A November 15 protest in Mexico – driven by a right-wing social-media operation – has been miscast as a mass uprising against President Sheinbaum. In reality, the march was small, elite-backed and part of a wider attempt to sow unrest, argues DAVID RABY
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Pics and it didn’t happen
Fraud in Alzheimer’s research raises difficult questions about the current state of science, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
GROUP SUPREMACY: Alois Alzheimer (standing third from right) with his research group at the Nervenklinik in Munich 1909-1910
[Public domainc/CC]
Despite new European arrests, the evidence presented so far fails to explain the sabotage of the undersea pipelines – and veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh’s allegations of US responsibility cannot be easily dismissed, writes ROGER McKENZIE
Groups are urging the US government to secure the 16-year old’s release as his mental and physical health decline dramatically after nine months inside Ofer prison, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
MAT COWARD tells the story of the eccentric founder of a short-lived but striking experiment in ‘vital democracy,’ who became best known for giving away his estate to the nation
As figures from Tucker Carlson to Nigel Farage flirt with neofascist rhetoric and mainstream leaders edge toward authoritarianism through war and repression, the conditions that once nurtured Hitlerism re-emerge — yet anti-war and anti-imperialist sentiments are also burgeoning anew, writes ANDREW MURRAY
As President Javier Milei is set to unveil a radical rollback of Argentina’s labour laws, unions warn of an unprecedented assault on workers’ rights, says BERT SCHOUWENBURG
IN MOST cases of peer review, scientists review a paper for free while the publisher makes a huge profit margin. Two of the world’s biggest academic publishers are Springer Nature and Elsevier: their recent profit margins range from 28 to 38 per cent. The fees charged by these publishers are generally paid for by research grants; in Britain, that is mostly public money. The status quo of science is worth a lot of money — for some.
However, not everything that is peer-reviewed is valid. A recent book published this month, Charles Piller’s Doctored, covers the story of fraud in research on Alzheimer’s disease — all of which had been peer-reviewed.
One of the leading theories in the late 20th century about Alzheimer’s was that the accumulation of amyloid proteins was to blame. Amyloids, named after their resemblance to starch molecules, clump together into tangles of gunk in the brain.
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A maverick’s self-inflicted snake bites could unlock breakthrough treatments – but they also reveal deeper tensions between noble scientific curiosity and cold corporate callousness, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
WILL PODMORE recommends an excellent and useful introduction to a lesser-known giant of the scientific revolution in Britain