Rather spry for an old planet. Some even consider her 'hot'. Her old hubby Mars hasn't aged half as well.

I believe you are right and that I misread the NYT article.

I know. The part about lying was deliberately facetious. Unless you get the ethics committee really drunk before the meeting of course. The question in the comment was phrased such that I couldn't say if the author meant 3 different doses of placebo or if they had missed the part where all the doses were compared to placebo. So I covered both bases with a little sugar pill of humour.

One thing strikes me. After the 50% price reduction in early 2022 the wholesale !! price of a one year 'maintenance dose' of Tilavonemab was $28,200. You can be sure that the company is still making money even after halving the price. As of April last year up to 1.5 million people had been treated with the drug. This is in the running for the most successful failure ever.

Three different amounts of the drug. As for placebo it would be 'hard' to devise 3 different amounts of nothing in solution. Maybe one could lie to the control group and tell them that they are getting different doses of the nothing solution. The article compares the effects to the placebo, hence the results are implicit in the design.

Sadly, despite earlier reports of (slight) efficacy this study found that treatment with Tilavonemab wasn't significantly better than placebo.

>A total of 453 patients were randomized, of whom 337 were treated with tilavonemab (300 mg, n = 108; 1000 mg, n = 116; 2000 mg, n = 113) and 116 received placebo. Baseline demographics and disease characteristics were comparable across groups. The mean age was 71.3 (standard deviation [SD] 7.0) years, 51.7% were female, and 96.5% were White. At baseline, the mean CDR-SB score was 3.0 (1.2), which worsened through Week 96 for all treatment groups. The least squares mean change from baseline at Week 96 in the CDR-SB score with tilavonemab was not significantly different compared with placebo (300 mg [n = 85]: −0.07 [95% confidence interval (CI): –0.83 to 0.69]; 1000 mg [n = 91]: −0.06 [95% CI: –0.81 to 0.68]; 2000 mg [n = 81]: 0.16 [95% CI: –0.60 to 0.93]; all P ≥ 0.05). The incidence of any adverse event and MRI findings were generally comparable across groups.Tilavonemab was generally well tolerated but did not demonstrate efficacy in treating patients with early Alzheimer’s disease. Further investigations of tilavonemab in early Alzheimer’s disease are not warranted.

It's only a second best, of course, but there is a free webcast featuring our friend, the comet.

I'm sure that there has to be more than one factor in choosing an appropriate target when there are thousands of possible choices. The size and orbital period of Dimorphos certainly come into play - once you have first decided to look at binary systems as the safest bet. Here's what Science Magazine had to say about the mission. I quote the relevant paragraph:

>NASA chose to conduct the test on a binary asteroid system for two reasons. First, even though the pair was not on a course to hit our planet, the 780-meter-wide Didymos served as a gravitational anchor during impact, ensuring that Dimorphos wasn’t inadvertently ricocheted toward Earth. And second, having a pair of space rocks locked in orbit made it easier for scientists to measure the asteroid’s deflection relative to its partner.

Ease of measurement is reason number 2. Safety is reason number 1. Like the old slogan says, "Safety First". Space missions aren't always planned so responsibly.

I'd agree that size is a great factor. There's , however, another thing about this that lurks in the background. Simply 'moving' an object isn't the same thing as moving the object to a precise and planned place. The mission did change the orbit of a smaller asteroid around a larger one. I suspect such a system was chosen precisely because the degree and even direction of movement was unknown and unpredictable. Nobody would want to 'accidentally succeed' by pushing a harmless target onto a dangerous (and once more unpredictable) trajectory.

I've read about the numbers associated with the success ie it changed the orbital period of the target around its babysitter. But I've seen no evidence that the precise change was predictable. After showing that it is possible to hit a small target very far away and move it there's still the steep hill of moving it where you want to left to climb.