“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.”
To understand this story, let’s visit the “flood geologists” and “science geologists” of the 1600s.
1/5
To understand this story, let’s visit the “flood geologists” and “science geologists” of the 1600s.
1/5
The flood geologists, as devout Creationists, had “the Earth started 6,000 years ago” as an axiom. So every theory they came up with about geological history had to start there and build around it. It led them to many dead ends, like a brick wall blocking them from progress.
2/5
2/5
The “science geologists” of the time, starting with a clean slate, were able to truly reason from first principles. With no brick wall in the way, they went on to discover plate tectonics and date geological history to billions of years in the past.
3/5
3/5
This is why this Alzheimer’s story is so devastating. It appears that for the past 16 years, millions of man hours and billions of dollars have been building upon a false axiom. For 16 years, there may have been a brick wall impeding progress toward an Alzheimer’s cure.
4/5
4/5
All (allegedly) because of one researcher’s willingness to falsify results for career advancement and the carelessness of the lab and journals that published those results, again and again.
I hope it turns out this story is overblown, but it doesn’t look like it is.
5/5
I hope it turns out this story is overblown, but it doesn’t look like it is.
5/5
Full story by @cpiller here: science.org
More on the two kinds of geology and reasoning from first principles: waitbutwhy.com
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