Charles Piller

And by making this change, I have created an opportunity to get new funding, funding that I desperately need to prove out the validity of this work.

And

Then the next study comes along and they see, well, I'm not quite getting exactly the results I want and need to prove my hypothesis, but I know I'm close.

I'm just going to make a couple of other changes to reflect well on the experiment.

And so you see where I'm going with this.

Suddenly you're moving into the direction of outright fraud and misconduct.

that then goes into the scientific record, skews thinking in the field.

And in the case of the amyloid hypothesis, there have been many studies done that are above reproach, but many others that have been done that are based on doctored science, doctored data that have pushed people in directions that suggest that the importance of this work is greater than it really is.

I think in the near term, we're going to be faced with many dilemmas and conundrums in the Alzheimer's field.

That said, I do have a lot of hope in part because I think scientific ideas are opening up a bit.

Perhaps I've had some small part in forcing the scientific community to take a good hard look in the mirror and ask themselves, how can we do this better?

How can we approach our science with

both greater validity and greater open-mindedness.

And I think that is beginning to take hold.

Let me give you a couple of examples that I feel very interested in seeing how they come out.

And potentially, they could be great developments in the field.

One is an emphasis on

the infectious hypothesis of Alzheimer's.

And this is the idea that latent infections such as that of herpes virus or other ailments could hide out in the brain for years or decades and cause problems such as inflammation that could contribute to or lead to the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease.

People are studying these things ever more seriously.