While the cult of Finance is loaded with the morally bankrupt, in addition to the error-prone, the merits of at least some of the discipline’s theoretical principles are made clearer with the bursting of each new financial bubble. In the case of the NIH and how it manages its research funding, Modern Portfolio Theory, and the tenet of diversification as a means of reducing the risk assumed when one invests their money, is of particular relevance.

When you invest in a single company’s stock, as opposed to an entire index of equities representing different industries, you assume more risk, risk that you won’t earn the returns you expect. If you invest in the entire universe of stocks available to you, or all publicly-traded companies in the world, you mitigate your risk immensely and immediately. The same is true if you are invested in all stocks available to you, and then bonds on top of that, for instance.

There’s a tradeoff, of course. For a reduction in risk, you accept a reduction in your expected financial returns, a decrease in the potential for how high they could be if you instead luckily bet big on some winning equity racehorse. However, in so doing, you also increase your chances of earning a stable, consistent, reliable return that will actually help you build real wealth over time.

Based on multiple factors, including your appetite for, and willingness and capacity to take on, financial risk; as well as your investment time horizon (how long you’re going to tie up your money in investments for); and your investment objectives (like, “retire filthy rich in 20 years”), you tweak the composition of the portfolio you’re going to invest in until all these things are in sync. Then, at some point, after you’ve drafted your designs, you put your money where your mouth is.

The NIH, which administers its own budgets, would do well to begin viewing the studies it funds, and/or could fund, as a portfolio of assets in which it is invested, and diversify that portfolio further. It already claims to have an inkling of this, explicitly stating the following goal on its website:

to expand the knowledge base in medical and associated sciences in order to enhance the Nation’s economic well-being and ensure a continued high return on the public investment in research;

To repeat, they profess to seek to ensure a continued high return on the public investment in research. Does long-lasting failure to cure disease by ignoring edgy approaches sound like we, the public, are getting a high return on our investment? What is the return to you in this context, if your loved one is currently dying, or now deceased?

To reduce the risk inherent in investing in that portfolio of research studies — the risk that funding the same old, same old won’t identify any cures, or will take much longer than anyone would care to tolerate — and increase the chances of a worthy return, such as the discovery of even one cure, the NIH should pursue a path of increased diversification. By many accounts, they are not diversifying enough today with respect to their funding approach vis-à-vis Alzheimer’s and other dementias.

In other words, funding studies such as Moir’s should be seen as the rule, not as some sort of exception. Spread the money around, across a range of ideas. Vet the hell out of them as seen fit, fine, but mix it up. Why shovel most of it into the same dump truck of exhausted thinking on the subject?

What has that led to, exactly? Don’t we define insanity à la Albert Einstein as the act of repeating the same action with the expectation of a different outcome, though the actual result of each iteration remains the same? And isn’t it common enough that progress throughout all human history is made through the risky but courageous efforts of rogue thinkers? In fact, many advancements have been at the hands of inspired individuals, not at the hands of the dominant group. It is the individual who challenges the group, not the other way around.

A blurb on the website of the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund, run by the finance folks who saw Moir through the year 2014 in the absence of further NIH funding, coincidentally echoes the need for a different approach.

The vision for Cure Alzheimer’s Fund was set by our founders. Frustrated with the slow pace of research about the disease, they applied their experience in venture capital and corporate startups to build an organization specifically designed to accelerate research, make bold bets, and eradicate the disease…

Frustrated with the slow pace of research…

…make bold bets…

Amen.

It seems overdue, then, that someone inform the NIH, and all those who perpetuate the existing amyloid beta plaque dogma, that to continue to primarily fund studies that support and reinforce the dogma in an endless feedback loop of futility is, in actuality, the real risk. That is, the real risk is that while the establishment gorges itself on old ideas, families like mine keep suffering immeasurably.

Such a funding approach as the NIH currently seems locked in is, from a portfolio management standpoint, akin to taking your personal wealth and letting it all ride in 2017 with the fortunes of one or a few cryptocurrency market players, or the latest shitcoin dealer, as critical industry insiders have begun to phrase it. We’ve seen that hit show. It didn’t end so well.