Charles Piller
speaker
984 appearances
4 recordings
4 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard 17 Apr
Charles Piller’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Apr 2026 with 1.
Appearances
It doesn't mean that nothing associated with the amyloid hypothesis is true and that nothing should be done about it, that no one should ever look at it or think about amyloid proteins. I think even the critics of the hypothesis believe that amyloid proteins have something to do with the disease, but maybe not everything to do with it the way it's been often described.
And consequently, yes, there's been a lot of anger at the messenger, you might say me, in bringing this to light. But I think what's interesting is that the criticisms of the book, and there have been criticisms from scientists who are deeply committed to the amyloid hypothesis and whose careers have
and funding and reputations are built on examining, exploring, and proving out that way of thinking about the disease. Of course, they feel threatened. They've been antagonistic and critical of some of the findings of the book. But I should add that they haven't found anything in the book that's not true.
What they have said is that they just see the situation differently and feel very strongly concerned that, and again, I'm going to get back very briefly to this question of the administration of this whole set of issues in Washington, but they feel concerned that
my book might encourage people who are anti-science from thinking, oh, well, because some science was improperly manipulated, all science is suspect. Let me address that directly, if I could, Dylan, just for a moment. I want to say that I believe that in every walk of life, a small percentage of people will cut corners or manipulate information or cheat or outright commit fraud.
Why would Alzheimer's research be any different from people in finance or plumbers or even journalists who do engage in improper activities from time to time? We're all human beings. We both make mistakes and there are a few among us who are willing to do things improperly. And so that does not mean the vast majority of research in Alzheimer's research can't be trusted. Of course it can be.
It's the honest work of people who are deeply committed to finding the truth in these matters. Do they make mistakes sometimes? Sure, of course, all of us do. But I think we should understand that even though it's only a tiny percentage of research in the field that may have been based on doctored images or on other improper scientific approaches or on outright fraud,
even though it's only perhaps a very small percentage of the overall body of research, even that small amount in certain locations in the thinking of the field can skew scientific thinking, can lead to dead ends, can waste important funding. that we don't have nearly enough of, that we desperately need to help patients by finding better approaches to finding a cure for the disease.
And so it's that wasted thinking, it's that wasted funding, and the tragedy of it that I think the field needs to take more seriously, even though Myself and I think everyone should understand that most scientists are honest, even if they're pursuing things that don't ultimately pan out. They're trying their best.
I do feel that way, Dylan. I feel optimistic for a couple reasons. Um, well, first of all, I think, uh, Over the last few years, there's been a much greater effort to detect improper research, to find doctored images in scientific research. And I have to say that it's been stimulated by something that I think many listeners would maybe even be unsurprised by, a kind of crowdsourcing.
So you have a small army of these people who call themselves image sleuths, and they are forensic image experts who know how to use software and who have a good eye for seeing when some improper duplication of an image or change in an image may have occurred using software tools to examine it carefully. And until these folks entered the fray a few years back,
You had enormous amount of complacency on the part of journals and other institutions who are, again, the gatekeepers of science and should be all over this. They should be vigilant about it. But unfortunately, we're very complacent and we're not paying close attention. And so much improper science slipped through. That's harder to do now because you've got thousands of eyes on it.
people who are posting their images, some to social media and some to a website called Pubpeer that listeners may want to look up just for fun and take a look at. It looks at scientific studies and where perhaps mistakes or improper manipulation of images might have taken place. And it doesn't necessarily conclude that bad things have happened, but it asks questions.
It shows the apparent flaws in the images. it requests that the scientists behind the work take a close look at it. And often, it gives fodder for an examination by the journals that published the work. So this is one way in which I feel optimistic. It's forcing a greater concern about making science the most powerful, the most reliable it can be. And that's the forensic image sleuths.
The other thing is I think that as much as the amyloid hypothesis of Alzheimer's has been dominant for many, many years, has received the most attention, Yet in recent years, there have been a few other ideas that I think are potentially fruitful and interesting that I have my eye on. And I would certainly encourage people who are interested to think about and examine.
And I can give a couple of examples of those. One is right now, the kind of the GLP-1 inhibitors. These are the drugs like Wegovy and others that have hit the world by storm of late. And whatever pros and cons there are of these things, they have become very important drugs in our world.
But one of the interesting things about it is that scientists have found that it's possible that they may have beneficial effects on early stage dementia. And as a result, they're being tested in people. I think within
probably by sometime early in 2026, just no more than about a year from now, we may know whether those hopes, the early evidence that we've seen with those drugs might prove to be true and correct. And it might be an avenue that some patients might be able to travel to have a better, more hopeful experience with the progression of their disease.
The other thing that I think people often forget about is that certain infections that seem like they're gone, like one example is herpes virus that people might get that causes cold sores, but then goes away. And people think, okay, I'm done with that.
But it can somehow, sometimes I should say, be a latent infection that hangs out in internal organs, including the brain, for many years, even decades, after the person has apparently gotten over the disease and gotten over the infection. And people are studying the effects of these latent infections on dementia. And it's possible that it could be a factor in Alzheimer's disease.
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