The claim may or may not be true, but for me the word "toxins" has been so thoroughly poisoned by woo that I get a knee-jerk reaction just reading the title. The bar for anyone talking about cleansing toxins is like 200% higher because of all the bullshit that's been spouted over the last few decades.
Indeed. But there is also an easy test that can be applied to people that talk about "toxins": see if they can name a toxin. And both the article and the original paper[1] discuss beta-amyloid.
In any case, it appears that the blame for the suspect terminology lies primarily with the NPR writer, not the researchers. For example, the word "toxin" does not actually appear in the paper[1], which is titled "Sleep Drives Metabolite Clearance from the Adult Brain".
Of course we can. The fact that a trustworthy document from a real scientist in a real journal is initially seen as less reputable because a journalist uses the word toxins shows how devalued the word has become.
