6.5 million people suffer from Alzheimer’s Disease in the U.S. Turns out that a 2006 research paper cited by 2200 successive research studies, sparking billions in research effort was a fraud.

“The investigation uncovered evidence suggesting several instances of image manipulation in the work of Sylvain Lesné, a researcher working at the University of Minnesota and an author of the 2006 study.”

Billions of dollars in subsequent research based on this model has failed. 99% of all human trials of treatments based on this research have produced no results.

“They concurred with his overall conclusions, which cast doubt on hundreds of images, including more than 70 in Lesné’s papers. Some look like “shockingly blatant” examples of image tampering, says Donna Wilcock, an Alzheimer’s expert at the University of Kentucky.”

That’s 20 years of research in the wrong direction.

Two decades of Alzheimer’s research was based on deliberate fraud by 2 scientists that has cost billions of dollars and millions of lives

Blots on a field? A neuroscience image sleuth finds signs of fabrication in scores of Alzheimer’s articles, threatening a reigning theory of the disease

Years of Alzheimer’s research were based on a key finding. Now an investigation alleges it was faked, and the work may have been wasted.