Honestly, Im not sure what you are saying, Anne... No offense but Im reading it more like a generic political manifesto than a constructive argument rooted in the current discussion.

Can you be more specific, what should a sanctioned researcher do?

I've met some of the John Hopkins crew and imo they are not only excellent top notch human beings with the right motivation and intentions, but they are also very willing to talk to people like us and ask about our experiences, ask for tips and brainstorm ideas collectively in order to mutually help each other. Im not sure what else you are expecting them to do.

I completely disagree if I understand you correctly that people should quit academia. I think the underground working together with academia is a way more effective way of going about it and that's exactly what is being done.

Nathanial.dread already explained why it's not so simple to think that collective trip reports, even if thousands, is enough to have reliable data. Placebo controls and blind tests, for one, are extremely necessary to be able to isolate variables, and with trip reports you rarely if ever have such controls. We have suggested in the past doing placebo controls to test for some of the claims and very few people followed through. And as a perfect example against your argument, in those few instances where there was placebo control in underground experiments, the results were against what the collective trip reports were saying!

Many people claimed THH was an amazing substance and way better than Harmine for taking in pharmahuasca... So if we took at face value the collective trip reports as 'understanding', we'd think indeed THH is great for orally activating DMT and better than harmine. Except we later found out what people were taking as supposed THH was harmine, being mislabelled by an unscrupulous seller. So not only is what people considered a 'magical harmala' actually the good old harmine, but the THH that people wanted so badly actually doesnt even work as a MAOI!

Then when people were saying red dmt resulted in evil experienced and different than yellow or white dmt, when someone did a blind test they couldn't tell them appart. And the Chaliponga that people claimed resulted in weird experiences and probably had 5-meo-dmt just had dmt, albeit a large quantity of it.

So unless propper scientific method is applied, information gathered and opinion of trippers may be useless, even if it's done so for decades. Of course the underground can still apply scientific method without being part of academia, but that's just an example, there are other things which underground researchers might not be able to test... And having a statistical analysis of controlled experiments to know there is an ideal dosage and to have that number to be able to quote to others is a great thing imo, even if you yourself have already found your personal ideal dosage.

So yes congratulations to the John Hopkins crew and others for doing the work they are doing, and let us support them and help them out as much as possible, collaborate whenever we can, so that we can all learn from them and they can learn from us

no offense taken at that projection , ive stated im not against academia.



realize that they are noobs on human experiments in comparison to the larger community,
especially in the sense that its in REAL life administering PSIL , and not in a controlled lab.........
the controlled lab , by definition, shades results,
especially when considering it pry has little crossover beyond coincidence to field tripping
most of us dont trip in labs, so i have doubts it even translates to reality.
we trip in the real world, along with its perils.



for starters, we could have told them 40 yrs ago to eat 3 g's



another projection, who said that?
its a fact timothy did though, and he did it as one of them first, and for reasons.
even their OWN star guy, saw the need for clandestine research outside of the lab.




if they just figured the dose, they aint working with us that close.
ive also suggested they work with us more, they need it.



oops not part of the hopkins club?
id offer their limited data pales to ours.


were past that,
when the person i just fed is kneeling and drooling in a color hurricaine,
and the abstainers are not...........



im talking specifically PSIL , its relatively common now .
dont see the comparison.
at no point did i say science is useless on many questions.




sorry .
i cant flip off what me and other pros have learned from wholesale field testing that easy.
but obviously 64 people on a couch in a lab does.
i cant play the community like that. its against my DNA.



likewise, as they are more restricted than we will EVER be.
we dont have their limits.
if they were unlimited like us, imagine how much they would know by now.



exactly MY point, cept i get this feeling its ,
not real learning till hopkins says so.
i dont buy it.


once again, not against research
to suggest otherwise , is a distortion.
i appreciate the limited work they have been able to do in this climate.
we should embrace them as allies indeed........

but i also offer, they need to seriously catch up.
and we deserve more than, "hopkins agrees so now its a fact"

i can appreciate hopkins,
the question is, to what degree do they appreciate the field reps?
id offer they get more respect than we do.
in spite of the fact we have air miles way beyond theirs times 100.

and considering the question is PSIL testing,
we have the air miles in combat not couches.
the only thing were couched in is real world trippng.

might be wise for them to listen good to us.



i love ya endless,
im not sure we disagree here, beyond perspective.
the ideal would be for everyone to share and research full tilt.


id also offer, that theres a vid somewhere here on nexus,
that talks about the value of clandestine research.........
and one really has to ask, why DID tim cross over?
and when he did, did he not give SOME degree of research cred ,
to the psil pirates as a default?

final word from me on this topic...........
im not so fast to discount the community on psil research.
i still contend were the experts, not them.

in real world practical terms,
actual field experience, is tangible and valuable.
id wonder why it fails in this case.

i also wonder if the war left us with stockholme syndrome,
and ,some underlying need to to appease our oppressors,
with an academia seal of approval stamp.
( thats another thread another day)


all the love to those who differ on opinion on this.
but ill never discount the foot soldiers research of psilocybin.

And who says they havent realized yet? And who says they havent experimented outside of lab setting in their own privacy? That's a very generic request that you don't even know if they have or haven't done so I don't see your point.



And who says they didn't ask about other tripper's opinion on dosages before deciding on a research protocol about it ? Still, they have used the opportunity to do sanctioned research on a number of questions, including of ideal dosages, which seems very legitimate IMO. Also, its not like the only research they've done is on how much to take, they did other very interesting publications including the one regarding spiritual experiences which was a landmark research imo.



You were the one talking about Tim Leary dropping out, I assumed you mean that's an example they should follow, sorry if I was wrong.

And who's 'they' ? Again with this "us vs them" mentality, arbitrarily defined groups which doesn't help in anything imo.



Is it possible its you who isn't following them enough? They have published other interesting things and work in collab with other researchers in many other interesting questions.



Yet again 'us vs them' . What if they are part of us and we are part of them? What if we are all human beings trying to find things out through different means and show to different people in different realms through different styles of communication and ways of establishing data and sharing that data? What if this is not a competition on who's data is more or less pale?



You can speak for yourself, IMO blind studies and placebo control is essential in the quest for knowledge.



Where did you get this feeling from?


They deeply appreciate what underground researchers do, and do listen.




Everybody is an expert in some things and a noob in others. Unless you know the specifics of each of the researcher's personal history and experience I wouldn't be so quick to assume whether they are noobs or experts.

ill stand on what ive specifically said, rather than parse myself,
and, allow others to chime in on this topic.

and once again, not sure we disagree.
clandestine research has served me well, and produced my teks.
im gonna cheer for everyone.
but i cheer really loud for the underground.
we have done enormous work.

I'm all for underground/personal use, and the subjective exploration of consciousness; that's really great.

At the same time though I'm passionately pro science on this front too, and the Johns Hopkins team in particular should be congratulated for doing really exemplary work. I met the big kahuna of the Johns Hopkins team Roland Griffiths at the Breaking Convention conference in London last summer while a little altered on his chosen molecule of study (plus a little MDMA) and we had a nice chat. Later we met again at the conference and gave me this really nice mushroom and mindfulness medallion. A great man doing great work.

I'm not sure I even see the point in forming an argument here, it really isn't worth the energy peeps...can't we just get a bong??

I agree with endlessness that the 'us vs. them' is the wrong mentality, but I also want to say that 'we' (or 'you' ) don't actually have data.

Recreational users like 'us' haven't generated any data. We have a long history of complex experiences, interpretations, thoughts, and feelings, pretty much none of which are objective or useful in the same way real data is.

That's not to say that this mess of experiences and stuff isn't useful in it's own ways: none of us would be here if it wasn't, and I think I speak for everyone when I say that we've benefited from the culture and history of psychonauts gone before, but it's not data. Data is "a set of qualitative or quantitative variables" that describe some kind of system. It can be analyzed, collected, and reported with a much higher degree of confidence then the nuanced reports generated by users.

Also, I recommend clicking on the links I provided in the last post - the things we can do with science are pretty remarkable. When combined with the cultural stuff, it gets even better.

Blessings
~ND

Actually, there are such things as quantitative data and qualitative data, both of which can be important in different situations/ways in science. Data is just a general term.

Due to the more widely spread acceptance of these drugs arnt these researchers just "us" coming out of the woodwork? I would imagine that a lot of them already knew that 3g was the sweet spot for many people. It"s just that now they can present it to the general public/media in an acceptible and easily digestible way.

If you have a sensationalist tabloid like news site and it receives the same story "3 grams of mushrooms is the sweet spot". One version of the story from a hippy named Moonbeam Flowerchild and the other from a peer reviewed scientist, they will colour their coverage accordingly and we can all guess on how that would turn out. I would like to think that most of us on the Nexus would base our own views on content of information rather than
the messenger but we still live in a world where a lot of times this is not the case.

This "official" research can only be a good thing.....

I don't entirely agree with what you are saying though. I know what you mean if you are simply talking about random trip reports in the trip report section but the underground research is comprised of way more than that. The survey can be used for statistical analysis, the trip report templates serve for better comparing trip reports, the blind test protocol can also be used by underground researchers for controlled experiments, the phytochemical analysis is done with scientific methods and the TLC kits also add a scientific dimension at the reach of underground researchers. Also the collaborative research subforum follows scientific methodology to gather reliable information on different plants in ways that often cannot be found anywhere else in official publications nor on the internet.

All of this, and more, is most definitely scientific, and real data, and is one of the reasons why many of these researchers keep an eye on what comes out of the Nexus (and why we are invited to so many of these conferences). Again, I think what is being done by undeground researchers is fantastic, and so is what the sanctioned researchers are doing. It's all good, and we are working together as it should be

Johns Hopkins finds Sweet Spot with Psilocybin
could be replaced by
Johns Hopkins confirms Sweet Spot with Psilocybin

All that is real data, and I'd call it real science, but I don't think that's what Anne was referring to. I got the sense that she was talking about the stories, the culture, the social aspects of psychedelic use. If you have a bunch of people who all take psychedelics who are hanging out, smoking together and talking about their experiences, that may be interesting but it's not data.

I'm totally in favor of underground science.

Blessings
~ND

^note

i was mostly alluding to what happens when you feed the lab rats.
things like , heroic amounts, types of set and setting, and groups larger than normal,
or stressed groups/ groups under duress.

things like how people react in war zones, strip clubs,
extreme environments like arctic circle, tropical equator,
and in things like airplanes and on ships.............

the social studies.....
but without safety nets.

peeps know how most react when in a good vibes festival concert setting,
or on a couch.

not many wanna talk about tripping in peril, and its implications.

Hello to any of the Hopkins team that is reading this thread!

^ of course they are reading.
were the best groupies ever on this rock tour.

if i didnt think they were reading, i wouldnt have posted.


while we have their attention,
i would offer 2 experiments.
one , you give lab rabbits hula hoops.
the other, you give them flaming hoops to jump thru.

the question is, wich experiment is more valid?
i say either experiment is half the picture
dont we need both for the total picture?



im trying to enlarge the perspective and POV with these posts.
3 g may be perfect for couch surfing.
personally, i think it would be a little light for " the apocalypse"
for that , i think 10 g would be best.

they arent testing the range of behavior and set and settings we do.
they probably arent allowed to, but they should be.

think about it.
for science to be truly valid, it has to be field useful.

for those who think annie is "too far gone" on this topic,
allow me to remind the readers that the military and CIA played with hallucinogens,
all thru the 50's 60's , and likely beyond,
and i can assure you , it wasnt on couches with the johns hopkins music playlist.
im pretty sure ft detrick alumni , think 3 gs on couches is absolutely heart warming and quaint........

of course, the military has options the civilian academia doesnt,
and a sense of humor more dark than jam bands and drum circles.
we shouldnt forget the full spectra of science, good or bad on all this.


all said,
i love scientists and a good trippy experiment.
but scientists have a tendency to just look thru one window sometimes.
even versailles has a dumpster out back.