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Short abstract:

Alzheimer’s disease is explained and treated based on a scientific premise that has been repeatedly disproved yet dominates. Via recent examples of research fraud and pharmaceutical failure, I explore the individual and institutional reasons why this hypothesis “refuses to die”.

Long abstract:

This work examines the journey and legacy of an actively disputed hypothesis in molecular neuroscience, using this as a starting point to speculate more broadly on the staying power of scientific errors, and the material and institutional conditions that may surround and support their longevity.

Here, I trace the development of the actively contested yet dominant “amyloid” hypothesis of Alzheimer’s disease, from just another plausible explanation of pathology to practically an ideology that is the (questionable yet enduring) basis for the majority of therapies currently in clinical trials. In this narrative, I look at contemporary instances of fraudulent discoveries, misconduct in scientific reportage and the spectacular medical and financial failure of adacanumab as a pharmaceutical intervention. In doing so,this talk contributes to extant STS explorations of the extrinsic institutional, academic, and social pressures that have an outsized influence on not just research questions but research answers. What do ‘erroneous’ decisions look like in the social fabric of molecular neuroscience? What explains and sustains scientific “stubbornness”, and what motivates the mutation of persistence to perversion - on individual, collective, and systemic levels? And what can we even do about it?