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
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
