[16th June 2024] Interesting Things I Learnt This Week
1. Researchers plan to retract landmark Alzheimer’s paper containing doctored images : Researchers are planning to retract a landmark Alzheimer's paper due to manipulated data. The study investigated the impact of a specific protein on memory in mice. The findings suggested that the protein caused memory impairment. However, it was later revealed that the researchers had altered the data, leading to the retraction of the paper. While some scientists believe the amyloid beta hypothesis remains important for Alzheimer's research, others argue otherwise. My Take: It is definitely a black mark on the peer review process for having been duped that long, but I definitely feel that though late it did find the faults and forced to get a retraction on the paper. Often there are researchers who are under undue pressure, no different than engineers working on startups to come up with something. But I guess we as a society fail to acknowledge that finding out that something does n