The Amyloid Hypothesis

Environmental & Science Education
STEM
Health
Medicine
History of Science
Nature of Science
Edward Hessler

STAT's Damian Garde narrates a short animated film (~6 m) on the history of the credibility of a hypothesis, the idea that amyloid plaques cause Alzheimer's disease.

This hypothesis "eventually became drug industry dogma." Garde asks, "How did nearly two decades of failure not convince the brightest minds in pharma that it was time to move on?

It is complicated, another story on how science works and a reminder that the puzzles presented by the natural world are difficult.