From the magazine

Alzheimer’s research is challenging enough without a data manipulation scandal

Two cases of scientific fraud and cover-up are brought to light by Charles Piller, with serious consequences for the Alzheimer’s field in the US

William McEwan
Amyloid plaques depicted as abnormal clusters between nerve cells resulting in Alzheimer’s disease.  Alamy
EXPLORE THE ISSUE 03 May 2025
issue 03 May 2025

‘In science, truth always wins,’ said the molecular biologist Max Perutz. In 2022, Charles Piller, an investigative journalist for Science, published an article posing a new set of obstacles to Perutz’s truism. He revealed cases of fabricated data in the area of Alzheimer’s research, setting off a cascading set of consequences for the researchers involved and for the field more generally.

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