The evidence had been scandalously suppressed for several years by editors and referees of scientific journals. This site contains the full details of the excuses put forward for this suppression, along with the author's demonstration of their speciousness.

The historical record of original thinking being suppressed by "scientists"

The new evidence is presented in the paper "Does longer-term memory never become overloaded, and would overload manifest as Alzheimer's and other dementia?" 

As convenient-to-print pdf file (only 209k), uses Acrobat reader     As rtf (Mac etc) file

Prepublication history

The paper was first submitted to Nature in early 1995 (then titled "Learning too much causes Alzheimer's disease"). The Nature assistant editor telephoned and claimed, in declared concurrence with the editor, that it did not present a theory and that they did not publish "mere discussion", both of which claims are most certainly patent untruths.

Very taken aback by this ridiculous and deceitful response, it was two-and-a-half years before I sent a new presentation of the paper again to Nature, which then had a new editor (I was subject to even more distracting life-events than usual during that interval).

The new Nature editors rigidly asserted that it would not be of interest to readers, even though Prof David Horrobin was sure that they ought to be interested were it not for the extent of narrowmindedness among what pass for scientists currently.

Similar nonsense from the journal Science. Then from the Lancet. The Lancet publishes short worthless "Hypotheses", and after many months its editor expressed his preoccupation with brevity as being more important than quality.

The editor of Behavioral and Brain Sciences asserted that it did not fulfill the requirements for a BBS article, but could be considered by his e-journal Psycoloquy (sic).

Response from the Psycoloquy/BBS editor and referees, with my interpolated rejoinders.

The paper as sent to Psycoloquy (concised e-version)

One of the Psycoloquy referees (perversely called "reviewers" in U.S. language) even claimed that the paper did not mention the idea that memories should accumulate so therefore AD would increase with age, whereas the paper had in fact mentioned it in eleven paragraphs including the abstract. And the same referee then claimed that there was no such correlation with age. This flies absurdly in the face of the common knowledge that many old people have AD but it is virtually unknown in the first three-four decades.

All that the editor had to say in response to my defences was ....

Well, eventually, after much prompting, a message came that this distinguished Professor did not have the time "to engage in the protracted discussions [I] seek". In other words he was not willing to actually do the job that he pretends to do.

I then sent to Psychological Review.

Manuscript version, pdf file

Reports from referees for Psychological Review, with my accompanying rejoinders.

My letter (accompanying the rejoinders) to Psychological Review editor

Editor's reply to appeal, from Psychological Review

My letter of appeal to Chief Editorial Advisor of American Psychological Association

Thereafter, the paper was considered for publication by Medical Hypotheses, a refereed journal edited by Prof David Horrobin (the self-made multimillionaire), and was accepted on 6 January 2000, five years after I first sent it to Nature. Finally, it was published in the November 2000 issue.

To Robin P. Clarke main page