Matthew Schrag

And the four of them took a look at Masley's papers.

We found 132 papers out of the 800.

We didn't look at all 800 because it was too massive a task.

At 132 were image irregularities, including apparently doctored images, apparently misused or reused images, apparently images that were published separately in different papers in an improper way to make different scientific points.

What came out of it was a 300-page dossier detailing all of the concerns.

And this traces back to Maslia's work going back 30 years, including at UC San Diego, and also the work coming out of his lab at the National Institute on Aging.

That he's directing personally in his own lab.

Well, in the most straightforward way possible.

I wrote to him.

I presented the dossier to him.

He had 100% of the information.

I asked him a wide range of questions about the problems that we...

found, and of course we offered him the opportunity to present evidence that would suggest that we had it wrong in some way.

And so the response was that he didn't respond.

The response from the agency was fascinating.

At first they would refuse to respond, and then as the date of publication became closer and closer, literally three days before the story was published, they said, wait, wait, we might have something for you.

And then they timed their announcement about this to land the moment my story went live on the Science Magazine website.

And that announcement was that Maslia was no longer in his job.

Just to put it plainly, nearly all of them have built their careers on explaining, exploring, and expanding the benefits and the importance of the amyloid hypothesis.

Their money, their prestige, their career aspirations are all tied up with that.