Doctored

Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer's

Charles Piller

An Economist Best Book of 2025 So Far

For readers of Empire of Pain and Dopesick, a “gripping story of medical groupthink and warped incentives” (The Economist) that follows how Alzheimer’s disease treatment has been set back by corrupt researchers, negligent regulators, and the profit motives of Big Pharma.

Nearly seven million Americans live with Alzheimer’s disease, a tragedy that is already projected to grow into a $1 trillion crisis by 2050. While families suffer and promises of pharmaceutical breakthroughs keep coming up short, investigative journalist Charles Piller’s Doctored shows that we’ve quite likely been walking the wrong path to finding a cure all along—led astray by a cabal of self-interested researchers, government accomplices, and corporate greed.

In this “riveting must-read master class in science journalism” (Gary Taubes, author of Rethinking Diabetes), Piller begins with a whistleblower—Vanderbilt professor Matthew Schrag—whose work exposed a massive scandal. Schrag found that a University of Minnesota lab led by a precocious young scientist and a Nobel Prize–rumored director delivered apparently falsified data at the heart of the leading hypothesis about the disease.

Piller uncovers evidence that hundreds of important Alzheimer’s research papers are based on false data. In the process, he reveals how even against a flood of money and influence, a determined cadre of scientific renegades have fought back to challenge the field’s institutional powers in service to science and the tens of thousands of patients who have been drawn into trials to test dubious drugs. Piller “masterfully unfolds an epic tale of astounding fraud, scientific egos run amok, and steely heroism in the pursuit of truth, creating both a page-turner and a seminal account of deceit that will long be remembered alongside Theranos and Enron as a scandal for the ages” (Katherine Eban, author of Bottle of Lies).

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Prologue
• Chapter 1: A Vanishing Mind
• Chapter 2: “Magic Hands”
• Chapter 3: “Everything Is Figureoutable”
• Chapter 4: The French Connection
• Chapter 5: Prodigy Meets Genius
• Chapter 6: One Hundred Years of Solitude
• Chapter 7: Drug of Choice
• Chapter 8: Image Problem
• Chapter 9: Doctored
• Chapter 10: “Biology Doesn’t Care”
• Chapter 11: Trust but Verify
• Chapter 12: The “Amyloid Mafia”
• Chapter 13: Blots on a Field
• Chapter 14: Federal Failures
• Chapter 15: Scholarly Deceptions
• Chapter 16: Ivory Tower Deceits
• Chapter 17: Shock and Duty
• Chapter 18: Slow-Motion Meltdown
• Chapter 19: Survival Mode
• Chapter 20: Brain Games
• Chapter 21: Impact on Alzheimer’s
• Chapter 22: Innovation and Hope
• Epilogue
• A Note on Reporting
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Notes
• Index
• Copyright