The 2006 paper described a specific amyloid-beta protein assembly, nicknamed Ab*56, that appeared to cause memory loss in laboratory mice. It was published in Nature and went on to shape years of funding and drug development built around the amyloid hypothesis of Alzheimer's disease.
An investigation detailed in Science in 2022 found that key images in the paper appeared to have been digitally manipulated. In 2024, the paper was formally retracted, eighteen years after it was first published and after it had been cited more than 2,300 times.
The retraction did not disprove the broader amyloid hypothesis, which rests on many other lines of evidence and drugs that have since shown real if modest effects. But it raised hard questions about how a single flawed paper could shape an entire research field and its funding priorities for nearly two decades before independent scrutiny finally caught it.
Read the original study
Lesné et al., Nature, 2006; retracted 2024 · doi.org/10.1038/nature04533
Eighteen years, then the retraction.
Source
- Lesné, S., Koh, M. T., Kotilinek, L., Kayed, R., Glabe, C. G., Yang, A., Gallagher, M., & Ashe, K. H. (2006). A specific amyloid-β protein assembly in the brain impairs memory. Nature, 440(7082), 352–357. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature04533 (Retracted)