The research base for modern Alzheimer’s science is getting murkier, with new figures caught up in the field’s doctored brain-scan images scandal. The scandal is bringing into focus the perverse incentives of the university laboratory/pharmaceutical consultancy nexus.
In September last year, research misconduct was found against Eliezer Masliah, who was head of US National Institute of Health’s Neuroscience Division. The division had an annual budget of USD $2.6 billion.
According to Science, investigators found suspect images in 132 of Masliah’s more than 800 published papers. The images – predominantly MRI brain scans – were either doctored or re-used across research reports that described different experimental conditions.
When appointed in 2016, Masliah reportedly claimed the new billion-dollar funding would kick off “a golden era of Alzheimer’s research”. A statement from the National Institute of Health announced his dismissal from his position upon the investigation’s publication in Science.
It is not yet clear how far-reaching the effects of Masliah’s misconduct were on the science of Alzheimer’s, but there are signs he was no lone wolf.
Charles Piller is the journalist who led the Masliah investigation for Science. As reported in Doctored, Piller’s new book published earlier this week, his team went on to investigate 46 other Alzheimer’s researchers after Masliah.
Of their work, Piller’s team found 600 papers with dubious images. Together, the research had been cited over 800,000 times.
Before his multi-billion-dollar directorship, Masliah headed up a neuropathology research institute at the University of California, San Diego.
Another of the figures caught up in Piller’s investigation is former professor of neuroscience Berislav Zlokovic, currently “on leave” from University of Southern California. Zlokovic was found to have doctored brain-scan images in dozens of papers.
These studies have incalculable flow-on effects, including misguided clinical trials and lost opportunities for real scientific advances.
The biotech company Zlokovic founded, ZZ Biotech, went on to test a drug for stroke patients. Six of 66 patients given the drug died, compared to one out of 44 in the control group.
Then there is Marc Tessier-Lavigne, former president of Stanford (also in California). In 2023 he was forced to retract four papers in four months, including a 2009 paper with 1,245 citations that claimed to have found the cause of Alzheimer’s.
Fellow researchers recalled seeing it as “the miracle result” when it was first presented. It earned Tessier-Lavigne a role at Genentech, where he later became chief scientific officer. Genentech’s top four drugs generated USD $8.5 billion in revenue in 2023.
These latest scandals suggest there is a corrupting set of incentives at the top level of health science departments in US universities.
Article image courtesy of @mcverry and thumbnail image courtesy of @iemyoung via Unsplash.
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