The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #24 with Investigative Journalist Charles Piller! Uncovering FRAUD in Alzheimers research, Intimate details of the scheme, the impact of doctored research, amyloid protein, investigative journalism, freedom of speech, censorship and more!
Wed, 07 May 2025
Episode #24 Featuring Investigative Journalist Charles Piller! This discussion provides disturbing and eye open details of fraud in Alzheimers Disease research. Charles discusses the intimate details of what occurred, the impact of doctored research, a deep dive in Alzheimer's Disease facts, a discussion on amyloid proteins, what it takes to be an investigative journalist, censorship and freedom of speech and so much more! There are intricate details shared here that bring troubling facts that we all need to be aware of exist! DO NOT MISS THIS ONE!!Buy Charles New Book "Doctored" here:https://www.amazon.com/Doctored-Fraud-Arrogance-Tragedy-Alzheimers/dp/1797185993Follow Charles at Science Magazine here:https://www.science.org/content/author/charles-piller______________________________________________________________________Follow Dylan on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Tiktok @dylangemelliHuge thank you to everyone for the support! Please make sure to subscribe, like and comment!!Email Dylan for booking, collaborations and/or to apply for the Dylan Gemelli [email protected] Dylan's homepage here:https://dylangemelli.comTo PURCHASE MITOPURE visit Dylan's landing page and use code DYLAN10 to save!!https://www.timeline.com/promotions/dylangemelliRSShttps://rss.com/podcasts/the-dylan-gemelli-podcastApplehttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-dylan-gemelli-podcast/id1780873400I Hearthttps://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-the-dylan-gemelli-podcast-249695201/Spotifyhttps://open.spotify.com/show/3In4QlJj4IvHqq0eduKj7mPandorahttps://www.pandora.com/podcast/the-dylan-gemelli-podcast/PC:1001096187Stitcherhttps://www.stitcher.com/show/1096187FM Playerhttps://player.fm/series/the-dylan-gemelli-podcastPodchaserhttps://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/the-dylan-gemelli-podcast-5933919
Chapter 1: What inspired Charles Piller to become an investigative journalist?
Yes. Absolutely. I appreciate you taking the time. I know you're busy, especially with the new book. And there's a lot of people wanting to interview you and get into the things that you have talked about. And I'm really excited to learn about what you've done here. So let's start with this. Um, what drove you to get into the topic of work that you do?
I, you know, being investigative and looking for the things that, that you're digging into, what is there something in your life that triggered you to want to do that? And can you kind of get into that background?
Sure. At the risk of dating myself, I am old enough to remember the Watergate scandal with Richard Nixon, and it really inspired a lot of young people. Of course, I was too young to be a reporter back then, but I remember being riveted by the revelations associated with that scandal and really inspired by the
kind of intrepid legwork that has to go into uncovering the critical information that goes into helping people understand something from a factual and also a most credible perspective. perspective on important issues facing our society.
And so, like so many young people, I was inspired by that, but it took some years to learn and to study and to understand where I might fit in in journalism and to try things. But yes, I was from a pretty young age interested in trying to become an investigative reporter. It's not that easy to do because It's a competitive field. There aren't that many jobs in investigative reporting.
Unfortunately, there should be a lot more. But if you're deeply determined and want to put in the work, it can be done.
Absolutely. So do you find that this type of work, you get a lot of pushback or a lot of people trying to, I don't know, sabotage your work, not lead you in the wrong directions? I mean, how difficult it is to really get into this and do it properly?
Yeah, I mean, I think if you're doing this kind of work, you have to be prepared for threats and for the consequences of pissing off important people, to put it frankly.
Mm-hmm.
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Chapter 2: What challenges does Charles face in investigative journalism?
Yeah. Well, I'm fortunate that I'm not suffering from a lack of income, but I'm not getting rich either. You know, very few reporters really do get that rich. But yes, for me. Look, I mean, it may sound a little bit corny, but I'm really deeply committed to doing something beneficial with my work.
That's always been my motivation back from, as I mentioned, inspiration as a very young person associated with the Watergate scandal. What I want to do is expose things that can illuminate issues in a way that are helpful to the public, that can advance these causes in a way that might put things a little bit better on track than they were before. Look, you have to be realistic.
Being one person, no matter how influential some of my work might be, and fortunately, at times, it is influential. I think the book, for example, Doctored, has turned a lot of heads, and that's great. But you have to understand that the world's complicated. My goal really is to be one of the many people who's trying to do something beneficial in the world.
And because I feel deeply about it, it also means that I really enjoy what I'm doing. I really enjoy digging. I really enjoy getting to the bottom of puzzles. And that's an integral part of being an investigative journalist, is figuring out how mysteries end, what the steps are to learn what the root causes of problems are, and how someone might try to correct them.
So let me ask you this, and I think I know the answer, but I just want to hear what you have to say about it. During all of these investigations that you do and the digging and the learning, have you ever had anything or do you ever get to the point where it's like, holy shit, like what just happened here?
Are you kind of at the point where you're kind of like jaded now where it's like, ah, it's just something else. I just kind of expected this to happen. And you don't have to get into what it is if you don't want to share. But have you ever had those moments where you're like, oh, my gosh, like, really? Yeah. Did this really happen or did I just uncover this?
Yeah, honestly, I've had that a number of times. And it's not with every story because sometimes in this business, you drill a lot of holes and some of them are dry holes. But when you hit a gusher, you know this is something potentially important and interesting.
And that's really critical to remember because it doesn't do much good to do a lot of digging and find out information that is beneficial to the public if you can't make it something the public really is interested in and wants to learn about. And so, you know, what I look for in the, as you say, the sort of most exciting moment is when I have
both an interesting story and compelling story of some importance, but also a compelling way to tell it. And that's usually through the eyes of the people who have lived it. And that's what I'm about.
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Chapter 3: How personal experiences shape investigative reporting?
Well, my background initially was not in journalism. I studied psychology in school. And I very quickly realized that that was not going to be a profession for me, that I was... You know, as much as I respect and honor people who want to have a one-to-one relationship with patients and clients and help them work through their issues, I realized that that just, you know, that wasn't me.
That wasn't my personality. And my grandfather was a quite accomplished psychology researcher back in the day. And he, in a way, inspired me. But then I realized I had to be honest and true to my own interests and talents. And so... What happened was out of college, I went ahead and experimented with freelance writing.
And in fact, one of the first big articles I ever did was something that really sparked my interest in investigative reporting. It had to do with a group of workers in Utah who were working in a lead smelting plant. So this is a processing plant for lead. And this group of workers were exposed to terrible toxic fumes. And the company that they were working for had been covering it up.
And what I was able to do was to not just learn about some of the details of that toxic exposure, but to talk to some of the individual workers who were exposed. And this was quite a few years ago. There was no internet. And it was a bit of a challenge. And I used kind of a time-honored device.
old school method, which was to call from a small town in Utah, where it's not that everybody knows everybody, but people are deeply connected to each other. And I made some random calls, looked up people in the phone book and started calling people and said, do you know someone who works at this plant?
And within about three calls, I had some key sources to understand the depth of the problem there. And that gave me the sort of the bug, if you will, to try to do more in investigative reporting. I worked for newspapers for a while, small, very small newspapers, and then moved on to, uh, magazines.
And eventually, um, I broke through to a big newspaper job at the Los Angeles times where I did, uh, both, uh,
reporting on news subjects and also a lot of investigative reporting and really had the benefit of working with world-class colleagues and editors who were able to help me hone my skills and be even more ambitious and try to do things that required the teams that a big news organization can provide. And that kind of got me on my way, and I have never looked back from there.
That's awesome. Well, you've had quite the road then in the journey, sounds like. So that's great. And quite the background. What is, right now you write for Science Magazine. Can you kind of get into what that magazine discusses and what you kind of contribute to?
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Chapter 4: What is the significance of the book 'Doctored'?
Yeah, well, science comes out weekly. My articles are... not by any stretch of the imagination in every issue, because what I do usually takes months for every article to do the deep research and reporting and often data analysis that might be required to mount a really credible case. And whether you're talking about Alzheimer's research, or I did a story a few years back on nutrition research,
And whether you're talking about the kinds of deep questions that people have or just wanting to understand the subject well enough to write about it in an authoritative way takes time. I'm a very fortunate journalist. Most journalists are on tight deadlines and do not have the luxury of having that time. But it's time that's required for certain kinds of stories.
And like I say, I'm fortunate, but also it's a way in which The editors of the magazine, they understand if they want to contribute in this way, they have to be willing to allow me to take the time to do it. And so I'm very grateful to them for that and for their leadership in that respect.
That's great. That's awesome. So let's take a look back at some of your older writings before we get into your newest book. So your first book was Gene Wars, correct?
That's right, yeah.
Okay. What's that kind of about and the inspiration behind it?
Well, so that was something I, many years ago, worked for a small newspaper that was published by the University of California, and I became interested in biological sciences. And I became interested also in this phenomenon of how genetic engineering was used in our culture and in the scientific community. Because I think it's an important, amazing, powerful tool
and one that, like any tool, can be used for good or ill in society. And one of the really interesting things to me was this big question that goes with the question of how you use genetic engineering in warfare. Because at the time I was writing this book, a long time ago, there was a considerable amount of concern about it. There still is.
But that was kind of in at the ground floor level, you might say, when those concerns were just building on the possibility of biological warfare being affected by genetic manipulation in a way that might produce perhaps more harmful weapons.
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Chapter 5: How does Science Magazine contribute to scientific journalism?
That's right.
One of the things that I set a goal for myself with this book was to tell it as a narrative story. with a clear story arc. And what I mean by that is that this is not a dry recitation of scientific concerns or findings from an investigation. What this book is about is telling a story. How were these problems in the world of Alzheimer's disease discovered?
And the book describes a lot of apparently falsified research, doctored research in critical areas. And For me, the challenge was not just learning what those were, which was a big challenge in and of itself, and I'm happy to talk about how I went about doing that, but also critical was to find the right people to use as tools
the storytellers, really, to use their life experiences as a way of understanding the implications of this raft of apparently doctored research on the field and on the challenges and difficulties in finding effective remedies for this disease that's so critical for the United States and the world and also afflicts so many people and has such a massively difficult effect on their family members and caregivers.
So as time has evolved and things have changed in our society and governments changed, leaders have changed, all of these things have changed. You can have your opinion one way or another out there. Do you feel like it's become more difficult now? over time or before to speak your mind, to not be censored, to not be viewed upon, vilified? Do you think it's changed any differently over time?
And if it was worse in one era than the other, when was that and why do you feel that that is?
Well, I mean, I guess it depends in part on whether you're talking about reporters or the general public. But I can speak as a reporter. I was too young to be a reporter during the Nixon era, where he had created an enemies list that included many reporters. And he was someone who believed quite adamantly in that the press was something to be reined in.
Now, look, all presidential regimes, all administrations have had challenging relationships with the media at times. And the current one is no exception in that regard. I think this media environment's very, very different from the one that I grew up in, if you will, as a reporter. And the differences are, of course, exemplified by Thank you so much.
It means that the conventional mainstream media has much less control over the way in which people think about the world. And that, you know, there are both pros and cons associated with that. Now, for me, look, I have worked throughout my entire career in what you might call call the mainstream media.
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Chapter 6: What are the implications of censorship in journalism?
all to accentuate a point that was being made for a scientific paper, but to do so improperly in a way that is essentially a kind of scientific cheating. And because he had developed the talent for seeing these things from looking at this, initially looking at the science behind this drug, semufilam, he was looking more broadly to expand his ability to do this.
And he, in a way, kind of just by accident ran across one of the seminal studies in the history of Alzheimer's disease. Now, this was a study done in 2006 at the University of Minnesota. And what this study did, if I could just
use a few, a little bit of scientific explanation to bring this experiment to life for listeners a little bit, is that it involved a group that was using genetically engineered mice to produce copious amounts of a protein that deposits in their brains. This protein is called amyloid.
And it is thought by many, many, many people to be the linchpin of Alzheimer's disease, the thing that kicks off a series of biochemical effects in the brain. that leads to cell death in the brain and ultimately to dementia.
And so what he was doing when he kind of stumbled on the study and was looking at its images is that he realized that there were some big questions about whether these images were improperly changed. And so I remember the first conversation that Schrag and I had about the images in this seminal paper that had appeared in the journal Nature.
Now, you remember I said that the journal I work for, Science, is one of the preeminent scientific journals. Nature also is kind of its counterpart. Science and Nature are two journals that are often thought of in the same light as being the most important general science journals out there. And so to get an article into Nature means that you're really hitting
something really important and potentially could have a lot of influence. And this study had enormous influence. It was one of the most cited and discussed studies in Alzheimer's disease for a very long time. And The way the experiment went was this. They extracted these proteins from the brains of these genetically engineered mice.
They refined just one little segment of the protein, something they called amyloid beta star 56, their star protein. They injected it into rats, and rats began to show the apparent symptoms of memory loss that they compared to memory loss of Alzheimer's disease.
So what you had was the first kind of cause-effector relationship of a particular substance towards Alzheimer's disease, albeit in animals, but still something that really inspired the science. Now, Why was it so important? Why was it so pivotal? If you don't mind, Dylan, what I'd like to do is go back more than 100 years to tell kind of the story of the disease. How did we get here?
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Chapter 7: How does Charles Piller approach the topic of Alzheimer's research?
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.
And there's trials going on right now, again, that I think within a few years might have fruitful information that could prove beneficial in understanding the possibility that there's other avenues involved.
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Chapter 8: What criticisms does Charles have about institutional authorities in science?
I don't personally know the research you're talking about, so I don't have an opinion on it, but creative thinking is what we need.
I agree. And I mean, I, I'm a cellular health coach and things like that. And one thing that we learn in there is that all diseases start in the cells somehow, some ways damaged cells and inflammation. These things are like the causes of basically everything that goes wrong and or gut health, but that, you know, that's neither here nor there.
The point is, is things like inflammation, things like this, the preventative things that you talked about, there's multi
methodologies to go about things to prevent things to be preventative early on as opposed to just kind of you know I struggle this with a lot of my clients and people that I train it's kind of just this carefree attitude and when you do that you don't take the proper precautions and steps to take care of yourself prior and kind of educate yourself and know you're setting yourself up for failure
assuredly far earlier than you should. And so the hope is, is that with the education and the good explanation of everything that we can spread that word and help people to take better care of themselves early on to be preventative and then do their due diligence in terms of their research and their understandings. And then, you know, you ultimately in life, you make your own decisions.
You know, we all do. We live, we live and die by what we do and we learn and hopefully we make those right decisions. But it's people like you that are a blessing that, Take the extra step and risk your own health. I mean, really, in terms of people threatening you, you risk your career. You put it on the line to help people. And we need more people like you. And that's why I want to showcase you.
And I'm appreciative of having the opportunity to speak with you because it's so commendable. And people need to know more about you and who you are and what you do. So I just want to say thank you for all of us. It's appreciated.
Oh, you're so kind to say that, Dylan. And I just want to say that I agree with you very much. We have to remember that we are the center of our own lives. And we're the protagonists in our own stories. And it's up to us to think creatively and be thoughtful and to take care of ourselves. And I appreciate what you're doing towards that as well.
Absolutely. Well, I want to say congratulations on your book and the success and you being put out there to discuss it. Where is the best place to buy your book?
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