A Study of Studiers… Instead of the Fraudsters

Glorifying Matthew Schrag as the hero in this story presumes that he did not have something to win by outing rivals. The problem this book takes on is the complete corruption of medical research across diseases. But the blurb makes this sound as the only case of its kind. Schrag’s outing of these problems have not even succeeding in ending the erroneous branch of research uncovered. I assume most of this book is a puffery of Schrag’s team, instead of really presenting the evidence on how this type of fraud continues to dominate all branches of medical research. By explaining this we could begin to take steps to counteract it.
The “Prologue” opens by explaining that the author began this project by writing a story about this case for Science in 2022. He acknowledges that publicists for drug-makers usually hire “cheerleading journalists” to present product-puffing text they ghostwrite for them, instead of doing any original research into claims. But for this case to have gone unreported for the previous decades, the author had to be one of these cheerleaders puffing what was asked to be puffed… Some facts are given, such as that in 2023 Alzheimer’s patients cost $350 billion in the US.
“Chapter 1: A Vanishing Mind” jumps into the problem by describing a sufferer of Alzheimer trying to maneuver the system. There is a summary of the stages of FDA drug-trials, as this patient decides to join a trial, hoping it would work. The prose is pretty dense with information about the science, together with personal anecdotes. There are some random digressions into where the author grew up, or who the chosen “hero” researchers wanted to be when they grow up. As I anticipated the focus on the heroes, and the victims skews this narrative to describing these people, instead of just describing specific corrupt acts that are components in the catastrophic fraud problem. There might be a brief mention that a researcher found “one study” where “very young and very old mice showed nearly the same test results—a finding that other experts also found doubtful…” But instead of fully explaining this, the author digresses into an email where not much is said, before a trip is described to discuss this subject with the “hero” who forwarded this observation. A lot of voice is given to non-responses where researchers refuse to answer allegations. And when a dossier is mentioned the thousands of citations in it is stressed, instead of its findings. When something curious is raised like that Masliah “supported approval for 238 active patents—by far the most for any scientist examined…” This point is soon dropped without examining what these patents were, in favor, instead, of discussing how “weird” somebody is, or other personality issues.
A good deal of effort has been invested in this book. Somebody who reads it cover-to-cover should understand this subject better. But they would have to plow through a lot of irrelevant information to get to the nuggets about how this case was cracked. So this is not a good book to use in classes, and researchers probably should get the ebook to search for terms that interest them, as opposed to working through all the stuff around these.
—Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Fall 2024: https://anaphoraliterary.com/journals/plj/plj-excerpts/book-reviews-fall-2024

Oh boy am I mad after reading this one!! It hits a bit close to home, living with a grandparent with AD and having 2 APOE genes.

I think now more than ever people are paying attention to WHY US healthcare is such a nightmare. Piller covers the fraud within the Alzheimer research community - with poor research, obtaining federal funds for junk research, the fake finance bros who attack whistleblowers for decreasing stock value…

We need to focus more on cures than symptom management. Ok, we can stop these plaques from growing, but will that change the progression of Alzheimer’s?

The part where we learn that some of these expensive research studies directly caused Medicare part B to increase. Why must the people pay rather than corporations?

WOW! This is a super dense book dealing with a lot of technical medical knowledge. I didn't understand some of it, but the author did describe it.

The amount of fraud going into Alzheimer research is appalling. it seemed that whenever the author turned around there was another fraud in Alzheimer research. Even his main person reporting the fraudulent research, Schrag was accused of fraud on some of his undergraduate work.

The anger towards researchers and the journals/papers that published the false research was palpable in the book.

I was angry too, the National Institutes of Health gives out billions of dollars a year in research and just about every paper, every study, trial, for Alzheimer's is false or offers no hope, but they still get funded.

As I read this book I was shocked at how deep the falsehoods go, the Universities covering it up, and just the sheer amount of money in research and profit to be made.

it made me want to question all research.

There are a lot of people in this book, there is a lot of information. I thought the author had beat a dead horse. He had showed how the research was fraudlent and yet another 2 chapters went into finding MORE researchers who falsified their research/numbers.

In the end, this is a well researched book that is super dense and needs to be edited down.

I received a free copy of, Doctored, by Charles Piller, from the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Alzheimer's is a horrible disease, millions of American suffer with it, and their families too. This book shows how they people who can cure this disease are not. This was a very insightful read.

So, this was super eye-opening and really dives into the behind-the-scenes of Alzheimer’s research. If you’re into those deep-dive, investigative reads, this one totally hits the mark. It covers some pretty shady stuff going on with researchers, big companies, and regulators, and how all of that might have slowed down finding a cure.

What really stands out is how much of what we thought we knew could be totally off, and it definitely makes you think about the bigger picture when it comes to science and medicine. It’s kinda intense, but it’s written in a way that keeps you hooked, and it’s super informative without being overwhelming.

This book is definitely one to check out if you’re into thought-provoking reads that make you question things!

Thank you sooo much NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion!