What are the most controversial theories in your field?

Not a specialist, but prions are misfolded proteins that aggregate and we know how they kill people because they do it quickly in cases we see. They could also do it very slowly, resulting in tissue atrophy like we see in Alzheimers/Huntingtons, just would have to look in the right places.

I was under the impression that the prions either cuase damage quickly or in a predictable way

Sure, the ones we've consistently studied do. But proteins are one of those things that unless you're an X-ray crystallographer with nothing to do you're not sitting there trying to figure out to what extent they aggregate in vivo. The misfolded proteins collecting over time, resulting in the aggregation like we see in Alzheimers.

Is their proof of these aggregates in patients with Alzheimer's?

amyloid plaques (the things that cause alzheimers) are protein aggregates. uc.pt/en/fmuc/phdhs/Courses/neurodegeneration/Selkoe__Nat_Cell_Biol-04__AD_PD_review.pdf

I meant of prions specifically, that is for the link though.

There's new materials that behave like ceramics that are alloys of metals and metalloids. Its not really that important, its just that they aren't ceramics. Ceramics are non metallic, so to have 2 "metals" behave like a ceramic is strange.

I don't believe it. You can have ceramics like iron carbide, but its not a ceramic if it consists of only metals. That's why I think these people are stupid. I'm not even 100% sure what compounds are being made, just that I kept hearing about these three TAs and the new Material Science professor instructor talking about it like its fact.

metals make metallic bonds, where there's a "sea of electrons" between the positive metal ions. Ceramics most often, in all cases I'm aware of, have predominantly ionic bonding. That's why I think its highly unlikely these metal-metalloid compounds are not ionically bonded.

yeah in this case the misfolded amyloid subunits would be the prions, because prion are just misfolded proteins. It just happens in this case to be a prion causing the formation of other prions from the same protein source.

racial IQ difference
which shouldn't even be controversial, just look at the results of any serious research
[spoiler]t. Hans Eysenck[/spoiler]