Science can be as brutal as your average blood sport. Take Alzheimer's research, for example. For years, advocates of the theory that the disease is caused by too much of a toxic protein called beta amyloid (aka "the baptists") have been duking it out with proponents of the theory that it's caused by too much tau protein (aka "the tauists"). Beta amyloid is what makes the plaques that clump in an Alzheimer's brain. Tau forms the ropey, intracellular tangles that are also typical of a person with AD. For years the Baptists have been ascendant; they've also received the bulk of the research money, a fact that has not been lost on the Tauists, who have claimed, among other things, that because they don't subscribe to the dominant paradigm they've been shut out of grant money, academic positions, respect.

One manifestation of this divide is that many of the new drugs that are in the end stages of development work off the amyloid hypothesis in one way or another. This was a bad month for a number of those drugs: Flurizan flamed out, the Elan "vaccine," while removing plaques, did not improve cognition or slow down cell death for most people; and now a drug in development by Elan and Wyeth not only hasn't shown efficacy in early trials, it has led to brain inflammation in a number of participants, callling into question its overall safety. If you were listening closely, you might have heard the Tauists snickering.