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The researchers seem pretty convinced that this mushroom causes the hallucinations yet they do not describe trying it out in an experiment. Surely the most str
by yreg 2mo ago
The researchers seem pretty convinced that this mushroom causes the hallucinations yet they do not describe trying it out in an experiment.
Surely the most straightforward way is to undercook the mushrooms and run a blind controlled experiment where participants eat the shrooms and report on hallucinations.
What stopped them?
- forestrywat 2mo agoPresumably the fact that experimenting on oneself is not considered particularly ethical or repeatable for science?
- leni536 2mo agoIt's probably not ethical. How repeatable it is is for an experiment to decide, if it was possible to arrange ethically.
- yreg 2mo agoWhat's unethical about it? It sounds the locals consume it anyway. If the experiment is blind you can even tell the participants what is it about beforehand without losing too much validity.
- leni536 2mo agoI don't know much about standard ethical frameworks used in these kinds of experiments, but giving hallucinogens with unknown long term health effects to participants feels somewhat unethical to me. Also, to get stronger results you would probably want to conduct the experiment on participants who don't have an expectation of seeing little people, so that rules out locals or people who heard of or eaten the mushroom before.
- bonoboTP 2mo ago[flagged]
- UpsideDownRide 2mo agoThere were some very questionable experiments done in the name of science that lead to development of ethics guidelines. Being respectful of other people is hardly pearl clutching
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- anon48293 2mo agoEthics are just someone else’s opinion. Something isn’t ethical or unethical, somebody just doesn’t like it. They might have a reason for it at best.
- reichstein 2mo agoEthics is what people agree on. Not doing unnecessary harm is usually easily agreed on. Don't exploit people who know less it's also on the list. Doesn't mean we didn't learn something valuable from KZ camp experiments, we just don't think it outweighed the costs. And we don't like, or want to encourage, people who think it did. There are very strict rules for scientific experiments _because_ we know that without them, just guided by "common sense" or "be reasonable", someone would get blinded by ambition or "the potential" and go further than the majority want to accept. Anyone can "experiment" without it being an accepted scientific experiment. But then they're personally responsible for any and all bad outcomes. If you follow the rules and get the experiment pre-approved, you'll likely be covered by your employer's insurance and free from criminal liability . That's a very good incentive.
- anon48293 2mo agoBut people don’t agree on ethics. That’s the whole reason you have ethics boards. Otherwise the scientists wouldn’t need one since they already thought the same. I agree there ought to be rules, but ethics is just a word to make things sound fair when it’s just an authoritative decision, often taking bad arguments (like religious ones or public misconceptions) unnecessarily into account.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- yreg 2mo agoThat's the feeling I got, that they've tried it out on themselves, but (understandably) neglect to mention it. Which is a shame, because the self-censorship isn't helpful in regards of getting to the bottom of this. But maybe I'm reading too much into it.
- dwattttt 2mo agoI'm not sure what ethical considerations come up when testing a medical hypothesis by self-administration. Famously Barry Marshall overturned decades of medical doctrine when he ingested helicobacter pylori, and demonstrated its role in gastritis (and I think providing evidence for peptic ulcers).
- derektank 2mo agoThere’s nothing unethical about self experimentation. There are many notable examples of it in the history of science. Most notable is probably Barry Marshall’s decision to self-dose with helicobacter pylori, in an effort to prove that the bacteria caused ulcers. They did, he treated himself with antibiotics, and he was later awarded a Nobel for the research. Werner Forssman also won a Nobel for work partially derived from self-applying a cardiac catheter.
- wraptile 2mo agoBarry Marshall's story is so iconic that I read it every time despite knowing it very well. That being said one claim here would be that allowing self-experimentation would pressure people into self experimenting due to how our academia and labs are structured these days i.e. a junior scientists could be pressured into self experimentation by their superiors. So this is definitely not as clear-cut as one might think.
- VBprogrammer 2mo ago> Barry Marshall's story is so iconic that I read it every time despite As someone who suffered badly with ulcers in my teens I'm particularly grateful for his work. One course of antibiotics and I never had that problem again.
- Zobat 2mo ago> Barry Marshall's story is so iconic... More so for him and his collaborator having dinner each year when the Nobel prizes were announced in anticipation of the call from the Nobel Prize Committee. Legends.
- kapep 2mo ago> There’s nothing unethical about self experimentation. If people get rewarded for self experimentation, either directly with prices or indirectly with fame and success, more people will try do it. That certainly does raise ethical concerns. It worked out for people you mentioned but there will be many others who might harm themselves doing it.
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- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- _joel 2mo agoYou need to learn about this guy then https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Shulgin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Shulgin
- mrgriscom 2mo agoSelf-experimentation allows one to conduct science without the imprimatur of the IRB. IRBs, in the name of ethics, fashion themselves as the sole arbiter of what science may be done. Ergo, any loophole that circumvents their authority is prima facie "unethical".
- s1artibartfast 2mo agoI assume knowlege of the experiment could influence the outcome. I think you would have to dose people without knowledge of that phenomenon
- QuantumNomad_ 2mo agoCouldn’t you get consent from the participants to consume hallucinogenic substances but also getting them to agree that there will be a number of trials and they won’t know which one if any of them will actually contain it? So instead of a single experiment where half of the people get it and half don’t, the experiment will be repeated ten times with the same people over a few months, different meals each time and in total each person will get hallucinogens in their food either zero or one times. And then you see what effects people report and if that correlates well with who was actually given the hallucinogens, and if there is a lot of placebo among the rest of the people each time that they were not given hallucinogens.
- leni536 2mo agoWhat if the hallucinogen has long term health effects? What if tiny people show up for a participant years from the experiment, while driving? I guess you can be upfront about unknown unknowns, and most human experiments have some of those, but I assume there are standards to keep those to a minimum.
- freehorse 2mo ago1. The main problem I imagine is not consent but ethics approval. You are probably gonna find some experienced psychonauts curious enough to want to try, but getting it approved by an ethics committee I imagine being tricky. 2. Multiple times per person over months risks attrition which gonna mess it up, and the statistical power increase you get could be offset by that (eg if a person gets it they may not be motivated to come again for the placebo). On the other hand ppl may be more motivated if they know they are gonna get it at least once so dunno. 3. Placebo with hallucinogens is always tricky. I would use psilocybin as (extra or only) control, esp if you test for little ppl. This way you can test if they report more tiny ppl in the new mushroom vs psilocybin.
- piker 2mo agoMaybe the prospect of seeing tiny people? Stops me!
- Dilettante_ 2mo agoWhat's wrong with tiny people? ;)
- wellthisisgreat 2mo agoTiny people
- novia 2mo ago> the trips it produces are unusually long, commonly lasting one to three days after an onset of 12 to 24 hours, and in some cases even causing hospital stays of up to a week. Because of the extraordinarily long duration of these trips and the chance for prolonged side effects such as delirium and dizziness, Domnauer has yet to try the raw mushrooms himself. > These mega-trips might help to explain why people in China, the Philippines and Papua New Guinea do not seem to have a tradition of purposefully seeking out L. asiatica for its psychoactive effects, according to Domnauer's findings. "It was always just eaten for food," Domnauer says, with hallucinations being an unexpected side-effect. From when this same story was covered in January https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260121-the-mysterious-mushroom-that-makes-you-see-tiny-people https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260121-the-mysterious-m...
- rbanffy 2mo ago> lasting one to three days after an onset of 12 to 24 hours I’ve been to parties longer than that.
- culi 2mo agoSounds very similar to an anti-cholinergic/delirious effect rather than a psychedelic one. More similar to Datura than Psilocybe
- bossyTeacher 2mo agoI don't think you can put Datura in this scale at all. Datura is borderline psychotic inducing. More damage you might not heal from than funny visuals.
- colordrops 2mo agoThey might be neurotoxic.
- stuaxo 2mo agoAll the best stuff is. /s
- inigyou 2mo agoOrdinary psychedelics are thought to induce neuroplasticity.
- someothherguyy 2mo agoneuroplasticity and neurotoxicity aren't mutually exclusive, and its not a phenomenon in of itself that has some positive meaning. for instance, all addictive substances "induce neuroplasticity"
- lukan 2mo agoDo you volunteer? 3 day non stop trip sounds .. not great, if it ain't great.
- mettamage 2mo agoSure, I'd do it. One bad month tops. I can take that.
- bragr 2mo agoI don't know. 3 days, even if it is great, doesn't sound great. Trip reports from long lasting research chemicals all seem pretty awful.
- pavel_lishin 2mo agoSomeone mentioned going to parties that have lasted longer than that; I don't even want to do that at this point in my life.
- Panoramix 2mo agoNot me but I know plenty of people that would volunteer
- comboy 2mo ago> What stopped them? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics_committee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics_committee
- embedding-shape 2mo agoIs the argument that even if you'd do such an experiment with consent of the participants, it'd be unethical? Or are we just assuming this will be done without the consent of the participants?
- criddell 2mo agoI think the implication is that it would never get by the IRB.
- nextaccountic 2mo agoIt doesn't matter if it's actually unethical. It just has to be approved by a board.
- carlosjobim 2mo agoOr what? The board is going to kick their asses?
- wizzwizz4 2mo agoYes. All the time the rest of the organisation spends on mandatory ethical training, the ethics board spends on martial arts.
- hnbad 2mo agoIt's a common misconception: the ethics board isn't the committee deciding whether the trial is ethical, it's the instrument they use to punish you if they decided it wasn't and you decided to ignore them.
- 2mo ago
- theelous3 2mo ago> Domnauer has yet to try the raw mushrooms himself Coward, basically. I have no idea why on earth you'd travel the world looking for a specific hallucinogen and then just try to sequence it and toss it, and then waste everyone's time writing papers saying you essentially have a hunch about the mushroom's effects. Beyond terrible science.
- IAmBroom 2mo agoOr good sense: "Have I committed a crime consuming a Class-1 narcotic? No sirree-bob!".
- kadoban 2mo ago> What stopped them? This would be impossible to get past ethical review in any institution who has such a thing. You'd be forcing people to have a trip, which may or may not be pleasant for them, for days, with no guidance on wtf is happening to them. Depending on the person, that's some pretty heavy trauma. You could tell people what to expect, but that ruins the blind part. I still think you'd have no chance of passing review anyway.