The biggest challenges for psychedelic science today
The scientific study of psychedelics is not immune from broader crises that are currently ongoing in the scientific realm, like the replication crisis… and the increasingly privatized funding of research… What may further limit the researcher’s degree of freedom, is that most studies on psychedelics are sponsored by private foundations with a vested interest.
In the field of psychology, this problem is also known as the W.E.I.R.D bias: the majority of all participants are recruited from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies. Given that tribal cultures compared to people from WEIRD populations exhibit significant differences in the most paradigmatic examples of psychology (such as the Müller-Lyer illusion), the subjective experience of psychedelics may be equally contingent on cultural differences.
Original Article (ICPR2020):
The biggest challenges for psychedelic science today
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