What was once seen as "groundbreaking" research in an Alzheimer's study is now being questioned by some in the science world, following accusations around the study's authenticity.
The study was led by Dr. Karen Ashe, a senior University of Minnesota scientist. However, one of her colleagues, Sylvain Lesné, is being accused of doctoring images to prop up the research.
Charles Piller, a contributor for Science Magazine, is among those shining a light on the controversy, and he shared his thoughts on the study with News Talk 830 WCCO's Jordana Green and Adam Carter.
"The problems with this study and many other studies done by scientists at the University of Minnesota and their colleagues were uncovered by a guy by the name of Matthew Schrag, who is a neuroscientist and doctor at Vanderbilt University," Piller said.
Piller shared that Schrag was looking through research on Alzheimer's to aid his own study when he ran across papers by Lesné. According to Piller, Schrag examined the papers and found that some images may have been doctored.
Piller suggests that the photos could have been changed to support a hypothesis that was not supported by the data that was actually found.
For the longest time, Alzheimer's was believed to be related to amyloid proteins that can cause plaques in the human brain and lead to Alzheimer's or dementia, Piller explained. However, in Lesné and Ashe's papers, they wrote about a new protein they discovered that doesn't cause plaques and is in a different class of amyloid proteins.
Piller shared that their 2006 experiments were seen as a breakthrough because the specific amyloid protein they discovered, dubbed Aβ*56, could be purified and used to cause memory loss, the first ever substance to do so.
"It was kind of a bombshell in the field," Piller said.
But when Schrag came across the research and "kind of stumbled into it," according to Piller, he found an issue in their work.
"In image after image after image. Paper after paper after paper. There were strong signs that images based on data examining these proteins didn't look right," Piller said. "The images looked as if they had been doctored."
Following the release of the information questioning the studies, several high-profile journals have begun investigations into the published papers, going as far as to warn readers that they should be cautious of the data.
Now, Piller is worried about the implications the research will have on Alzheimer's in general 16 years after the research was released. He says, like himself, others feel the studies could have steered thinking in the field to places it didn't need to go, creating possible "wasted thinking."
Regarding the long-term and acute effects of the possible false research, Piller says that no patients have suffered from it as no drugs were developed to specifically attack the Aβ*56 proteins that were the subject of the study.
However, he does think that the research could have "confused the field, set it back, and deterred people from pursuing other important and fruitful avenues of research."
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