Alzheimer’s Research, Doctored Data, and the Human Cost | Charles Piller – EP 722

coming up next on passion struck. I think people of good intentions can make mistakes,

they can be drawn into actions that are counterproductive, that are even counter

to what their expressed views and wishes would be. And my job is to try to tell the bigger story,

to tell the human story behind some of these concerns so that I don't want to leave readers with

a sense of cynicism. I think it's important to view the world as it is, but also to try to

generate a sense of hopefulness about what it can be by exposing bad actions and trying to correct

them, and also pointing out where things in the future might benefit from some of the work that's

being done. Welcome to passion struck. I'm your host John Miles. This is the show where we explore

the art of human flourishing and what it truly means to live like it matters. Each week I sit down

with change makers, creators, scientists and everyday heroes to decode the human experience

and uncover the tools that help us lead with meaning, heal what hurts and pursue the fullest

expression of who we're capable of becoming. Whether you're designing your future, developing as

a leader or seeking deeper alignment in your life, this show is your invitation to grow with purpose

and act with intention, because the secret to a life of deep purpose, connection and impact

is choosing to live like you matter.

Hey friends, welcome back to episode 722 of Passion Strock. We're continuing our January series,

The Meaningmakers, an exploration of how meaning is built, protected, and sometimes broken inside

the systems we trust most. In recent episodes, we've been tracing how inner structures shape performance

and identity. With New York Times best-selling author Jim Murphy, we explored inner excellence

on Tuesday, how courage, wisdom and love form the invisible foundation beneath extraordinary

performance. Before that, we examined how pressure distorts judgment, how unseen cognitive strain

erode self-trust, and how early systems of belonging shape regulation for life. Today we turn

outward for truth, power and consequence, because meaning doesn't only live inside individuals,

it lives inside institutions, and when those institutions fail, human cost is enormous.

My guest today is Charles Pillar, an award-winning investigative journalist for science,

and the author of the groundbreaking book, Dr. broad arrogance and tragedy in the quest to cure

Alzheimer's. For decades, Alzheimer's research focused on a single dominant theory,

backed by prestige, funding, and pharmaceutical promise. But what if that certainty was built on

manipulated data? What if careers, incentives, and institutional silence delayed progress for

millions of families waiting for answers? Today's episode is not a conversation about cynicism.

It's a conversation about integrity, about whistleblowers who risk everything to tell the truth,

about what happens when systems prioritize certainty over curiosity and prestige over accountability.

In this episode, we explore how manipulated scientific images reshaped Alzheimer's research

for decades. By the dominance of a single theory, the amyloid hypothesis became a billion dollar

blind spot, stalling innovation and stirring funding toward flawed research. The courage it takes to

challenge consensus from inside a system, how universities in the FDA failed to fleece misconduct,

and what must change? The hidden cost to patients, families, and the 7 million Americans

living with Alzheimer's. And what must change if science is to remain worthy of public trust?

If your life has been touched by Alzheimer's or if you care about truth and medicine,

science, and leadership, this conversation matters. Before we begin, a brief note.

If you're interested in the broader work we're doing around mattering, visibility, and human

worth, including how these ideas translate across generations. You can learn about my upcoming

children's book, UMatterLuma at UMatterLuma.com. You can also go to our sub-stack,

where we accompany each one of these episodes with a workbook and a detailed post.

Find it at TheUnitedLife.net. And if this episode resonates, please consider

sharing it or leaving a five star review. Your support helps these conversations

reach the people they're meant for. Now, let's continue the meeting makers with investigative

journalists Charles Miller. Thank you for choosing PassionStrike and choosing me to be your host

and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin.

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I am so excited today to welcome Charles Pillar to PassionStruck. How are you today, Charles?

I am well, John. Thanks for having me here. Well, you and I were talking beforehand that you're

in the Oakland, California area, and I have probably been to the Bay area maybe 50 times in my

lifetime, and I absolutely never know how to pack when I go there, because the weather, having lived

in Southern California for some reason, I can't get that out of my head, and so I never pack

the right things. Well, if you were coming today, you'd be packing for rain because we are in

the middle of a huge storm. Well, I've seen my fair share of that when I've been out there, but

thankfully, most of it, especially when I've been one country, has been arid, and I've been thankful

for that. We're very privileged to live here. It's a spectacular area with usually a wonderful

climate. Charles, I have been following your work for a while. You're an investigative journalist,

and you write for some of the biggest names in journalism. What drew you to that career,

and did you ever think you'd be doing today what you're doing? Sure, thanks for that.

Question, John, I have been interested in this for a very long time, and at the risk of dating

myself, I'm old enough to have been inspired by some of the investigative reporting way back in

the Watergate era. I was a kid then, but I was paying attention to what was going on.

To me, my inspiration has been the idea that through illuminating issues, we can help inform

the public and give people a better frame of reference for understanding our world.

I have been working in investigative reporting for a very long time. I've done other kinds of

journalism as well, including technology reporting, business reporting, and what has inspired me

to do this is the hope and the thought that some of my articles could help people move in a direction

of improving society and basically interrupting some corruption that might be causing harm to people.

And so that's been my inspiration, both when I worked for newspapers like the Los Angeles Times

and the Sacramento Bee, and now writing almost exclusively for Science Magazine about issues

of scientific research. Charles, was there a moment early in your career that taught you that

power or cost? All right, I'm going to say that again. Was there a moment early in your career

that taught you the power or cost of telling uncomfortable truths? Something that shaped the

journalist you became? Sure. I think one of the things that I face all the time is that we live in

a complex world where more than one thing can be true at once, and there are contradictions that

are often brought into high relief by investigative reporting. So let me give you an example,

not at the very beginning of my career, but this was about 20 years ago when I was working at the

Los Angeles Times, and I did a multi-part investigation of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

And some of the difficult contradictions in their work, this is an institution that's done great

good in the world, in my opinion, has contributed to research that has helped turn back some terrible

diseases and has been very generous in their support of important scientific research. But at the

same time, I found in my reporting that the organization was also making investments in companies

that were engaging in practices that directly contradicted their good works from their philanthropic

efforts. And so what my stories were trying to do is to explain that we live in this complex world

where people can be engaged in beneficial efforts, but also at the same time be doing things that

contradict their work, and that people need to look at those nuances and to understand

how they shape our world. Well, I think that is a great story of a difficult topic that you covered,

but in addition to that, as I've looked at your background, you've reported on everything from

biological weapons programs to federal oversight failures. Is there some sort of similarities that

you see across the systems you've exposed? Sure, I think the similarities are that, and this

is something I have to remind myself about, because a lot of my work looks at problems, corruption,

challenges, and difficulties in big systems and in big bodies of work, bodies of research.

And consequently, I have to guard against getting a kind of cynical attitude about it. I think

people of good intentions can make mistakes. They can be drawn into actions that are counterproductive,

that are even counter to what their expressed views and wishes would be. And my job is to try

to tell the bigger story, to tell the human story behind some of these concerns so that I don't

want to leave readers with a sense of cynicism. I think it's important to view the world as it is,

but also to try to generate a sense of hopefulness about what it can be by exposing bad actions and

trying to correct them, and also pointing out where things in the future might benefit from some

of the work that's being done. Charles, your work in investigative journalism and science

goes into incredible technical details. It has to, because you're dealing with science.

But I understand because you've exposed some things in science that, especially recently under

the current administration, you've been criticized a lot and even been linked somehow to some of

the policies that this administration has been handing down. What do you say about those accusations?

Sure, thanks for that question, John. As an investigative reporter, I am used to people

pushing back against some of the things I write. This comes with a territory. And normally,

I just like to let it wash over me, because let's face it, people are entitled to their say,

and I have a pretty big platform. I have an opportunity to put out my work in a way that's

read by many people. And if people have different ideas, people of good faith should be allowed

to say whatever they want. And I'm just going to let that happen. But I think there have been some

disingenuous criticisms of my work that, to me, are troubling because they reflect some of the

weaknesses in the arguments made by scientists in the Alzheimer's field about their own work.

Specifically, what you were referring to is that some top officials in the Trump administration,

including RFK Jr. and Jay Bhattacharya, who was the head of the National Institutes of Health,

have used references to my work and my concerns about elements of research in Alzheimer's

disease that I regard as having been corrupted by bad behavior by scientists as a way of making

a larger critique of the scientific community. And so many things, in my view, about the Trump

administration's critiques of society, I think there's an element of truth in what they were saying,

but that they're, in my view, ham-handed way of describing these matters and their relentless

attacks on scientific institutions such as universities and the grantees of federal agencies.

To me is exactly the wrong approach to solving some of the problems in the scientific record.

That said, I think some scientists in a misguided way have misrepresented my work,

have used what I would call straw man arguments to describe my work as somehow responsible for

these attacks. This is ludicrous. The book that I wrote was written and locked down before Trump

was even elected. So the idea that I somehow am responsible for ideas that emanate from that

administrative structure in the Trump administration, I think is something that I have to refute

and I have done so I can talk about that further if you're interested. But the short story is that

people of good faith and people who stick to the facts and to the real truth of my arguments,

I think I welcome their criticisms. I welcome their pushback because that's what a real debate is

about. But this ingenuous attacks lies about what I do. And in my opinion, straw man arguments

are probably not that useful to the public to eliminate the issues.

Well, I thought it was important to bring that up, especially with some of the discourse that's

been out there just for you to let the record be set straight. And the book you're referring to

is titled Doctored. Fraud, arrogance and tragedy in the quest to cure Alzheimer's.

And the reason I was so interested in talking to you about this is I had a grandfather

who was absolutely brilliant. He worked at Fort Dietrich where he was recruited,

supposed to go to D-Day, but to head studied chemistry at the University of Michigan,

and unknowingly was recruited into the chemical warfare, germ warfare ecosystem because this

professor at Michigan was a leader in it and ended up saving his life, we think, because most of

his platoon, when they parachuted in, lost their lives. But he went from that research to becoming

the head of research by the time his career was over 40 years plus later at craft of craft foods.

And I saw this gentleman who was one of the smartest people I'd ever met, so articulate

during the later decade of his life, come down with dementia, eventually become a fraction

of the brilliant man he once was. And so because of that, I've tried to profile a lot on the disease

and bring different perspectives on it. And just recently, I was at my mother-in-laws,

a senior living center, and I happen to see on the wall in the elevator that they now predict that

one in nine seniors will someday get dementia or Alzheimer's. So it really is a huge thing

that for all of us, we need to be concerned about. So I opened it up like that, but I wanted to

ask you a question before we get into this. And that is, when you're looking at something like

Alzheimer's, what role does intuition play in your work? Is there a signal that tells you

like a story like this might be built on lies? Why do you decide to go into things like this?

My story's emerged in a variety of ways, but one of them is that I get a lot of tips because

unfortunately there aren't that many reporters who are dedicated to investigations involving

scientific issues. I wish there were more. There are a bunch of great reporters doing this kind of

work, but shortage means that a lot of ideas come my way. And my book, for example, and many

of the articles I've written for science about Alzheimer's disease came out of that process of a tip.

But I think one of the most important things to say about how do I assess ideas and decide whether

it's suitable is that my stories often involve a great degree of skepticism about other people's work,

about whether they're doing work that's valid and perhaps whether it's been corrupted.

And because of that, it's incumbent on me to also have skepticism about my own ideas.

Journalists just like scientists and almost everybody can be subject to expectation bias. In other

words, the idea that what we're after, the story that we think would feed our determination to get

it in such a way that we might overlook details or ideas that could contradict it. And so what I try

to do is to test my thinking, to test my ideas in various ways to ensure that I'm not going down a

road that could prove to be a false idea and that could possibly be harmful and damage thinking that

maybe is worthy of paying close retention to. And so I do this as a multi-step process where I

test my ideas, I test the ideas of others. And once I'm sure about both of those things, I know I've

got a strong story to go forward on. So I want to talk to you about Matthew Shrague who's at the

core of your book and this whole Alzheimer's debunk that's happened. And when I think about him and

I think of whistleblowers, I think of the enormity of the decision that he took to stand up for this

because, and I'll let you go into his story here in a second. When I think about this and I have

interviewed a ton of scientists on this program, what he did is like attacking the foundation of an

entire industry. And it had the potential for him to be extremely dangerous to the career he was

trying to build. And at the time he did this, he was pretty junior still in that trajectory. So maybe

with that as a backdrop, you can tell a little bit more about him and maybe the courage that it took

for him to come forward. Yeah, thanks, John. I appreciate that question in part because I do admire

Matthew Shrague who's a key character in my book. Shrague at the time I met him was an

untenured junior professor at Vanderbilt University. He's a neuroscientist. So he does laboratory

research about the brain and about how it functions. And he's also a neurologist. So he treats patients

who have symptoms of dementia. He has this broad perspective on Alzheimer's disease that I think

is critical to his bigger understanding of the field. And Matthew, so he's a whistle blower.

And what he did is he uncovered certain seminal experiments in the field of Alzheimer's or

search. These are basic science experiments, laboratory experiments that steered a lot of

thinking in the field. And they steered the thinking towards the acceptance of something called

the amylate hypothesis of Alzheimer's disease. So perhaps it would be best before I answer your

question directly about a Matthew Shrague is to take a step back and explain what is the amylate

hypothesis and why does it matter? So maybe if you'll forgive me, I'm going to digress.

Before we continue, I want to pause for a moment. Conversations like this can feel unsettling.

When systems we trust are questioned, our instant is outrage, but meaning is built in discernment.

Inside the ignited life, each episode, the Meaning Maker series is paired with guided

reflection prompts designed to help you stay present with complexity without collapsing into

cynicism or certainty. This week's prompts focus on recognizing when authority replaces inquiry,

identifying where silence has felt safer than truth and clarifying what integrity requires

when the cost is real. You can explore them all at theignitedlife.net. Now, a quick break for our

sponsors. Thank you for supporting those who support the show.

You're listening to PassionStrike on the PassionStrike Network. Now, act to my conversation with

Charles Billard. I think it's an important thing to go into because even on this show, which is

one of the reasons I wanted to have you, have had numerous neuroscientists and neurologists come

on the show and say that the biggest reason people have this disease is because they're not

clearing amyloid plaque at night, and it's that buildup over time that causes these symptoms to

occur. What you need to do is try to free that amyloid plaque so it goes out of your brain

and through your nervous system and gets flushed. That is what I have been told repeatedly,

and I'll let you take it from there. I'm going to step back very briefly more than 100 years

to the guy who discovered, if you want to put it that way, Alzheimer's disease, the namesake,

Eloise Alzheimer, a German scientist, and he in doing an autopsy of a very terribly

demented patient of his who died, he examined her brain and found these structures, amyloid protein

plaques that you were mentioning, and also another kind of protein called tau that takes the form

of these kind of tangled shapes within nerve cells, and so you have these two proteins, amyloid,

tau, and dementia. That became the definition of a disease called Alzheimer's disease.

Now, for many years, Alzheimer's disease was a relatively minor thing in the scientific world,

and the reason is purely a demographic one. Back in the early 1900s, not that many people were

living to the old age where Alzheimer's disease would become a serious problem. As medical science

advanced in the 40s, 50s, 60s, suddenly we had vaccines, we had antibiotics, we had medical

advances in cancer and heart disease, and the demographics shifted radically. Many more people

were living to old age, and many more people were having the symptoms of dementia, attributed to

Alzheimer's disease. Consequently, a gigantic confusion of funds went into this in the 70s,

80s, 90s, and many hundreds of scientists started studying this, and because of the definition,

as it first was stated by Dr. Alzheimer, it was strongly felt that the linchpin to this disease

was amyloid plaques. I can state the amyloid hypothesis very simply. It's that the accumulation

of amyloid plaques in the brain, which nearly everyone has, leads to a series of biochemical events

that gradually kills nerve cells, kills the neurons that make up the brain and causes the symptoms

of dementia. It was felt very strongly that by removing these amyloid plaques from the brain,

that you would have the ability to arrest and possibly even reverse the cognitive decline of

Alzheimer's disease. Within that period of time, after billions of dollars are spent on research,

and billions of dollars are spent on the development of drugs that were then tested in people,

there was a very disappointing series of events, drug after drug, that were capable of removing

these plaques from the brain, were found to not be effective in arresting or improving the cognitive

symptoms of the disease, and in fact, many of them also had various, very dangerous side effects,

including brain swelling and bleeding, that in a few cases could even cause death, and so

you had these ineffective drugs that were also dangerous to use, and so some contradictions

came into play in the scientific community, some doubts about whether they were on the right track

came into play, and so I'm getting closer to answering your question directly about Matthew

so forgive me for this long digression, but I think it's important to get a little bit of the

scientific background to understand where the field stood, and so what happened was during this

period of doubt, during this period of soul searching on the part of the scientific community,

a brilliant experiment took place, and this was at the University of Minnesota, and in this experiment,

scientists there were able to produce genetically engineered mice that produced copious amounts of

amyloid plaques and other amyloid proteins within their brains, and the scientists extracted

one very specific type of amyloid protein called amyloid beta star 56, their star protein if you will,

and they extracted this from the brains of mice, they purified that one type of amyloid protein

injected into rats, and then witnessed the symptoms of memory loss that they compared

to memory loss and confusion that people who have Alzheimer's disease have, so what we had here was

the first ostensible cause and effect relationship between a particular substance and Alzheimer's

disease, and people thought, ah, this is a revelation because it shows we are on the right track,

we may not have had the right specific amyloid target in our research, but we know we're on the

right track, we know that we're headed in the direction of curing Alzheimer's ultimately, or at

least, coming up with a treatment that can help the sufferers of Alzheimer's disease.

Can I just add something here? So when I think about this, and you're talking about the work from

Karen Ash and Sylvane Lesney, when I think about this, in positive psychology, this would be

almost like Marty Selegman's work on learned hopelessness, helplessness, being found to be doctored,

or Danny Kahneman's work on thinking fast and slow to be doctored. It was like that big,

revolutionary for a community. Is that a good way to think about it? Yes, I think that is a good way

to think about it, John, and essentially to cut to Matthew Shragg. So this went on, then there's

a reinvigoration of the belief that the amyloid hypothesis was the correct way of looking at things,

and an invigoration that meant many more billions of dollars being spent on possible remedies,

and then we had, again, failure after failure of these experimental drugs, and then the science behind

them to deliver on their promise. And we also, at the time, the science is a bit complicated,

but I'm going to explain very briefly. One of the contradictions is that people who have Alzheimer's,

when they die and autopsies are done, they're often found they have enormous amounts of amyloid

protein in their brain, and also tau proteins. And yet, it's also been shown that people who die

who had no symptoms of Alzheimer's disease also have the presence of these proteins in their brains.

So it's one of the complexities of Alzheimer's disease that there's never been a fully understandable

and good explanation for. So consequently, what happened after this historic experiment by,

as you say, Karen Aschen, Sylvan Lesnay at the University of Minnesota, it reinvigorated

thinking in the field. It reinforced the amyloid hypothesis. It regenerated the funding for this,

and then many new experiments for it. But what Matthew Schrag did, and finally, I'm back to

the beginning of your question, Matthew detected the problems in this study in the form of

Dr. Scientific Images that called into question the entire premise of the experiment.

If you have image after image within a seminal scientific study that are shown to be based on

false science, changes in these images to reflect the experimental hypothesis. In other words,

when the actual data did not prove hypothesis, the images were changed in a way that would suggest

to reviewers and suggest to scientists that this hypothesis was true. This is a form of a parent

scientific misconduct that had an enormous effect on the field, an enormous effect on funding

and scientific research and drug development. Now, it was not solely responsible for that,

but it was important at the time. It was one of the most cited scientific studies in the field

in decades. And this is what Matthew Schrag detected. This is what he found and brought the

evidence to me, so that he felt strongly that had to be exposed into the world more generally.

So the scientific community could take stock and try to correct the thinking in the field

that might have improperly skewed thinking in the direction of ideas that were not well founded.

So now I'm going to get to exactly your question, the risks that he took. So you're talking about a

junior professor at Vanderbilt University did not have tenure going up against some of the biggest

journals, funders, and authorities, all people and institutions he needed to continue and develop

his career to become successful as a scientist himself. And yet he ultimately decided that his

journey of discovery was central to helping the public understand this set of contradictions and

that he was trusting me after literally months of discussion about this, that he trusted me to tell

his journey of discovery in both Science Magazine and in the pages of my book in such a way that we

could try to illuminate the importance of it and to help to try to correct the scientific record

in a positive way that could open up new ideas for the field.

So as someone who is not part of the scientific community which is a very tight-knit club based on

what I've seen across universities, would someone in his position first attempt to go to some of the

people in the scientific community themselves and confront them and then after that confrontation

ended in going nowhere, then they come to you or does it not work that way?

Well yes and no. So what Treg did is that he always followed the path of the appropriate way to

question research which is to go to the funding agencies and the journals, the agencies that

funded the work and the journals that published it and to present all of his information openly to them

and make sure that they had the full set of concerns about a body of work in order to judge

whether it's worth looking at and whether his concerns might be well-founded and it was only after

months and months of being stone walled by those institutions, months and months of being ignored

by the journals that are responsible for the scientific record itself that he felt that it was

appropriate for him to come out publicly through my writing and so the short answer is yes,

he followed the sort of prescribed protocols and found them to be unfortunately not very useful

and this is I would add a very typical story. These institutions are sluggish at best in examining

problems that occur on their watch, both out of the sense of embarrassment and also out of the

problem of trying to guard against people criticizing them. There's a longer story about it but

the gist of it is yes, he did approach those institutions and did not get satisfaction.

So this isn't a simple thing like you see in the Washington Post or New York Times,

Wall Street Journal where they publish something, someone writes in saying you didn't get all the

information right and you see in the editorial comments that we published this story and it's come

to light that part of our reporting was incorrect so we feel it's important to restate the information.

So these publications that we're talking about don't normally do something like we see in a lot

of newspaper reporting on a common basis. No, just to be clear, look we're all human, we all make

mistakes. I have made mistakes in my reporting although I gotta say it's pretty unusual because I'm

a careful person and I have great editing and great fact checking but that said whenever there's

a claim that I've made a mistake, I drop everything and go directly to re-investigate that issue

to satisfy myself that either the questioner is incorrect or if there was a mistake made that we

issue correction, this happens immediately. Not so with scientific journals usually they spend weeks,

months or even years without doing anything. Normally they kick the question back to the home

institution of the investigator who's been questioned. So if let's take the example of the

important experiment from the University of Minnesota from 2006, the journal Nature published

this is an eminent journal, one of the most important journals of scholarly writing in the world.

You might say an equivalent with science, the journal that I work for. And

Nature basically sat on this literally for almost two years before doing anything about it

and actually more than two years it turned out to be. Now what they did is they kicked it back

to the University of Minnesota. This is the institution with the most aloos and the least

gained from doing a robust, complete and publicly accessible examination of concerns about one of

its scientists research and lo and behold they went years investigating this. Ultimately the study

was retracted but we didn't get the details of what the University of Minnesota's investigation was.

We didn't get those details because they behaved in an incredibly secretive way. I might add that

ultimately Sylvan Lesne who was implicated in being most involved with the apparent image

doctrine in this study was retired out of the University even though he was a young full professor

there, very unusual but clearly the substantial problem that caused him to retire.

When you think about the papers and the funding that were all based on the amyloid hypothesis,

in practical terms just so the listeners can get some type of sense. Like how much time

money and human opportunity did we lose by chasing a theory that was based on falsified data?

Well let me put it this way. So I want to make it clear that I agree that amyloid proteins and

tau proteins have something to do with Alzheimer's disease. I think where I part ways with the

progenitors and supporters of the amyloid hypothesis as the dominant way of looking at the disease

is that I don't think they have everything to do with Alzheimer's disease and I think that the way

in which that idea has been promoted has squeezed out other ways of thinking about Alzheimer's.

Because of the scarcity of funding when so much emphasis goes on one dominant set of ideas,

it can be hard for other researchers to get traction in their way of thinking about the disease.

I think that is the sort of tragedy of the issue. If I could just expand on that briefly,

there has been an enormous amount of fraud and misconduct in the field of Alzheimer's disease,

a lot of it associated with the amyloid hypothesis. And that is in part because the dominant way

of thinking about the disease presents a big target and it makes the possibility of incorrect

or falsified information more likely to be accepted by the scientific community. If it fits

with the wet dominant way of thinking about the disease, even if it's wrong, even if it's based on

fraud or misconduct, it's much more likely to pass muster and to be seen as being correct information.

But I want to say briefly that fraud and misconduct is still, in my view, a small part of the overall

scientific equation, most scientists like most people in all walks of life are honest and deeply

committed to doing the right thing to develop human knowledge and to serve humanity in a beneficial way.

And even though I think Alzheimer's disease has been badly damaged by fraud and misconduct,

I'd say that most scientists are not in that category. Of course, they're not. If you look at

the scientific record, there's been a lot of fraud and misconduct in heart disease, cancer

research, diabetes research, basically everything because very small percentage of people in every

field of life are going to cut corners or even worse. But the difference is that unlike heart

disease and cancer and diabetes and other very important human ailments, which have seen enormous

progress in the last few decades, which have seen even cures in some cases. We have not seen

that in Alzheimer's disease. There's never been a remedy developed that arrests or reverses the

cognitive symptoms that are so terrifying and so damaging and really have created this sort of

dementia crisis that we have worldwide with Alzheimer's. And in my view, part of the reason why

progress has been slow is that the human brain is an incredibly complex organ and is very difficult

to decipher what's going on inside there. So that's one reason. Another reason is that when so much

seminal research in the field is based on thinking that has been skewed by doctorid images,

falsification of data and by basically fraud, that undoubtedly that has been a factor in the problem

of a lack of progress in Alzheimer's research. So it's multiple problems. Since you brought up things

like cancer research, et cetera, one of the things in doctorid that you exposed was a cabal of

researchers, funders and pharma executives who helped enable the deception that went on. And the

reason of bringing this up is because it's an entire system. And it's often systems that stop things

from making progress or make things like this become something of progress. What incentives did

you find that made fraud not only possible, but predictable? Sure. So I refer in the book to

something that I call the amylate mafia. And I want to make it clear that it's not a real

organization. It's not a real mafia. These are not criminals except to the extent that some people

who are proponents of issues in Alzheimer's like some proponents of the amylate hypothesis

and other related scientific factors have engaged in inappropriate actions, have engaged in

doctorate research. But what I mean by that amylate mafia is people whose careers and personal

fortunes and pay days from pharma companies and scientific reputations and their legacies as

scientists are all integral to this idea of this one dominant way of thinking in the field. And

when you have this enormous set of incentives for professionals in the field who are very powerful

and who are often the gatekeepers of knowledge, who are prominent scientists, whose work has been

cited many thousands of times whose ideas tend to dictate the trends in drug development and the

trends in scientific thinking. When you have them working in lockstep with each other to try to

reinforce what is ultimately their professional legacy and to prove out one way of thinking in the

field, then you can have the effect of for stalling the ideas that might work in contrary to that

or might just compliment it in ways if they were not star for funds, if they were not regarded as

a secondary or lesser or not worth pursuing. And I think what you had in the field is this

dominance that crowded out other ways of thinking. Now I'm happy to say that thinking in the field

is beginning to expand. More and more you're seeing people push back against the singularity of

the amylate hypothesis and to look at the aspects of it that might be extremely valuable to keep

exploring but also to expand out to other ways of thinking of the disease that might in themselves

be equally valuable or might in combination with research on amylate and tau proteins lead to

better outcomes for patients. Thank you for going into that Charles and I have a follow-up question

that revolves around big pharma itself because many Alzheimer's patients, including my grandfather,

had pinned their hopes on the evolution of drugs coming out to help them. Based on your reporting,

how effective or ineffective are these drugs really? Thanks, Shana. I believe you're referring to

two anti-amylate antibody drugs. Their names that they're sold under are casunla and laquembee.

And they've only been on the market a couple years and these drugs were developed to strip

amylate proteins out of the brain with the idea that again if you do that you are going to be

preventing this cascade of biochemical effects that lead to terrible dementia of Alzheimer's patients

and large trials were done with these drugs. These are human trials where people with mild symptoms

of Alzheimer's or what they call pre Alzheimer's symptoms, very mild dementia or memory loss symptoms.

Join these trials, take the drugs for an extended period and then they're compared against a group

of people who are given a placebo, which is kind of the classic sugar pill, although in this case

it's not a sugar pill because these are infused through a veins. They're getting a dummy infusion

that does not contain any drug in it. And then they compared the results of these two groups.

And what they found is to a statistically measurable degree, statistically significant degree,

the people who took these drugs, they just like the placebo group, their cognition declined,

but it declined to a very slightly less rapid rate than the people on the placebo. And so you say,

well, isn't this a really beneficial effect of the drugs? Yes, they did not reverse the cognitive

decline of Alzheimer's. They did not arrest the symptoms, but what they did is they made it possible

for people to decline very slightly less rapidly. Now, so if these drugs were completely safe to take,

if they were completely affordable, if they were drugs that did not require potentially harmful

infusion process in doctors offices or in clinics, and they only had a slightly beneficial effect,

then why would anyone refuse them who was beginning to experience the symptoms of Alzheimer's

disease? But unfortunately, the story told, I think, is not quite correct. So what in the community

of neurologists and other doctors who prescribe these drugs or don't prescribe them in some cases

is that these drugs, the benefits of them as described are so minimal that many doctors,

patients, and family members would not be able to notice those benefits. In other words,

the effects would not be discernible. That's how subtle they are. But at the same time,

they have potentially dangerous side effects, including brain swelling and bleeding,

and including brain atrophy. That's the shrinkage of the brain that occurs more rapidly than

the shrinkage that occurs within Alzheimer's disease itself. And so you have these contradictions

of potentially dangerous brain swelling and bleeding that does kill people on occasion.

For the benefits of the drug that are so subtle that in many cases, people say it's imperceptible.

So I'm not saying that no one should take these drugs. That's a decision that people should make

with their physicians and with their family members. But what I'm saying is that people should not

exaggerate the benefits. They should see that these potential benefits are very slight and the

dangers are ever present. So all that being said, based on the research that you have done,

and I'm going to phrase this in two different camps. For those of us who are younger in our lives

and haven't reached the normal point for some of these diseases to take root,

what have you found our recommendations people should do? And then if you are in the camp where

someone has an early diagnosis for dementia or Alzheimer's, what have you learned through your

research, that might be appropriate steps for them to take. When you say an early diagnosis,

you mean someone who's beginning to see the very early signs of dementia, who at any age or

at a normal, what they call the sporadic Alzheimer's age of maybe in 70s, usually from 65 to 85.

Well, let me say that in my view, Alzheimer's has been subject to some of the same things we see

for all kinds of diseases. The two most important being that care and prevention has sometimes been

sacrificed at the altar of cure. And so the vast majority of funds for research and development

for drug discovery, et cetera, has outweighed the emphasis being placed on prevention and care.

And these are things that can make a big difference in a person's life and experience of the disease

and also in trying to forestall the possible, a terrible effects of Alzheimer's. So let me put it

this way, living our best lives through good nutrition, exercise, controlling high blood pressure,

controlling cholesterol levels, using your mind, reading, having good social relationships. These

are all things that can forestall the worst effects of Alzheimer's if you're unfortunate to be someone

who ends up getting the disease. There in my view is no brain game or supplement or exercise

regimen that will definitively stop a person from getting out Alzheimer's. But we know that this

combination of effects, things that pay dividends in our lives generally can be extremely important

in forestalling or preventing the worst effects of the disease. And so I would just say people

should remember that they have some agency in their lives and that's one factor. The science,

the scientists who are proponents of the amyloid hypothesis, who again, in my view, have important

points to make. But their ideas should not prevent people from exploring other ways of looking at

the disease and finding the combination of factors that might lead to Alzheimer's disease. But I think

what they're advocating for is to treat early and earlier with these anti-amyloid drugs that again,

as I mentioned, have potentially beneficial effects if very subtle effects on cognition,

in other words, to reduce the rate of cognitive decline that people might experience. But when

they're describing the idea of giving these drugs to younger and younger people, I think people

should be cautious in adopting that advice, particularly people who have no symptoms of cognitive

decline, but may have evidence of amyloid and tau proteins in their brain. Young people who have

those symptoms have those evidence of those proteins might at some point be encouraged to take

these drugs. And I think you need to proceed down that path with great caution because of the potential

hazards associated with them. I want to go back to image manipulation for a second. Based on your

discoveries, is fraudulent image manipulation rare? Or is it shockingly common across some scientific

disciplines, such as what you found in neuroscience? John, let me just say that I, again, I just want to

emphasize that I think most scientists would never manipulate images. But even a minority of scientists

who do can have profound effects on thinking in the field, which is what I discovered in my work.

And I would say then that, yes, image manipulation is unfortunately quite common. And part of the

reason for it is that I think scientists sometimes become very convinced of their ideas in ways

that they follow a kind of slippery slope where they might make a small change in an image

in order to exaggerate the beneficial results of a study and that they see that they know and

notices that they made an improper change. And they think this is good because I'm very convinced

of the truthfulness of my science and the importance of my science. And by making this change,

I have created an opportunity to get new funding funding that I desperately need to prove out

the validity of this work. And then the next study comes along and they see, well, I'm not quite

getting exactly the results I want and need to prove my hypothesis. But I know I'm close.

I'm just going to make a couple of other changes to reflect well on the experiment. And so you see

where I'm going with this, suddenly you're moving into the direction of outright fraud and misconduct

that then goes into the scientific record, skews thinking in the field. And in the case of the

MOA hypothesis, there have been many studies done that are above reproach, but many others that have

been done that are based on doctor science, doctor data that have pushed people in directions

that suggest that the importance of this work is greater than it really is.

It's given the decades of false starts and misconduct. How hopeful should the public be about

the future? Are we closer than we think or is Alzheimer's still an unresolved mystery similar to

pancreatic cancer in the near term? I think in the near term, we're going to be faced with many

dilemmas and conundrums in the Alzheimer's field. That said, I do have a lot of hope in part because

scientific ideas are opening up a bit. Perhaps I've had some small part in forcing the scientific

community to take a good hard look in the mirror and ask themselves, how can we do this better?

How can we approach our science with both greater validity and greater open mindedness? And I think

that is beginning to take hold. Let me give you a couple of examples that I feel very interested in

seeing how they come out. And potentially, they could be great developments in the field. One is

an emphasis on the infectious hypothesis of Alzheimer's. And this is the idea that latent infections,

such as that of herpes virus or other ailments, could hide out in the brain for years or decades

and cause problems such as inflammation that could contribute to or lead to the symptoms of

Alzheimer's disease. People are studying these things ever more seriously. There's clinical trials

going on right now to see if that idea might be one of great importance. And I think within the

next couple of years, we're going to see some evidence to suggest whether it is or not. So I'm

very hopeful about that adding new information to the field that could be beneficial. The other is

GLP1 inhibitors. These are the new seemingly magical drugs that are used for weight loss and

for diabetes and now a raft of other ailments that have taken the world by storm over the last

few years. And they are also being tested as they possible preventive or treatment for Alzheimer's

disease. And very soon, even perhaps by the end of this year or early next year, we're going to

have the initial reading of a big clinical trial associated with GLP1 inhibitors that will have some,

I think, some interesting results to see whether they're heading down a path that could be beneficial.

And so these are the kind of scientific projects that give me a lot of hope and a lot of belief

that science is vast. Much of it has not been corrupted. Much of the set of ideas behind

the brain and neuroscience and Alzheimer's disease, I think will bear fruit eventually in ways

that can really be hopeful for patients. And in the meantime, we also have the kind of hopeful

quality of, again, living our best lives in ways that could help us for stall or prevent some of

the serious effects of the disease for years in a way that could really benefit our lives.

Charles, you alluded to this a little bit, but I wanted to ask you because it's intriguing to me.

After years of reporting on what you wrote about and doctored, what changed in you? How has

exposing fraud at this scale reshaped your belief not only in science, but truth and the human

capacity to self-correct? Terrific question, John. It's been a really difficult journey

because I believe deeply in science and the scientific method. I believe that it's one of the

greatest most important developments in human thinking historically. We have reaped enormous benefits

from it in medicine and in many other fields, of course. That said, I think the scientific method

teaches us that you can't fake information ultimately and get away with it because science is

what they call self-correcting. What that means is that false information will eventually be

discovered, uncovered, and corrected by new experimentation. The problem that I see in science is

that because of difficulties in the journals, the funders, the universities, and the regulators of

science, all four of those important scientific institutions have deep flaws that have been

created the conditions where problems in science, either corruption or just simple error or simple

misunderstandings that are part of the scientific research process, are being allowed to remain

in the record and to skew thinking in the field for much longer than they need to be. I mentioned

earlier that, for example, the University of Minnesota was charged with examining the possible

corruption of this important study in Alzheimer's research and because the university was very slow

in doing their work, this study remained on the record influencing thinking for many years longer

than it needed to be. What I would say and what I have been writing about in my book is the importance

for these scientific institutions to up their games to do better at investigating, correcting,

and enforcing the importance of accuracy and truthfulness in the scientific record.

I say this because I have great faith that these institutions have the ability to do better

and reform themselves, but we as citizens and consumers of science and journalists and everyone,

we have standing to insist that they do better. Now, this is different from insisting that we

defund them or cause them to be redirected into, in my opinion, sometimes incorrect areas. I don't

subscribe to the idea that the way to correct these institutions is to completely in a way

challenge everything about them and destroy them in a way that, I think, to some degree

that effort has been made by people in Washington of late. But what I do believe is that we

should not stand for laziness and inconsistent enforcement of rules and an unwillingness to challenge

conventional wisdom in ways that is vital to improving the scientific record.

Thank you so much for that. I just am curious. What is the next topic that you're now working

on to tackle for science? Well, unfortunately, John, I can't talk about that because all of my

investigations are under wraps until I much farther along in the process. But stay tuned. We're

going to have some stuff in the magazine pretty soon that I think will be of interest to your listeners.

Okay, great. And Charles, where is the best place for people to learn more about you and your work?

The best place is really to go to my website, Charlespillar.com. And up there, you can read more about

my book, Dr. And you can also see links to my stories and science magazine, The New York Times

and in other locations. And I think you're interested in any aspect of my work. That's a terrific

starting point. Okay. And the last question I'm going to ask you, I'm passion struck. We're all

about teaching people. How do you create what I call a passion struck life, which you are obviously

passion struck about the journalistic reporting that you do for you? What does it mean to be passion

struck? Well, for me, it means you have to be a little obsessive. And you have to be

deeply concerned about doing something beneficial for the human condition. That's where for me,

it's central to my identity. But I have to say that I also feel that for me to explore my passion,

most effectively, is that I have to challenge myself and sometimes that take myself too seriously.

And my method of doing that is to spend time with my three-year-old granddaughter who

did not put up with any kind of pretension or she is someone who I love so much and value so much.

And spending time with her keeps me honest. Well, Charles, you didn't know this before we did

this interview, but I actually have a children's book coming out in February. The title is You

Matter Luma. Once I get some advanced reader copies, I'd love to send one to you. It's a little

bit early for her, but she'll be four before you know it. I can't wait to see it, John. Thank

you for mentioning that. Charles, thank you so much for coming on passion struck and sharing this

important research discovery that you made. It was my pleasure. Thanks for having me, John.

That brings us to the close of today's conversation with Charles Miller. This episode stayed with you.

That's because it wasn't just about Alzheimer's research. It's about how truth survives or roads

side powerful systems. Here are three reflections that I'm carrying forward. First,

progress without integrity is fragile. When certainty replaces curiosity, systems stop learning.

Second, whistleblowers aren't disruptors, they're guardians. Truth often arrives through the people

willing to risk belonging. And third, mattering requires accountability. Human worth erodes when

outcomes matter more than honest. Charles' work is a reminder that meaning isn't only something we

cultivate internally, something we must defend structurally in science, leadership, and culture.

If today's episode resonated, please consider sharing it with someone who cares about medicine,

ethics, or the future of truth, or leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

It's the most powerful way to help these conversations travel. If you'd like to continue the work,

visit the ignitedlife.net for episode reflections and practices. Watch the full conversation on

YouTube at John our Miles or Passion Start Clips. We'll explore it in tension-driven apparel

at StartMattering.com. Next Tuesday, we start a new series, You Matter, with a conversation that

shifts from corrupted systems to constrained choice. I'm joined by renowned psychologist Barry Schwartz,

author of Choose Wisely, as we explore how the paradox of choice shapes mattering agency and regret.

Why more options don't always lead better lives. What we're trying to suggest in the book is that

it's important to think of our lives as ongoing narratives that there's a trajectory to life,

that it isn't simply about attaining one pleasurable moment of experience followed by another

pleasurable moment of experience with no particular connection between them. That is to say,

life needs to have meaning. There are different ways that people can get meaning out of life and

in a pluralistic society like ours, you certainly see that. Until then remember, truth demands

courage. Mattering requires stewardship and significance grows for integrity holes. I'm John

Miles, and you've been passion-struck.