Talk blurb: Recent decades have been relatively lucrative for dementia research. However, rather than achieving the goals of cure or care, dementia research has been most successful in creating conditions that support its own prosperity. We are told that dementia is a syndrome of cognitive decline, caused by brain diseases, distinct from ageing, widely misunderstood by the public, that will one day be overcome through ingenious technical breakthroughs. These ideas nurture the research economy, but they also fuel several problems for people affected by dementia, including the promotion of potentially dangerous treatments and the erosion of social support. We social dementia researchers have often criticised such problems as stemming from a medical model. However, our own tradition can also be complicit in those problems, harming people with dementia by inadvertently contributing to the multifaceted pressures that they live in the midst of. To change this situation, we can pursue a dementia research tradition that centres the welfare of people with dementia today and tomorrow, resisting harmful ideas and pursuing better futures.