This is fascinating.<p>I've been following, at a distance, the developments of AD research.<p>The culprit is not Amyloid or Tau in themselves, but their misfolded variants, which have prion-like properties: they can't be degraded (and thus accumulate), and turn their respective healthy variants into their pathological counterparts.<p>Misfolded Tau is intracellular, but it is known to propagate from cell [0,1], causing havoc on its way since its accumulation is sufficient to cause neurodegeneration.<p>Misfolded Amyloid may not be toxic in itself, but it probably acts as a misfolding template for Tau (it does in vitro) [2].<p>--<p>0. <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22365544" rel="nofollow">http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22365544</a><p>1. <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19282288" rel="nofollow">http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19282288</a><p>2. <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22965142" rel="nofollow">http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22965142</a><p>These may not be the best sources for these very points they're the first relevant papers I could find on the spot.
<i>History is peppered with examples of scientists who struggled against a prevailing orthodoxy, only to be proved right.</i><p>This may be right, but it's also an argument used by crackpot theorists.
<i>"Science is politics," he says. "And the politics of amyloid won."</i><p>This quote is <i>just</i> the kind of thing the public need to read to improve their confidence in the scientific method.<p>There needs to be a better distinction between established scientific knowledge and the funding decisions for research of unresolved questions. In other words, Science HAS_A Politics, not IS_A Politics.