Latest news with #Piller
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Milwaukee abandoned boat; leader of crew that freed vessel talks
The Brief The owner of All City Towing spoke on Tuesday, May 20, about his team's removal of Deep Thought from Milwaukee's lakefront. The boat was abandoned back in October. Despite multiple attempts by other teams, the All City Towing crew successfully removed the boat in early May. MILWAUKEE - Boat watch 2025 is back! Well, sort of. On Tuesday, May 20, we learned a lot more about how a Milwaukee crew successfully removed Deep Thought, the boat that was abandoned on the city's lakefront. What we know On Tuesday, Jeff Piller, the owner of All City Towing, spoke at the Rotary Club. He was invited to share how his crew was able to free the boat which had been beached between Bradford and McKinley beaches from October 2024 until early May. Piller said his crew estimated the boat weighed between 40,000 and 50,000 pounds. It was actually close to 100,000 pounds. FREE DOWNLOAD: Get breaking news alerts in the FOX LOCAL Mobile app for iOS or Android Piller spoke about the challenges of removing the boat. He initially estimated the cost to free it from the beach would be around $50,000. It turns out that it was much more than that. What they're saying "There was a lot of people who wanted to see it stay but it was definitely time to get rid of the boat," Piller said. Piller said he is giving the county and taxpayers a discount, as they are figuring out a way to come up with the money to pay for it. Two donors previously pitched in around $20,000 to help with the costs. SIGN UP TODAY: Get daily headlines, breaking news emails from FOX6 News "But we have went way over that," Piller said. "But I have a discount on my invoice. That's approaching about $35,000." What's next Milwaukee County Parks said final costs and responsibilities will be confirmed once it reviews the invoice. For now, the boat is being housed at All City Towing's lot on Milwaukee's south side. The Source The information in this post was produced by FOX6 News and taps into previous FOX6 News coverage.
Yahoo
06-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Over 100 spectators gather to cheer and mourn 'Deep Thought' for what could be its final hours in Milwaukee
More than a hundred people swarmed Milwaukee's lakefront. A stretch of North Lincoln Memorial Drive was completely closed. A helicopter whirred overhead. You'd think someone important was in town. But no. It wasn't someone, but rather something — Milwaukee's iconic abandoned boat. Starting at 7 a.m. on May 6, crew members kicked off a sixth attempt to remove the boat, 'Deep Thought,' from the shoreline between Bradford Beach and McKinly Marina. Around noon, owner of All City Towing Jeff Piller announced the boat would likely remain on the beach for several more hours. 'It's a lot heavier than I thought,' Piller said. 'Now's a good time for a bathroom break." Milwaukee County contracted the Milwaukee-based towing company to lead the latest attempt to rescue Deep Thought, which has also been nicknamed 'The S.S. Minnow' by locals. Throughout the morning, crew members used two cranes to rotate the boat 90 degrees and drag it out of the water and onto the lakeside rocks. Earlier that morning, the crew also successfully salvaged the mangled remnants of a pontoon boat that got stuck next to Deep Thought in late April in a previous, failed rescue attempt. Cheering — and at times, lamenting — the removal attempts were at least 100 spectators. As the sun glinted off Lake Michigan on the 70-degree day, runners, bikers, families and dogs alike gathered for the what could be boat's final hours. What do resident think should happen to the defunct boat? Work is done to remove the abandoned boat "Deep Thought" from the shoreline of Lake Michigan near Bradford Beach in Milwaukee on Tuesday, May 6, 2025. The boat has been stuck since October after its Mississippi-based owners ran out of gas while operating it. By mid-morning on May 6, the grass was littered with backpacks, bikes, strollers and sweaters of the spectating crowd. Some, like Milwaukee resident Paul Fredrichs, said he planned to stay the entire day. Fredrichs said he's visited the boat regularly since October and worries it's become 'a bit of a hazard.' "Seems very Milwaukee-esque," he said of the spectacle. "One of our cheap amusements." In recent weeks, the Daniel W. Hoan Foundation donated $10,000 to rescue attempts, on top of an undisclosed amount already proffered by an anonymous donor. Milwaukee resident Elizabeth Ketter said she wonders about the time and resources funneled into the effort. During the boat's removal, a portion of North Lincoln Memorial Drive was closed to traffic for most of the day. Traffic was even at a near total stop a little before 9 a.m. as commuters navigated the detour. "It's become an inconvenience to the city,' Ketter said. Deep Thought has become a 'Milwaukee landmark,' others say Work is done to remove the abandoned boat "Deep Thought" from the shoreline of Lake Michigan near Bradford Beach in Milwaukee on Tuesday, May 6, 2025. The boat has been stuck since October after its Mississippi-based owners ran out of gas while operating it. Not everyone was ready to say goodbye to what they called a modern-day 'Milwaukee landmark.' West Allis resident Kelly Haessly said she's been following the boat's story since last fall and visited it for the first time May 6 with her son, who she did not identify and her dog, Bodie. 'We happened to be off work, and today was the big day,' Haessly said. For others, it was far from their first trip to the site. In the past few weeks, Milwaukee resident Alexander Minik said he's helped organize a boat "funeral," lit a candle at a boat vigil and even visited the site a final time in the early morning hours of May 6. "The boat has brought so many people together — artists, dancers, community members. It's funny, iconic, whimsical," Minik said. "I hope it continues to be this monkey wrench in the city's side." Shorewood resident Peter Froelich said he's biked past the boat almost every day since it got stuck. As crew members dragged 'Deep Thought' up the rocks, inch by inch, he said he hopes it won't be the last he sees of the boat. If its owners are willing, Froelich said he would like to see the boat attached to a trailer as a traveling attraction for Milwaukee's summer beer gardens. 'I'd buy a little chunk of it if that was an option,' Froelich added. MATC student sold 'S.S. Minnow' keepsakes to onlookers In fact, it was. Magnus Bonde, a 19-year-old first-year Milwaukee Area Technical College student, had the same idea. As the removal effort was underway, he was selling wood cut-outs he and his father salvaged from inside Deep Thought for $10. The wood, which included an engraving that read 'deep thought MKE,' was taken from the boat by Bonde and his father on May 5. 'The Minnow is an iconic piece of Milwaukee history," Bonde said, as he sold the last of the half-dozen or so of the keepsakes he had made. This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee abandoned boat finally dragged out of Lake Michigan
The Guardian
20-02-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
Doctored by Charles Piller review – the scandal that derailed Alzheimer's research
Living to old age is quite literally the best thing that any of us could hope for, given the alternative. It's a cruel irony, then, that many of us who make it that far will begin to lose our sense of who we are due to dementia. If you're 65, you've got about a one in 20 chance of developing the most common form, Alzheimer's disease, in the next decade. At 75, it's about one in seven, while those fortunate enough to reach 85 face a one in three chance. Given the toll this illness takes on sufferers and those around them, hundreds of millions of families around the world are desperate for a medical breakthrough – and for years, headlines have suggested that it might be imminent. Scientists had identified the cause of Alzheimer's, they promised, and potential cures were already being tested. The subtitle of Doctored – Fraud, Arrogance and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer's – serves as a spoiler as to how that story ends, at least for the moment. The fraud uncovered by a rag-tag group of researchers into academic integrity and extensively documented here by Charles Piller, an investigative journalist for the magazine Science, feels like the kind of scandal that should have had wall-to-wall coverage. And yet, outside scientific circles, it remains relatively low-profile. The story is complicated, but a summary might go like this: for decades, something called the amyloid hypothesis has dominated research into Alzheimer's, determining how billions of dollars of public and private funding into new drugs was spent. The brains of people who had died with it showed clumps of sticky protein – called amyloid plaques – between neurons. It seemed logical that these might be responsible for the disease's symptoms. And while this became the main line of inquiry, it never quite delivered on its early promise. Many people with amyloid plaques didn't have signs of Alzheimer's, for example. Something seemed to be missing. And then came what seemed like decisive proof: a 2006 paper from the University of Minnesota, which went on to become one of the most cited in the field, showed that a sub-type of amyloid led to memory impairment. It wasn't until 2022 that scientific sleuths suggested that key images on which the research relied might have been Photoshopped to better fit the hypothesis. At first, the scientists fought back against the claims, but the 2006 paper has now been retracted, as have others based around the same findings. As the book explains, investigations continue and several key figures involved deny any knowledge of wrongdoing. The implication is that years of work and billions of dollars spent on Alzheimer's research may have been carried out on the basis of fraudulent evidence. The scale of the harm caused and damage done is likely to be incalculable. Piller handles the difficult material patiently and meticulously, as you would expect of an experienced specialist reporter. As the book continues, it becomes an ever more uncomfortable read: the tale starts with the alleged fakery of images by one, or a handful, of scientists. By the end, we're left wondering if any research can really be trusted. Doctored is clearly the result of brilliant and dogged journalism, but at times all of this work is easier to admire than it is to read. Piller tries to humanise his narrative with pen portraits of key figures, but his habit of doing several of these in a row – and formulaically telling us everyone's place of birth and what their parents and grandparents did – gets repetitive and frustrating. Sign up to Bookmarks Discover new books and learn more about your favourite authors with our expert reviews, interviews and news stories. Literary delights delivered direct to you after newsletter promotion That's a pity, as the scandal at the book's heart is one that more people should know about. The scientists behind the fraud may have set back the quest to find treatments for Alzheimer's by many years. For those making decisions on the future of scientific and medical research, this book should be compulsory reading. Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer's by Charles Piller is published by Icon (£20). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
Yahoo
09-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
How greed and profit fueled one failed Alzheimer drug
On May 3, 2021, Matt Price drove his 73-year-old father Stephen from their New Jersey home to a medical strip mall on the Jersey Shore, for his first injection of an experimental drug called simufilam. Cassava Sciences, a Texas biopharma company, had developed simufilam to treat (and possibly cure) Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of dementia that afflicts tens of millions of people worldwide. When Matt, 27, first heard about simufilam, 'it sounded exciting,' writes Charles Piller in his new book, 'Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer's' (Atria/One Signal Publishers), out now. Rather than simply calming symptoms, simufilam promised 'to slow, stop, or reverse cognitive decline — or for people who have no symptoms, prevent them — by attacking Alzheimer's biochemical cause,' writes Piller. It was based on a long-debated notion called the 'amyloid hypothesis,' which argued that Alzheimer's is caused by the buildup of the protein amyloid in the brain. 'If true, its removal would lead to a cure,' writes Piller. The discovery was shocking, especially given that it'd been introduced by a small biotech company that previously specialized in opioid painkillers and 'had never taken a drug to market in its fifteen years of existence,' writes Piller. 'Yet it claimed to have discovered a new molecule that stabbed the dark heart of the terrible illness.' Even in the beginning, Matt Price, a Harvard-trained epidemiologist and global-health specialist, had his doubts. Cassava's theory, which had not yet been validated by independent researchers, 'seemed weird and a bit thin,' Matt told the author. His concerns would soon be confirmed by a whistleblower, who produced 'convincing evidence that lab studies at the heart of the dominant hypothesis for the cause of Alzheimer's disease might have been based on bogus data,' writes Piller. The amyloid hypothesis wasn't just wrong, but it took valuable resources away from other promising theories on how to treat Alzheimer's. It was just the latest example, writes Piller, 'of the exaggeration, hype, and sheer fakery and fraud that has characterized Alzheimer's research for decades.' And it's not a problem confined to Alzheimer's research alone. As of this month, at least 55,000 medical and scholarly studies have been retracted, according to the Retraction Watch database from the Center of Scientific Integrity. And it's estimated that there may be as many as several hundred thousand fake studies still circulating and not yet identified. Even when they are exposed, journals are often slow to retract the bogus studies, if it happens at all. It's not just an issue of wasted research dollars. 'It makes people start to distrust the clinical research enterprise,' says Price. Simufilam began as an experimental drug — code-named PTI-125 — developed by neuroscientists Lindsay Burns and Hoau-Yan Wang. It was designed to target filamin A, which becomes twisted into an abnormal shape and causes inflammation in the brain, promoting the formation of myloid-beta proteins. PTI-125, the researchers suggested, could reverse those terrible effects. The drug was renamed simufilam in August of 2020, and in preliminary studies, patients started showing improvement after just a month — 'extraordinary for any Alzheimer's trial,' writes Piller. Simufilam began to seem like the holy grail, 'the dream drug that generations of researchers had searched for in vain,' the author writes. By late July 2021, the tiny biopharma company, whose sample size for their simufilam experiments was a minuscule fifty participants, suddenly had a market valuation of $5.4 billion. The victory was short-lived. On Aug. 18, 2021, just weeks after the company's stock reached record highs, two neuroscientists — Geoffrey Pitt of Weill Cornell Medical College and David Bredt, a former executive at drugmakers Eli Lilly and Johnson & Johnson — submitted a 'citizen petition' to the FDA, asking them to take a closer look at simufilam. Their main concern was that the drug's development 'contained manipulated scientific images,' writes Piller. 'In short, they asserted, the work looked like it had been doctored.' To help prove their suspicions, they brought in Matthew Schrag, a neurologist and neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University, who would become 'the most important whistleblower in the history of Alzheimer's,' writes Piller. When they asked for Schrag's help, 'my response was, 'You think I'm stupid enough to do that?' ' Schrag told the author. 'Apparently, I was.' Using ImageJ and MIPAV, software developed and endorsed by the NIH, Schrag carefully studied the images used in the simufilam study. He had a 'seasoned eye for detecting digital manipulation with common software programs,' writes Piller. Almost immediately, he spotted proof of manipulation. 'Schrag saw micrographs — magnifications of microscopic features of brain tissue — that seemed obviously cloned,' writes Piller. 'Yet they were presented as findings for different experimental conditions.' Schrag worried that he wasn't just uncovering evidence of research misconduct, but something much larger and more ominous. 'How had those problems gone unnoticed for years or even decades?' Piller writes. '[Schrag] wondered nervously: What other Alzheimer's research should be reconsidered with skeptical eyes?' Schrag had an uphill battle, mostly because 'disproving someone else's experiment can be a death wish in science,' writes Piller. Or as Schrag explained to the author, 'The field is absolutely calibrated to the newest, most interesting, most cutting-edge discovery. It disincentivizes replication at every turn.' Piller shared Schrag's findings with over a dozen experts, including several top Alzheimer's researchers. While most were hesitant to go on the record saying anything negative about the original research, some — like Donna Wilcock, an Alzheimer's expert at the University of Kentucky who would later become editor of Alzheimer's & Dementia — admitted that several images showed 'shockingly blatant' signs of tampering. But others, like Dennis Selkoe, a Harvard professor of neurologic diseases and a celebrated Alzheimer's researcher, 'chastised' the author for his criticism of the 'objective evidence' that reducing amyloid in the human brain produces better cognitive outcomes. 'I'm on the right side of history,' argued Selkoe, who Piller accuses of being part of the 'Amyloid Mafia.' George Perry, a scientist at the University of Texas at San Antonio and editor of the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, agreed with Piller that many Alzheimer's researchers are too hellbent on being correct. 'The major goal of these people is to win—if it isn't the Nobel Prize, it's God's glory,' Perry told the author. 'To be acknowledged that they really did something great. They don't want the amyloid hypothesis to die, because then they have no legacy.' Schrag delivered his Cassava dossier to the NIH in 2021, providing 'forensic street cred' to doubts about the research, writes Piller. Two years later, in 2023, a university panel found Hoau-Yan guilty of 'egregious misconduct' because of his work for Cassava. Last September, the company agreed to pay $40 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for misleading investors. And then in November, Cassava acknowledged that simufilam failed to deliver the results they'd expected in a phase 3 clinical trial, and the company would be discontinuing research. Their stock plummeted by more than 80% after the announcement. Schrag wasn't surprised by the outcome. 'You can cheat to get a paper,' he told the author. 'You can cheat to get a degree. You can cheat to get a grant. You can't cheat to cure a disease. Biology doesn't care.'
