Based on my understanding of how these things work: Yes, probably no, and probably no… I think the map is just a “catalogue” of what things are, not at the point where we can do fancy models on it

This is their GitHub account, anyone knowledgeable enough about research software engineering is welcomed to give it a try

There are a few neuroscientists who are trying to decipher biological neural connections using principles from deep learning (a.k.a. AI/ML), don’t think this is a popular subfield though. Andreas Tolias is the first one that comes to my mind, he and a bunch of folks from Columbia/Baylor were in a consortium when I started my PhD… not sure if that consortium is still going. His lab website (SSL cert expired bruh). They might solve the second two statements you raised… no idea when though.

I have a suspicion it’s not just an Alzheimer’s issue but rather quite systemic to lots of competitive fields in academia… There definitely needs to be guard rails. I think the sad thing with funding is… these days you have to be exceptionally good at grant writing to even have a chance of getting into the lottery, and it mostly feels like a lottery with success rates in the teens… and apparently no grant=no lab, no career for most ppl (seriously why are most PI roles soft money-funded anyway). Hard to not try and cut the corners if there’s so much pressure on the line

Not to mention, apparently even if you are a super ethical PI who wants to do nothing wrong, if the lab gets big enough, there might eventually be some unethical postdoc trying to make it big and falsify data (that you don’t have time to check) under your name so… how the hell do people guard against that.

I’m honestly impressed how science is still making progress with all of these random nonsense in the field

It’s definitely way more prevalent. There actually is this post from Retractionwatch just a few days ago too. This is kind-of a systematic issue induced by how scientific funding & the system works…

My current PI is actually co-mentoring a student who was studying scientific fraud, but the problem is… being a fraud researcher is apparently a really good way to alienate a lot of people, which ensures you never make it in academia (which is heavily dependent on networking/knowing people)… so I don’t know how many ppl would seriously study this.