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There is a huge, huge placebo effect when it comes to cognitive enhancement, and while I understand that this is intended as a series of anecdotes, it still see
by bbctol 10y ago
There is a huge, huge placebo effect when it comes to cognitive enhancement, and while I understand that this is intended as a series of anecdotes, it still seems that the author doesn't fully understand this. Most notably, for his attempts at blinding himself, he doesn't seem to have measured any actual cognitive improvement, just whether or not he could successfully distinguish drug and placebo. This is a large misunderstanding of experimental design and the placebo effect; most of these drugs definitely do cause physiological effects that can be detected, and the great worry with respect to Adderall etc. effectiveness is that people confuse rapid heartrate and quickly focusing vision with increased mental ability, without actually improving much.
- computerphage 10y agoI think Gwern understands many of the limits of his experimental design. He's has written extensively on a wide variety of statistical and scientific topics. Here's an example related to placebo that's linked to from his blog. http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/689936-My-Paper-quot-Noopept-amp-The-Placebo-Effect-quot?p=11910708&viewfull=1#post11910708 http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/689936-My-Paper-quot-Noo... See also: https://www.gwern.net/Statistical%20notes https://www.gwern.net/Statistical%20notes I'm not saying he's a perfect researcher, but give him some credit instead of assuming he doesn't understand what he's talking about.
- argonaut 10y agoThat would be even worse - he knows the limits of the designs and chooses to ignore them anyways and publish anecdata.