And now, investigative journalist Charles Piller reveals that some of those tackling the disease have been misled by self-interested researchers, government accomplices, and corporate greed.

Such an explanation outlines the nature of the forces involved, which were formidable, including giant pharmaceutical companies and university staff, and required credible sources.

Principally, the highly technical evidence to undermine the existing scientific evidence came from a neuroscientist and physician, Professor Matthew Schrag of Vanderbilt University.

The professor found that a university laboratory led by young and rising stars in the field delivered apparently falsified data forming the core of the leading hypothesis about the disease.

The professor’s research was driven by an indignation at the institutional tolerance, in research establishments and technical publishing, of the false data.

Piller describes how Schrag’s findings resulted in the discovery that hundreds of important Alzheimer’s research papers are based on that false data, others have now added evidence to these findings.

The false research papers, by holding out the hope of cures, had attracted vast sums of money from government and other sources, establishing great institutional power. Few clinical doctors had the relevant abilities that Professor Schrag did, and yet only an experienced investigative journalist could produce such a sustained narrative. The technical details of this major medical research scandal, and financial implications, do not make this book easy to read, but otherwise it might have been so much more difficult.

There is something for everyone in this book, with examples of ethical standards having been flouted widely, short-term gains preferred, and a studied indifference by some regulators.

None of the false research was random or a matter of chance, it was for personal gain or institutional funding, even although personal safety was in issue. It is to be recalled that in addition to unwarranted funding, tens of thousands of patients had been drawn into clinical trials to test dubious research findings and related new drugs.

The whole scandal is a morality tale for our time, and it is very well told by Piller, and the book is modestly priced given the great effort that went into the investigations, and the narrative.

Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer’s by Charles Piller. Published by Icon Books, 352pp, £20.