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I have two hypotheses that came to mind when I read your question: 1. It’s a hard problem to quantify effects on cognitive functioning provided by nootropic su

by Mtinie 4y ago

I have two hypotheses that came to mind when I read your question: 1. It’s a hard problem to quantify effects on cognitive functioning provided by nootropic supplements. We still have so much to learn about brain function; 2. Nootropics offer patent holders opportunities to make obscene amounts of money. As long as those supplements are (generally) safe to consume. That level of review requires R&D spending, but too much investigation may inadvertently reveal that these money-making “miracle” products are far less effective than the manufacturers claim.

permo-w 4y ago
1. is certainly true. to my mind, an accurate quantitative measure of brain function doesn't exist: you run into the fairly intractable philosophical problem of "what is brain function?" while that is true, not being 100% philosophically sound has never stopped psychology studies before - far from it 2. is also perfectly true, with the caveat that it only applies to beneficiaries of the patents. so your hypotheses account for beneficiaries of the patents, and scientists who aren't willing to broach the subject of measuring brain function, but what about the complement of those subsets? what about non-beneficiaries who are willing to quantify brain function? are they simply a small enough subset that it justifies the observation? or is there another hypothesis to be found? or perhaps the observation is flawed in itself
- Mtinie 4y ago
  > […]or is there another hypothesis to be found? There most certainly are more hypotheses to discuss. I picked the two which came immediately to mind and passed my personal “plausible enough” check. Thank you for giving me more to consider!
theptip 4y ago
I don't think 1. is correct. There is a large body of research looking into different dimensions of brain function, and how different conditions impair those functions. For example, look at the N-back test for working memory. This is popular in the nootropics community, and is widely used in clinical pharmacology research. There are plenty of other tests. Scientists do experiments like "measure how impaired you are on alcohol vs. antihistamines" to compare impairment profiles from different modes of drug action. You can measure impairment from sleep deprivation, alcohol, etc., so of course you can measure improvement in attention, reaction speed, working memory, spatial reasoning, and so on. The difficulty with quantifying effects is not that we need to learn about brain function to know how to measure them, it's that nootropics have quite small effect sizes, if any. I think it's entirely about 2 -- large studies are expensive, and unless your effect size is enormous you need a large study to detect it.

by Mtinie 4y ago

permo-w 4y ago

1. is certainly true. to my mind, an accurate quantitative measure of brain function doesn't exist: you run into the fairly intractable philosophical problem of "what is brain function?" while that is true, not being 100% philosophically sound has never stopped psychology studies before - far from it 2. is also perfectly true, with the caveat that it only applies to beneficiaries of the patents. so your hypotheses account for beneficiaries of the patents, and scientists who aren't willing to broach the subject of measuring brain function, but what about the complement of those subsets? what about non-beneficiaries who are willing to quantify brain function? are they simply a small enough subset that it justifies the observation? or is there another hypothesis to be found? or perhaps the observation is flawed in itself

Mtinie 4y ago
> […]or is there another hypothesis to be found? There most certainly are more hypotheses to discuss. I picked the two which came immediately to mind and passed my personal “plausible enough” check. Thank you for giving me more to consider!

theptip 4y ago

I don't think 1. is correct. There is a large body of research looking into different dimensions of brain function, and how different conditions impair those functions. For example, look at the N-back test for working memory. This is popular in the nootropics community, and is widely used in clinical pharmacology research. There are plenty of other tests. Scientists do experiments like "measure how impaired you are on alcohol vs. antihistamines" to compare impairment profiles from different modes of drug action. You can measure impairment from sleep deprivation, alcohol, etc., so of course you can measure improvement in attention, reaction speed, working memory, spatial reasoning, and so on. The difficulty with quantifying effects is not that we need to learn about brain function to know how to measure them, it's that nootropics have quite small effect sizes, if any. I think it's entirely about 2 -- large studies are expensive, and unless your effect size is enormous you need a large study to detect it.