Comment by throwawaymaths

sunk cost, stockholm syndrome, refusal to change mental models, "it is hard to get a man to understand something when their salary depends on it not being true"

amyloid experiments, especially biophysics experiments, are really fucking hard and really fucking expensive. like, months of hundred hour weeks hard. then it usually fails. so when you burn years of this cycle to find a consistent result (artefact or not), its crazy hard to let go of it.

if you want a very rare example of someone who did the right thing:

https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&h...

45 citations in 10 years. how many amyloid researchers do you think are aware of this problem with plasticware being published. and probably most "know" it from lived experience, but they say "fuck it, i need to finish my phd/postdoc" and just scramble to push out any result, plastics being problematic be damned.

the only thing that could remotely stop the nonsense from continuing is if the NIH had the balls to take this result and issue guidance to halt all amyloid research that doesnt take plastic use into account. but 1) the program managers are not smart enough to do something like that and 2) such a deep challenge to the research agenda would shake the system way too much from the top AND the bottom. just easier to continue being a bureaucrat with a nice salary and a very "mid" approach to science.