Potential Fabrication In Research Images Threatens a Key Theory of Alzheimer's Disease

A 37-year-old junior professor in Tennessee "identified apparently altered or duplicated images in dozens of journal articles," reports Science magazine. But that was just the beginning for Matthew Schrag, whose sleuthing then "drew him into a different episode of possible misconduct, leading to findings that threaten one of the most cited Alzheimer's studies of this century and numerous related experiments."The first author of that influential study, published in Nature in 2006, was an ascending neuroscientist: Sylvain Lesne of the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. His work underpins a key element of the dominant yet controversial amyloid hypothesis of Alzheimer's, which holds that A clumps, known as plaques, in brain tissue are a primary cause of the devastating illness, which afflicts tens of millions globally. In what looked like a smoking gun for the theory and a lead to possible therapies, Lesne and his colleagues discovered an A subtype and seemed to prove it caused dementia in rats. If Schrag's doubts are correct, Lesne's findings were an elaborate mirage.... A 6-month investigation by Science provided strong support for Schrag's suspicions and raised questions about Lesne's research. A leading independent image analyst and several top Alzheimer's researchers - including George Perry of the University of Texas, San Antonio, and John Forsayeth of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) - reviewed most of Schrag's findings at Science's request. They concurred with his overall conclusions, which cast doubt on hundreds of images, including more than 70 in Lesne's papers. Some look like "shockingly blatant" examples of image tampering, says Donna Wilcock, an Alzheimer's expert at the University of Kentucky. The authors "appeared to have composed figures by piecing together parts of photos from different experiments," says Elisabeth Bik, a molecular biologist and well-known forensic image consultant. "The obtained experimental results might not have been the desired results, and that data might have been changed to ... better fit a hypothesis...." Schrag's work, done independently of Vanderbilt and its medical center, implies millions of federal dollars may have been misspent on the research - and much more on related efforts. Some Alzheimer's experts now suspect Lesne's studies have misdirected Alzheimer's research for 16 years. "The immediate, obvious damage is wasted NIH funding and wasted thinking in the field because people are using these results as a starting point for their own experiments," says Stanford University neuroscientist Thomas Sudhof, a Nobel laureate and expert on Alzheimer's and related conditions. Lesne did not respond to requests for comment.... Some Alzheimer's experts see a failure of skepticism, including by journals that published the work. Schrag has warned America's National Institutes of Health that the suspect work "not only represents a substantial investment in [NIH] research support, but has been cited ... thousands of times and thus has the potential to mislead an entire field of research." And Harvard neurologic disease professor Dennis Selkoe told Science "There are certainly at least 12 or 15 images where I would agree that there is no other explanation" than manipulation.Selkoe's bigger worry, he says, is that the Lesne episode might further undercut public trust in science during a time of increasing skepticism and attacks. But scientists must show they can find and correct rare cases of apparent misconduct, he says. "We need to declare these examples and warn the world." Thanks to Slashdot reader Crypto Fireside for sharing the story!

Read more of this story at Slashdot.