Although the science looks good, you are right – Cotsarelis has a long series of “false alarms” in his hairloss research. It happens like clockwork… almost every year he finds an amazing “NEW DISCOVERY” which is widely publicized in the media (I am convinced it is Dr. Cotsarelis himself who aggressively seeks the publicity, because how else would there be these big media barrages all of a sudden? I also think that Dr. Cotsarelis actively seeks this media attention, to generate publicity for himself and to keep the money flowing for his research efforts.)
If you look carefully, Dr. Cotsarelis has had a long string of repetitive “discoveries”, each one being touted in the media as the “answer to hairloss” and the basis for a potential male pattern baldness cure. Some of these discoveries are related to each other (like the stem cell research), and some are less closely to his past research, such as this new PGD2 thing.
I know one thing. These discoveries can’t ALL be the ultimate answer which will cure hairloss. It logically follows from this that if each one is successively touted as the answer, and they are later found not to be, then the implication that any of the the previous ones, or the present one, is the ultimate answer is probably misguided, and therefore we should treat each new “discovery” by Dr. Cotsarelis with some skepticism.
Since Dr. Costarelis controls all the information coming out of his lab, and he is one of the top noted experts on this stuff, he is able to “spin” the information on these discoveries any way that suits him. His research always seems to be spun in the most positive light possible, i.e., that something revolutionary has been found and it’s the basis for a cure for hairloss. This happened with the discoveries underpinning Follica, it happened with his discoveries about stem cells being all over the scalp in bald people, and it happened again with this PGD2 stuff.
Since he controls all the information, and reports it from the standpoint of “professor”, he is able to spin the research results any way he wants to. For instance, an example of “spin” is the correlation between blocking PGD2 and increased hair growth. WHAT EXACTLY is the correlation?? What exactly did the data show? How much PGD2 is required to inhibit how much hair growth? Was there a lack of hair growth in control subjects who were not subjected to PGD2 in the same experiment?
We have to be VERY careful about how we interpret these doctors’ reports. Don’t just skim the surface of an article, read between the lines and look for areas where they might be “spinning” the results to suit their own agendas.