I've Got It!

In my last post, I spoke a little bit about how I was struggling to identify the argument of my project. But as I almost ran into a tree yesterday afternoon, I realized that I was thinking with far too specific a mentality. I will definitely explain what I mean by this but first, we'll need to rewind back to the June 21 emc training.

One of the things that I remember from that day is when we were debating American capitalism in the commercial sense, mostly focused on monopolies I think. And it's actually kind of funny, I remember this part of the day so clearly because I was trying to argue that both Amazon and Walmart have monopolies over the consumer population. Ben then asked me to define a monopoly... Although that was dumb on my part, it's good that I made such a silly mistake because it made me remember the situation and helped me to solve my much more recent argument problem.

So, when we talk about Alzheimer's and plaques in the nervous system, there can be 2 groups of people identified - Those who agree with the Amyloid Hypothesis and those who do not. In essence, the Amyloid Hypothesis states that flaws in the processes governing production, accumulation or disposal of beta-amyloid are the primary cause of Alzheimer’s - the initiation of the disease's pathogenesis. The opposing viewpoint then, subscribes to the idea that the primary driving factor in Alzheimer’s is a reduction in the capacity of neurons in specific regions of the brain to harness energy from glucose which would occur long before plaque deposition. In this theory's approach, the formation of Aβ may actually be an element in the brain’s defense against oxidative stress. So it's important to note that the discrepancy is not an argument surrounding whether plaques exist or not. The dispute is embedded within the progression of the disease. Are amyloid plaques the origin of neurodegeneration or are they simply a response to other factors? You might be thinking, well why does it matter which one comes first? The reason we care about how the disease develops is because if oxidative stress is what sets everything else into motion, then research should be redirected to metabolic processes and mitochondrial function in the central nervous system. Theoretically, if amyloid plaques are caused by an earlier physiological change, then if there was a way to stop the earlier cause, plaque research and proteotoxicity prevention becomes irrelevant.

Now, this is really important because it models that so-called double monopoly concept I tried applying to businesses. Since my personal thesis is based off the assumption of the Amyloid Hypothesis, those who do not support this assumed hypothesis, are likely to reject the conclusions I arrive at. Basically, what I am trying to say is that these two hypotheses are not variations of one another. Each respective proposed pathogenesis has a complete monopoly on the scientific opinions of the people who subscribe to it, at least when it comes to Alzheimer's related research. And the trick here is also that there is an overwhelming amount of evidence for both hypotheses... which means, I think I've found my argument.

It is highly unlikely that someone assessing my work will be arguing whether these amyloid and tau aggregations exist in an Alzheimer's brain, because that has been indisputably proven. But what is likely is that the argument becomes traced back to the preferential hypothesis of Alzheimer's Disease progression. Personally, I've always subscribed to the Amyloid Hypothesis because it has been widely tested and most of the professionals I've encountered have tended towards this theory. The evidence for the opposite then, comes from anomalies found in clinical trials of people who have plaques but don't present any symptoms of dementia, among other variations of discrepant cases.

So although a double monopoly can't really exist because it's an oxymoron, I think my thesis would fall under the category of Amyloid Hypothesis studies. But one thing I am wondering about is whether a discussion of Amyloid Hypothesis is called for in my thesis. I hesitate to go right ahead and include it because I am unsure whether or not it is too far removed from my explicit thesis statement. Obviously, for the purpose of my project as a whole, the most important argument lies in the assumption of one hypothesis or the other, but it is not so clear concerning my thesis paper.

In science, as I've learned, the true arguments tend to present themselves in larger pictures than one specific study or one replication of data. It's like saying I'm going to look at 1,000 sets of data and find a trend. But that trend I find will be different than every other scientist's trend because there are so many angles from which to look at the data published. Same goes for Alzheimer's theories, there's a lot out there supporting both sides, but the question then becomes, which has had the most minimal margin of error?