3 ms·

>I don't find these studies to be convincing. You give people a pill, they don't know what it is. These people don't know what to expect, they've never taken st

>I don't find these studies to be convincing. You give people a pill, they don't know what it is. These people don't know what to expect, they've never taken study drugs before. They're solving some random logic puzzle they've never seen before. "Participants had to work out which items to put into a bag." How do you propose then to isolate what may be the effect of the drug then vs the participant subconsciously trying to act out what they think the drug is supposed to make them do?

plewd 3y ago
Don't think there's a very good way to carry out these studies, this is just a catch-22. Either the participants are aware, and their bias could affect the results, or they're unaware, and they don't use the drug as real people do. I don't really see the point in this being a lab experiment, just test the results from actual people who use study drugs (not saying naturalistic experiments aren't biased in many ways too, but seems like a better option).
spoonfeeder006 3y ago
Its best to look at overall scientific consensus across multiple studies instead of a single study. Maybe there could be some causal factors that we didn't think of when looking at a specific study?
lacker 3y ago
Personally I wouldn't want to isolate the effect of the drug from the effect of the participant knowing what the drug is supposed to do. If I am considering taking a study drug, I would know what it's supposed to do, right? Compare to a less politically contentious human performance question, like, should a point guard do strength training to increase upper body strength? This is a topic where expert thinking has evolved during my lifetime. In the 80's many people thought that strength training would mess up shooting ability. Nowadays the consensus is that strength training is good, and that basically all NBA players should do it. Nobody did studies where secretly one set of basketball players worked out and got stronger arms, and the other half did "placebo workouts" that didn't make them any stronger. It's just obviously impossible to do that sort of study. I think it's equally impossible to do a good study on Adderall with placebos. But we still learn over time, by having experts try out different things, analyze the results subjectively, and discuss and share the outcomes. What I would like to see is making study drugs like Adderall and Modafinil legal, and for people to openly share their experiences, positive and negative. I think over time our society would learn from that and grow wiser, even if formal studies never quite worked.

plewd 3y ago

Don't think there's a very good way to carry out these studies, this is just a catch-22. Either the participants are aware, and their bias could affect the results, or they're unaware, and they don't use the drug as real people do. I don't really see the point in this being a lab experiment, just test the results from actual people who use study drugs (not saying naturalistic experiments aren't biased in many ways too, but seems like a better option).

spoonfeeder006 3y ago

Its best to look at overall scientific consensus across multiple studies instead of a single study. Maybe there could be some causal factors that we didn't think of when looking at a specific study?

lacker 3y ago

Personally I wouldn't want to isolate the effect of the drug from the effect of the participant knowing what the drug is supposed to do. If I am considering taking a study drug, I would know what it's supposed to do, right? Compare to a less politically contentious human performance question, like, should a point guard do strength training to increase upper body strength? This is a topic where expert thinking has evolved during my lifetime. In the 80's many people thought that strength training would mess up shooting ability. Nowadays the consensus is that strength training is good, and that basically all NBA players should do it. Nobody did studies where secretly one set of basketball players worked out and got stronger arms, and the other half did "placebo workouts" that didn't make them any stronger. It's just obviously impossible to do that sort of study. I think it's equally impossible to do a good study on Adderall with placebos. But we still learn over time, by having experts try out different things, analyze the results subjectively, and discuss and share the outcomes. What I would like to see is making study drugs like Adderall and Modafinil legal, and for people to openly share their experiences, positive and negative. I think over time our society would learn from that and grow wiser, even if formal studies never quite worked.