Just amazing! And not in a good way, either.
All the paper’s authors agreed to retract, save Lesné, who has been under investigation for manipulating data.
What makes this retraction so significant is that it has driven research into Alzheimer’s treatments for nearly two decades, and treatment approaches based on its conclusions have failed to yield results.
If the hypothesis that amyloid protein buildups cause Alzheimer’s symptoms is wrong, Lesné is responsible for perhaps billions of wasted research dollars and two decades of scientists following a false lead.
And immeasurable human suffering. I mean, is my dad dead because of what she did?
MANY bedrock social psychology studies have recently been shown to be fraudulent–the foundational studies we all learned. Milgram. Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment. More currently, the “scientists” at the CDC and elsewhere who totally fabricated data in order to push a political agenda. And now this. Wow.
Folks, we need reliable data upon which we can base decisions! And to find out that this fraud runs so amazingly deep is more than a bit discouraging. It means that we don’t actually know what we think we know.
It is a crisis of epistemology. And it is head-spinning.
I think we are seeing now how important morality is in Science. Because without morality, there actually is no knowledge.