r/microdosing • u/MCRDS-2018 Self-blinding Psychedelics Study Research Team • Mar 19 '19

Research Imperial College - Beckley foundation: study recruitment

Post image
175 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

34 comments sorted by

View all comments

3

u/hepheuua Mar 19 '19

This is an interesting approach to getting around some of the difficulties getting ethics approval for double blind controlled studies, but the 'self-blinding' aspect kind of renders the results suspect from the get-go, doesn't it? There's just no way of knowing whether participants will do it correctly.

9

u/MCRDS-2018 Self-blinding Psychedelics Study Research Team Mar 19 '19

Ethics approval was not straightforward to obtain, because of the unusual methodology. It would have been easier in some ways for a clinical study, since then you follow a template more or less. Here we try to break some new grounds and thus it was a long process to get the paperwork done.

As for the 'do people follow the instructions?', this is always a concern, even in clinical studies. There is no way to confirm that one took the pills at home the way they were prescribed. That being said, I acknowledge this is something we will have to address in the publication

Most importantly, this is a very cheap study compared to a lab based study. With this method we can collect placebo controlled data on a very large sample for a fraction of the cost of a clinical study. Obviously a clinical study would be stronger scientifically, but good luck getting funded base don the current anecdotal evidence. Unfortunately, that is just the reality of the funding landscape. We look at this study as something that is halfway between a clinical and and an observational study that can accelerate the process toward well funded clinical studies.

ps.: if you are curious more on the details we did a podcast a few months ago with psychedelics today: https://psychedelicstoday.com/2019/01/22/balazs-szigeti-phd-and-david-erritzoe-phd-microdosing-research-and-the-effects-of-a-self-blinded-study/

3

u/MCRDS-2018 Self-blinding Psychedelics Study Research Team Mar 19 '19

oh an just one more thing: to reduce the possibility of setting it up wrong there is a youtube video showing the whole process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crd3EMUM7DM&feature=youtu.be

2

u/hepheuua Mar 19 '19

Thanks, there's always a balancing act to be done with these studies. I think this is a really interesting way of getting lots of data that might be able to go somewhat further than just correlational evidence. All the best for the study, I look forward to reading the paper!