Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer's with Charles Piller

In this episode of Inquiring Minds, host Indre Viskontas speaks with investigative journalist Charles Piller about his explosive new book, Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer's. Piller unearths the troubling reality behind decades of Alzheimer's research, exposing how fraudulent data, unchecked ambition, and institutional failures have shaped the field—and wasted billions of dollars—while millions of patients and families await real solutions. Piller shares: How a single falsified study published in Nature helped cement the amyloid hypothesis as the dominant theory of Alzheimer’s, despite mounting evidence against it. The role of NIH funding incentives in steering researchers toward confirming flawed findings instead of exploring alternative approaches. The rise of scientific sleuths and whistleblowers like Matthew Schrag, who uncovered image manipulation in key Alzheimer’s studies. The institutional failures of major scientific journals, regu...