The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Exposing Widespread Corruption In Alzheimer's Research | Charles Piller
Sun, 02 Mar 2025
I'll teach you how to become the media's go-to expert in your field. Enroll in The Professional's Media Academy now: https://www.professionalsmediaacademy.com/Pick up a copy of Charles Piller's new book "Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer's " here: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Doctored/Charles-Piller/978166803124700:00 Intro01:21Loss Of Trust11:52 Paper Mills13:57 His Bombshell Report19:37 Where Corruption Comes From25:16 Don’t They Know They’ll Be Caught?27:54 Image Manipulation32:03 Competition For Grants40:30 Peer Review Process44:19 Is Everything About Alzheimer’s A Lie?47:22 Trump Administration / RFK Jr.51:11 Can You Trust Your Doctor?57:45 Shared Decision Making1:00:14 FDA Challenges1:05:54 Cost Of Healthcare1:08:05 What Should Be The Punishment1:12:50 How “Science” Has Changed1:17:47 COVID Messaging1:20:10 Hope For The FutureHelp us continue the fight against medical misinformation and change the world through charity by becoming a Doctor Mike Resident on Patreon where every month I donate 100% of the proceeds to the charity, organization, or cause of your choice! Residents get access to bonus content, an exclusive discord community, and many other perks for just $10 a month. Become a Resident today:https://www.patreon.com/doctormikeLet’s connect:IG: https://go.doctormikemedia.com/instagram/DMinstagramTwitter: https://go.doctormikemedia.com/twitter/DMTwitterFB: https://go.doctormikemedia.com/facebook/DMFacebookTikTok: https://go.doctormikemedia.com/tiktok/DMTikTokReddit: https://go.doctormikemedia.com/reddit/DMRedditContact Email: [email protected] Producer: Doctor MikeProduction Director and Editor: Dan OwensManaging Editor and Producer: Sam BowersEditor and Designer: Caroline WeigumEditor: Juan Carlos Zuniga** Select photos/videos provided by Getty Images *** The information in this video is not intended nor implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. All content, including text, graphics, images, and information, contained in this video is for general information purposes only and does not replace a consultation with your own doctor/health professional **
Chapter 1: What is the main topic of this episode?
In this episode, I sit down with Charles Piller, the investigative journalist for Science Magazine, who is behind some of the biggest exposés on scientific fraud. His recent book, Doctored, has uncovered widespread corruption by self-interested researchers, government accomplices, and greedy corporations, all racing in the quest to cure Alzheimer's.
We discuss secret data manipulations, shocking misconduct, and the unsettling truth about how money and prestige can derail real progress. But it's not all doom and gloom. We also dive in into how we can rebuild trust and make science work better for everyone. So sit back, get comfortable, and let's jump right into this eye-opening conversation.
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I'm excited to speak with you because a passion of mine in the healthcare space is talking about trust in science, in medicine. When I have a patient sitting across from me, the most important thing that I think about is the doctor-patient alliance. How can we get onto the same page? Because without that level of trust, we technically have nothing.
I'm basically a robot saying science words, and if they're not landing, they're not making an impact, I'm not helping. These days, I feel like there's been a tremendous loss of trust in our scientific institutions. A, have you seen that happen? And B, what do you think is leading the way for that to occur?
Well, I think it's tragic. Myself, as someone who tremendously support scientific research and the wisdom of doctors, truly. It's been very sad to see the decline in public understanding of how important those processes are. I think it's due to a couple things. One is I think there are people in society who are using
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Chapter 2: Why has there been a loss of trust in science?
Doctors and some of the medical situations we've been experiencing, such as the pandemic, beat up on institutional authorities like in medicine and for political purposes. And I think that's horrible and unfounded, unwarranted. The second thing is that science and medicine sometimes have an arrogance problem. And they use the idea that trust us or the experts.
And unfortunately, that trust has to be won, not just assumed. And when you have situations where there are missteps, honest human mistakes, or scandals associated with misconduct, Or simply just bad moves, bad policy moves. What you see is that often scientists are entrusted with policy decisions for which they have no specific expertise.
Or decisions about how to run things in society that they might claim expertise for, but they actually have no special expertise for. And those are the reasons why I think sometimes people develop mistrust in science.
Now, as for me, I'm deeply, deeply determined to try to fight off the needless skepticism, the needless complaints about problems in science and in medicine, but also to be serious about identifying problems where they are in order to strengthen the scientific infrastructure, if you would, to strengthen the ability of doctors to have those honest and effective conversations with patients.
So are you saying you seek to be critical of the scientific method of the scientific agencies in order to make it more valuable to the general public?
I would just change one word there. Not so much the scientific method, which I think in its highest form is a wonderful and well, well stated process of experimentation and and testing hypotheses. That part of it is terrific. It's where people cut corners or ignore important elements of the equation where you start to run into trouble.
And so, yes, I support the very excellent exercise of that method. And I support people who are trying their level best to deliver something important to the public, even if they do sometimes make mistakes. How would you describe the scientific method for the general public? Well, science is a series of iterations.
And I think one of the great things about science is that every new discovery opens up vast new areas of ignorance in order to be able to explore and improve upon what we know. So I would say it's... bringing in a hypothesis forward, testing it, and then learning from those tests what amount of that hypothesis was true and correct and can be applied to human benefit.
Sometimes we see that these ideas are completely without foundation when they're tested, and those should be discarded. Others have a grain of truth or an element of them that could be extended and made into something very valuable. Every so often, there are tremendous breakthroughs that are discovered in a single or a single series of experiments.
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Chapter 3: What are paper mills and how do they affect research?
Where do paper mills fall into this equation?
Well, this is a phenomenon that is a pernicious effect on scientific research. So I mentioned before the publisher-parish ethos within scientific careers. And because of the pressure that scientists feel and the competitive nature of the field—the too few jobs for too many PhDs, for example—
What you have is a situation where clever entrepreneurs, if you want to call them that, have developed these companies where they generate fake papers. In other words, kind of interesting sounding papers. kind of plausible sounding scientific papers. And then they sell authorships to the papers. Sometimes these are generated even by AI programs.
And they sell these authorships to people who are desperate enough or simply confused enough to pay a little money to get in on the game and be able to enhance their resume to get jobs or to increase their ability perhaps to have publications in legitimate journals.
So how do we fight back against this potential fraud that seems to be growing?
Yeah, so it's a great question, Mike, for a few reasons. And let me answer it in a couple different ways. So We are very privileged in this country to have excellent institutions that regulate, monitor science. The funders, the journals, the regulatory agencies like the Food and Drug Administration, these are agencies and groups that have
for many, many years served the public well with advancing scientific ideas, but I think have fallen behind in critical ways, in ways that we need to press them to improve for the sake of the scientific record and also for the advancement of medicine in general.
Let me give you the example of, this is something that to me was a pretty stunning example from research that I did for the book that also appeared in Science Magazine recently about the guy who used to be the chief neuroscientist in the head of the division of neuroscience at the National Institute on Aging.
That is a very important agency that funds research into Alzheimer's and other neurological disorders. And what this guy was, I found in my reporting, had been apparently falsifying images and other data in his studies going back a quarter century. This is Dr. Maslia? That's right. Very important guy in the business, very highly regarded.
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Chapter 4: How does image manipulation impact scientific integrity?
You have this company that's fraudulently taking, I forgot what, $16 million in NIH grants. Why is the FDA allowing that?
Let me frame the word fraud and what it means. It's a legal term that one has to use carefully because it has to be proven in court. But what I would say is that this company has been shown to engage in behavior that caused federal agencies to step in and really crack down on them in a dramatic way.
And why hasn't the FDA stopped the trials if that was going on?
I think there's a kind of complacency in certain ways in which the agency operates. I think also that there is such a desperate hunger and a sense of real desperation in the community of patients and family members who are living with Alzheimer's to have some sort of drug, some sort of remedy that can at least allay some of the worst cognitive symptoms.
It's very, very hard for the agency to resist the pressure that they're feeling from drug companies, from patient representatives, from the entire world to try to come up with approved drugs that can be used to help solve this terrible problem that we have with Alzheimer's.
I also don't see how it's valuable to manipulate or create data in the basic sciences step, then do it with the phase one trials when you know at some point the other shoe is going to drop and it would be found out that the medication is not as effective. Are scientists who engage in this type of behavior hoping that
maybe getting past the first stage will get them ultimately where they can prove truly that their medicine or treatment works. Do they have true belief in themselves or are they usually full on playing one of these games of let's make as much money as possible?
Yeah, it's tough. I mean, I'm not a psychologist and I don't play one on TV, so I can't really answer for sure what's going on in their minds. But what I can say is that you have a situation where historically it's been pretty easy to get away with falsifying data. And so there are many people who will roll the dice on it and reap the rewards.
And so even in a situation like the one you're describing, again, going back to Cassava Sciences for a moment, what you have is a situation where there was apparent image doctoring going on from the very beginning. apparent flaws in the thinking of this entire process from beginning to end, apparent other kinds of improper activities at the company.
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Chapter 5: What is the amyloid hypothesis and why is it controversial?
It's very hard to support the idea that a person like that maybe made a mistake and should be allowed to learn from their mistake and improve their behavior. On the other hand, I'm very sympathetic to junior scientists
and people who are drawn into either misconduct knowingly or maybe even unwittingly in some of these labs because they're beholden to powerful supervisors, professors, who dictate the future of their young scientists within their lab. And so I think those people deserve a lot of sympathy and a lot of support.
And I've talked to many of them, and it's sometimes heartbreaking, the stories you hear about how difficult it was for them knowing that to talk to me could jeopardize their reputation and their career, even though they were kind of trapped in a training situation where they witnessed wrongdoing.
But I'm thankful to say some of them stepped forward because they believe deeply in the integrity of science.
We talked about the peer review process improving. Do you think institutions like the major institutions of the world that are performing the scientific research should be also put on notice that they need to improve some things?
Yeah, I mean, I think really you have the The institutions that regulate, fund, publish, and administer science, you've got universities, journals, regulatory agencies like the FDA, funders like the NIH, and foundations that fund important scientific research, they're all guilty of complacency. They're all guilty of not keeping up with the times, not keeping up with the reality,
that there are pervasive problems in image doctoring and related kinds of falsification of research. So I think taking it seriously is step one. Not just paying lip service, but really developing
methods that are routinely applied in all of those institutions to be able to show the public that they care deeply about honest research research that can be used to move the society forward and not just drug development but other forms of science forward and so yeah i would say you got to hit those institutions hard the institutional authorities of science are behind
They need to improve their game, get their game going on this.
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Chapter 6: How can we improve the peer review process?
That your example of someone who, you know, your rather substantial side gig from being a doctor is, you know, it's a good sign that we have to have people who can do more than one thing and can kind of encourage this dialogue. But yes, we're in a big hole in that way, and I certainly don't have a solution for it.
But what I'm trying to do is to put accessible information out into the world that can help move people in a good direction, that can help raise awareness of these issues, but also force institutions to sit up and take notice and to make themselves better. What's said on social media is one thing. What institutions do is another.
They're not completely separate from each other, but these institutions are powerful and they can do much better. I want to say that I work for Science Magazine. I think one thing that I've appreciated there is that even though they themselves have been caught many times in having published studies that then later are shown to have been flawed or untrue, maybe even falsified.
You know, they're quite determined to put out accurate information, to do it in a way that faces down hard issues in science and medicine. Otherwise, I wouldn't be writing the stuff that I'm writing. They're willing to look at, take a good hard look at it. And I think that's,
The sort of thing that I think a lot of the institutions haven't been willing to do is to take a good hard look in the mirror and say, what am I doing that's leading to my own problems? How can I get better at this?
Yeah, they want to look outside for why their problems are happening.
That's exactly right. And it's not that they are the sole cause of all their own problems, but they need to clean up their own house. Yeah.
What's one positive thing we can leave viewers and listeners with when it comes to the future of Alzheimer's research? Where do you think we go in the next 20 years?
Well, I think one thing that I'm really looking forward to is some interesting research in two realms. One is the possible benefits of the new GLP-1 inhibitors. So these are the drugs like Ozempic and others that have been taken for weight loss.
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