Questioning the Alzheimer’s Experts

Recently someone brought a disturbing article to my attention. The article claims that leading brain research scientist, Eliezer Masliah, may have added false data to scores of papers he published or helped to publish.

The revelation is very significant. Since 2016, Eliezer Masliah has been working as the head of Neuroscience at the National Institute of Aging (NIA) and in charge of an annual budget as high as $2.6 Billion in 2024.

Besides the money, Masliah is in charge of setting the direction for Neuroscience research for the NIA. The results of his research determine a lot of the research into cognitive decline.

According to the article in the prestigious magazine Science,

“But over the past 2 years questions have arisen about some of Masliah’s research. A Science investigation has now found that scores of his lab studies at UCSD and NIA are riddled with apparently falsified Western blots—images used to show the presence of proteins—and micrographs of brain tissue. Numerous images seem to have been inappropriately reused within and across papers, sometimes published years apart in different journals, describing divergent experimental conditions.”

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) which oversees the NIA, made a statement saying that Masliah no longer is the Director of Neuroscience. However, he may still be employed there.

Some of Masliah’s papers influenced the approval of experimental drugs by the FDA. One example is an antibody called Prasinezumab to treat Parkinson’s.  The drug is supposed to attack alpha-synuclein. Scientists believe it’s build up in the brain leads to Parkinson’s symptoms.

Yet in a trial of 316 Parkinson’s patients, Prasinezumab showed no benefit compared with a placebo. The patients who took the drug also experienced more side effects than the placebo group.

Despite the poor results the company developing Prasinezumab is moving forward with another clinical trial of 586 Parkinson’s patients.

Some of Masliah’s colleagues were upset about the findings.

“I’m floored,” says Samuel Gandy, a prominent neurologist at the Mount Sinai Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center who was visibly shaken during a video interview. “Hundreds of images. There had to have been ongoing manipulation for years.”

Experts are humans as well. There are tons of reasons to listen to experts. Or hire them to provide a good or service for you.

They should also be treated with a dose of skepticism.

‘Trust but verify’ seems to be a good motto.

Blind trust in people about your health can be detrimental. Many people just look at an expert’s credentials and accept what they say without question.

That’s why marketers and sales people seek out the experts to endorse their product. People will be more accepting of it if an expert likes it.

We have a lot of people reach out to us at our assisted living homes with supplement recommendations and other therapies. It’s hard to sort through all of them.

I try a different approach. Instead of asking ‘what credentials do these experts have?’, I ask, ‘can you show me the results the product has achieved?’. Then I try to research those results from an independent source.

Even then the data of results may be fake. It just seems like a better benchmark that is harder to fake. And ultimately what we want is results.