There was a good HN discussion a few weeks back about this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21911225 It's becoming increasingly clear that the entire Amyloid-beta plaque hypothesis has been wrong and last 20+ years of Alzheimer's research and drug development has been wasted.

I recommend reading these instead:

Alzheimer’s amyloid hypothesis ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure (2019) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31828509

How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21911225

The amyloid hypothesis on trial https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17618027

Is the Alzheimer's “Amyloid Hypothesis” Wrong? (2017) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17444214

Why, at this point should we believe any one scientist writing in that forum wasn't already sunk far deep into amyloid research in their career?

Not to mention that after a quick glance on the comments section, I fail to see where you get the idea that "They all disagree with the notion that Lesné's papers have been important to the field". Apart from the very first comment from karen Ashe (who will obviously be defending her research) and a few other who's working on related topics, other commenters seems to be keeping their suspicion at amyloid hypothesis.

I work in healthcare (or health-tech), I sometimes forward articles from HN to colleagues or higher management. Often times I regretted that based on comments that came in later on articles. So now I muster up the discipline to wait some hours, keep the tab with comments open en refresh every now and then. I hardly ever get disappointed and the comments reveal the true value of an article almost without fail and always with extra resources to back up why a claim is true, false or questionable. I love this community for this reason and it provides a lot of value to me and via me my colleagues.

A good example is the recent discussion on the amyloid plaque "cabal" [0]. The comments confirm, but also attenuate the article, and together with my own experiences in science I feel confident to forward the article. Comments and discussions such as [1] are clearly from people deeply involved in the field or at least from very knowledgeable people, and they nicely balance the often polarizing articles.

Imho the HN algorithms seem to work very well in getting quality content to the top, given time (an article may well be gone from the home page by then).

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21911225

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21912471