There is no single source accounting for race in Alzheimer’s research, but clinical trials and research studies are known to skew toward wealthy and white participants. In just one clue about the level of disparity, of more than 12,000 brain-imaging studies on Alzheimer’s, only about 700 report race at all. Studies that do report race have more than 87% white participants. As of 2020, census data found about 58% of the US population was white.

As the Trump administration attempts to remake science according to its own priorities – canceling, freezing or otherwise disrupting more than 5,700 medical research grants at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) – work such as Dubowitz’s has been alternately labeled “DEI” (diversity, equity and inclusion) or unscientific.

Researchers were given 90 days to shut down the study, more than five months earlier than expected and a year earlier than hoped. It’s far too little time to conduct cognitive “adjudications,” where a neuropsychologist and geriatric psychiatrist were expected to interpret the results of all 600 participants – experts that the researchers now can’t pay.