Medical research

‘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. Doctored details how the dossiers of evidence were compiled in the lead-up to the publication of that 2022 article and the subsequent fall out. The central character is Matthew Schrag, a scientist at Vanderbilt University, who provided the expert analysis for Piller. The book is centred on the developing

One usually likes to think that scientists know what they’re doing. Here’s something that might shake your confidence. In bio-medical research, scientists often use cell lines. These are in vitro cells, originally taken from a human or animal donor, which can be experimented on to help develop new drugs or treatments. The problem is that, according to one review, in ‘at least 5 per cent’ of studies, the scientists have totally mixed up where the cells came from. This means that in at least one in 20 studies that were sent off for peer review the scientists were completely confused about the most basic element of their research. They thought,