Investigative journalist Charles Piller’s latest book, Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer’s, came out in February. It details the work of Matthew Schrag, a neurologist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., and other sleuths who uncovered evidence of problems in hundreds of research papers about the neurologic condition.
Most reviews and coverage have been positive, Piller said. But some Alzheimer’s researchers have criticized the book in reviews published in JAMA, The Lancet Neurology, and the website Alzforum, which hosts news and commentary on Alzheimer’s research.
Piller and Schrag say they respect that others are entitled to their opinions, but expressed concern that some of these reviews contain inaccuracies that downplay their findings. And the journals and Alzforum have refused to publish responses they submitted or make corrections they requested.
In one instance, an editor at Lancet Neurology refused to correct what Schrag claims are obvious errors in a review — including a mistaken but easily checked claim about citations — telling him the author of the article disagreed with “their interpretation” and rejected the need to fix his work.
Many of the criticisms allege Piller’s book overplays the importance of the research misconduct that has undermined the amyloid hypothesis of Alzheimer’s pathology, and called into question newly approved drugs targeting amyloid.
“There’s been this notion there’s a cabal around the amyloid hypothesis,” Schrag said. “This type of censorship gives some credibility to that.”
We ran an excerpt of the book in early February and our Ivan Oransky called it “required reading for aspiring scientists, policymakers, and anyone who will one day be touched by a devastating disease – which is all of us.”
The JAMA review was the first of the critical appraisals to appear. Its authors claim the book details four instances of research misconduct in the field, when the sleuths found issues in hundreds of papers from dozens of researchers, Schrag said. He and Piller submitted a response, which the journal declined to publish “because of the many submissions we receive and our space limitations in the Letters section,” according to emails we’ve seen.
Jen Zeis, JAMA Network’s communications and engagement director, told us the journal “cannot confirm or deny the status of any content that we haven’t published.”
Another inaccuracy Schrag and Piller identified in the critical reviews is the impact of a 2006 Nature paper in which Schrag found apparently manipulated images. The authors retracted the article last year, but it remains the fifth-most-cited retracted paper, by our count, with 2,384 citations.
In a post on Alzforum, John Hardy of University College London wrote the retracted paper “had no great influence in our field.” Hardy described himself as “a named member of this cabal” supporting the amyloid hypothesis in Piller’s book. He and his colleagues “never cited this work in our review of the amyloid hypothesis, nor did the other major reviews,” he wrote. Another Alzheimer’s researcher, Bart de Strooper, cited it “only” in a critical review, Hardy claimed.
But that citation record isn’t true, Schrag said. “It’s not clear to me why so much effort would be placed on the claim to have never cited this article, when it is so easy [to] debunk,” Schrag wrote in a response submitted to Alzforum. He included screenshots of Google Scholar pages showing multiple other papers in which Hardy and de Strooper had cited the 2006 Nature paper. Web of Science corroborates those results, showing Hardy has cited the work four times, including in a 2006 Neuron essay and a 2021 review in Molecular Psychiatry, and de Strooper has cited the paper 10 times.
Hardy has not responded to our request for comment.
Many other Alzheimer’s researchers chimed in with criticism of Piller and his book following Hardy’s post on Alzforum, which appeared in a discussion thread for the JAMA article.
Piller said he’s used to criticism, and usually doesn’t get involved in arguments because he believes his work can stand on its own, but this case was different. “Many of the comments were untrue and they were mischaracterizations of the book, and many of them included ad hominem attacks on me personally,” he told us. If he and Schrag didn’t respond, he said, he felt like “it was essentially acceding to their arguments.”
But as with JAMA, when Piller and Schrag attempted to submit responses to the thread, the editors declined to publish them.
“Your argument has been promoted for months and continues to be widely available in your book and in various media reviews,” Gabrielle Strobel, Alzforum’s executive editor, wrote in an email to Piller. “We see nothing new in your comment, and have closed the conversation.” Strobel did not respond to our request for comment.
Piller noted that Hardy and other researchers who commented in the thread serve on Alzforum’s scientific advisory board. “When they let their advisors criticize me and won’t let any response come through, it seems strange,” he said.
At one point, Alzforum promoted the thread as a “debate,” Schrag said, but its editors wouldn’t let him and Piller respond. “Is this what leaders of the field want debate to look like?” Schrag said. “You only have a voice if you espouse the popular opinion?”
Hardy had initially written his Alzforum post as a book review for Nature, but the journal declined to publish it, he wrote in his Alzforum post. A spokesperson for Nature told us when the editors commissioned the review, “we were unaware that Professor Hardy was a target of criticism in the book.” They decided not to publish the review after learning of his role during the editing process, as “the review may have been perceived by our readers to have a potential bias that could compromise the assessment.”
The Lancet Neurology later published another version of Hardy’s critique. Schrag wrote to the journal to request corrections to four “provably false” claims in it, including about how de Strooper had cited the 2006 Nature paper.
“Our Book Reviews are opinion pieces, in which authors are invited to freely express their views,” editor Elena Becker-Barroso responded. “I have shared your concerns with Professor Hardy, who disagrees with your interpretation and does not see the need for Correction.”
When we asked Becker-Barroso for comment on the decision not to correct the article, she asked us where in the text the inaccuracies Schrag identified had appeared.
“Please note the journal promotes scientific debate and we encourage authors to freely express their opinion in this sort of articles,” she wrote. “In which way should we correct Dr Hardy’s opinion?”
The experience is “very much more of the same” as his attempts to correct other problems in the scientific literature, Schrag told us. “You get the distinct impression that there’s very little concern about getting the facts right, at least in this case.”
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“In a post on Alzforum, John Hardy of University College London wrote the retracted paper “had no great influence in our field.” Hardy described himself as “a named member of this cabal” supporting the amyloid hypothesis in Piller’s book. He and his colleagues “never cited this work in our review of the amyloid hypothesis, nor did the other major reviews,” he wrote.”
In this article:
https://www.medicalschool.tv/genetics/top-geneticist-should-resign-over-his-teams-laboratory-fraud-the-guardian/
“Professor John Hardy, a fellow of the Royal Society at UCL, and winner of the $3m Breakthrough prize for his work on Alzheimers, told the Observer he wanted to go public because he was angry about the situation. Some minion carries the can. This is how it is, all the time. The powerful get away with it, he said.
As the senior author, he has to take responsibility, Hardy said. He should be fired from UCL and Birkbeck. He should be fired by UCL because he was leading a lab that published systematically fraudulent science. And at Birkbeck, he sets the tone. He shouldnt be in that position.”
This John Hardy?
https://pubpeer.com/publications/581C6237AB25C355B832530243F413
https://pubpeer.com/publications/8017E1F9F4A586B257B2AE89254BE0