Check out our new research letter!

🧪 #alzheimer #amyloid Amazing new paper from @sfackley.bsky.social that exposes the statistical alchemy Lilly applied to their donanemab data: jamanetwork.com/journals/jam... There is little to no correlation between amyoid removal and clinical outcomes with donanemab (or lecanemab).

Beware the reanalysis -

Appreciation to @mikegreicius.bsky.social for sharing this and to @sfackley.bsky.social for this important paper. It carefully examines whether amyloid removal in donanemab aligns with meaningful clinical benefit. Follow @academaxjournals.bsky.social for relevant research. #Science #Neuroscience

Professor @sfackley.bsky.social finds prior methods of studying cognition and amyloid, which builds up in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients "made a failed trial look like it had successfully removed amyloid." Learn more 🧠 https://sph.brown.edu/news/2026-05-18/alzheimers-analysis-donanemab

Lilly used "quantile-aggregation" to transform individual level data with 100s of data points and a correlation of 0.08 (see figure) into 10 data points with a correlation of 0.87! Dr. Ackley clearly debunks this approach with simulations and real-world data. Check it out. Spread the word.

Eli Lilly’s reanalysis of TRAILBLAZER-ALZ 2 proposes a new method for evaluating amyloid as a surrogate endpoint and argues the resulting high R-squared values are “unlikely to be artificially inflated.” Our response now out in JAMA Neurology: they are. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

"I am a clinical epidemiologist whose research focuses on assessing interventions for the treatment and prevention of dementia," @sfackley.bsky.social writes. "I believe it is premature to promote coffee for the prevention of dementia." https://wapo.st/4s5WRiD

For those of you attending #GSA2025 in Boston, consider this panel of #NIH awardees, Drs. Alden Gross, @mariaglymour.bsky.social , @sfackley.bsky.social , and @bryandjames.bsky.social. Please remember to tag #geronsky and @geronsociety.bsky.social in your posts.

🔔 #TRCI Special Issue 🔔 Marking the 10th anniversary of AD Drug Development Pipeline articles led by Dr. Jeffrey Cummings! Submit your research highlighting advances in ADRD clinical trials and drug development! ⏰Oct. 31, 2026 alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/hub/journal/...

Such a cool paper. #EpiSky @amjepi.bsky.social #DataScience #Reproducibility Led by @sfackley.bsky.social at @brown-epi.bsky.social Research on reproducible research funded by NIH/NIA - thank you!

Check out our recently published paper at AJE! academic.oup.com/aje/advance-... We analyzed 21,332 abstracts (2000-2024) from four major epidemiology journals, extracting 25,288 P values using ChatGPT’s 4o model with few-shot in-context prompting. #episky #reproducibility #metasci #metascience

#TIME-AD is heading to #AAIC25! 📊 We’ll be sharing results from our latest preprint examining whether reductions in brain amyloid—a key Alzheimer’s biomarker—can meaningfully predict changes in cognition and functioning. 🔗 Read the preprint: tinyurl.com/5n8psura

Looking forward to presenting this renanalysis of the A4 study, as well as a simulation study evaluating SILA's ability to detect ceilings in amyloid accumulation at #AAIC25. #ENDALZ www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

🧠 TIME-AD is now on Bluesky! #TIME-AD brings together results from different study designs and populations to find what really works to prevent and delay dementia. Follow along as we share what we’re learning and check out our website to learn more: www.time-ad.org #EndALZ #EpiSky #NeuroSky

New preprint up! Evaluation of Amyloid Removal as a Surrogate for Cognitive Decline: Pilot Analysis in Individual-Level Data from the A4 Study of Solanezumab www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Excellent talk at #MELODEM2025 by @sfackley.bsky.social evaluating amyloid as a surrogate marker with individual level A4 trial data One big take away — 5 years was not enough time to see cognitive decline in the placebo group == a major challenge

Now at #MELODEM2025 Is reducing/removing amyloid from the brain a reasonable surrogate for slowing/stopping cognitive decline in dementia? @sfackley.bsky.social uses data from the A4 RCT (of solanezumab) to answer this q, ... @melodem.bsky.social

I was invited to comment for AlzForum on GLP-1s and dementia. GLP-1s show promise, but RCTs like GRADE have not demonstrated clear cognitive benefits. Observational studies may be confounded by socioeconomic factors and prescribing patterns. Read the full comment: www.alzforum.org/papers/gluco...

In addition to today's NIH-grant-related anxiety, a cat vomited a fur ball in my shoe.

I wrote 1/3 of a page of my grant!

So many more people than I realized!

Note on my previous calculation--arguably 1/1000 is too high.

1/ The number of deaths (3) in this measles outbreak seems high given its size (480 TX + 50 OK + 10 NM = 544). Typically, ~1/1000 die from measles based on past data (pre- and post-elimination). Is it possible cases are underreported? #episky

Some math/physics history I happened across yesterday— David Hilbert lived to see the Nazis purge many prominent faculty members at the University of Göttingen in 1933, including Hermann Weyl, Emmy Noether, and Edmund Landau. (Wikipedia)

Breaking News: The Trump administration intends to block $510 million in federal contracts and grants for Brown University.

Of all the important questions and issues raised here, the least pressing (but still curious) is... why is the thumbnail a photo of MIT? www.msn.com/en-us/news/p...

Hmmm… This must be why my work backpack is always covered in cat fur

Science, Anti-Science, Pseudoscience, Truth--very timely & relevant themes in this excerpt on Feyerabend. Fascinating read. Some general + epi-specific thoughts: 🔗 www.thephilosopher1923.org/post/pseudos...

Stand Up for Science in Providence!

Struggling to compare treatment effects across different cognitive measures? Check out our new paper. alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

A couple thoughts on Piller's piece that didn't fit in my letter. First: Anti-amyloid treatments appear to cause brain shrinkage-- this is definitely a concern. But we don't actually know if it's bad and there's reason to think it might not be. We need individual-level data to know for sure!

Amidst the "amyloid mafia" debate, Sarah Ackley chimes in with a concrete proposal that would very quickly deliver better evidence on how to treat Alzheimer's disease and the promise of anti-amyloid therapies: the companies should share the data for combined, individual-level analyses.

Check out my letter on amyloid-targeting drugs in STAT! www.statnews.com/2025/02/22/l... A thread #episky

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1... Have efforts from epidemiologists to reduce reliance on P values reduced P hacking? Probably not. Do decreases in the fraction of P values just below 0.05 necessarily imply less P hacking? No. #episky #metascience

I know there's not much good news, but I have a big win! For the first time in my research career, I submitted a paper, and it went straight to review without (multiple rounds) of formatting corrections!

I'd like to know what these tests and treatments are. 🤨

Thanksgiving!!!!!