Book Review of C. Piller (2025). Doctored. Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer’s, Atria, One Signal Publishers, New York, Amsterdam, London, 352 pp.
Dr. G.J. van Bussel
Charles Piller is an investigative journalist renowned for exposing scientific misconduct, fraud, and ethical violations in biomedical research and public health. Writing for publications like Science, STAT News, and the Los Angeles Times, he examines how financial incentives, and institutional pressures compromise scientific integrity, covering topics from the reproducibility crisis to genetic engineering ethics and whistleblower challenges. Through meticulous document analysis, insider interviews, and critical scrutiny, Piller reveals the complex interplay between science, policy, and corporate influence, advocating for transparency and accountability while highlighting how systemic failures undermine public trust in scientific institutions. Piller’s investigations have triggered significant debate, paper retractions, and underscored journalism’s crucial role in safeguarding scientific integrity. From 2022 to 2024, he focused extensively on neuroscience fraud, particularly in Alzheimer’s research, publishing groundbreaking articles in Science that exposed data and image manipulation in clinical trials and revealed how Cassava Biosciences and researcher Hou-Yan Wang had manipulated data regarding the Alzheimer’s drug simufilam. [i] His February 2025 book Doctored. Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer’s synthesizes these individual cases into a comprehensive critique of the global Alzheimer’s research ecosystem, exposing how institutional policies, scientific misconduct, and distorted priorities have undermined the quest for effective treatments while leaving patients vulnerable to ineffective or dangerous experimental therapies.
In the Introduction, Piller articulates his central thesis: the dominance of the amyloid cascade hypothesis (the theory that Alzheimer’s disease stems from amyloid plaque accumulation) has stifled alternative research while fostering hype, wasted funding, and questionable breakthroughs. He is not the first to do so. [ii] Using Leqembi (a drug introduced in late 2022 that promised to be the long-awaited Alzheimer’s breakthrough) as his prime example [iii], Piller argues: “It was the latest example of the exaggeration, hype, and sheer fakery and fraud that has characterized Alzheimer’s research for decades. … I had to show why billions of dollars in spending by governments, pharma companies, and philanthropies had done little for desperate patients. For decades, proponents of the dominant amyloid hypothesis have sidelined, starved for resources, and even bullied rebels behind other promising notions of how to treat Alzheimer’s … Alzheimer’s research has offered endless opportunities for advancement and riches to corporate shysters and ruthlessly ambitious scientists who cut corners or engage in brazen deception. I set out to unmask decades of arrogance, greed, fabulism, and error that have emptied research coffers and littered the drug development landscape with failure after failure.” (pp. x-xi.) This narrative summary, while effectively encapsulating his book’s scope, opens him to criticism that the work could have been much shorter.
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