Science

Misreporting and confirmation bias in psychedelic research

Let us be clear: we are not suggesting malicious intent. Our point is that paradigmatic expectations can make it all too easy to cherry-pick, misunderstand and then misrepresent results so as to render them consistent with the reigning worldview. And because the community at large shares the same expectations, such errors easily go unnoticed. Perhaps more worryingly, paradigmatic expectations…

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Science

What psychedelic research can and cannot tell us about consciousness

Our study, like all other studies that explore relations between experiential states and brain states (whether about psychedelics or not), is entirely irrelevant to this metaphysical question [about materialism]. …by misrepresenting the explanatory reach of our findings in order to motivate metaphysical discussions irrelevant to our study, they risk undermining the hard-won legitimacy of a neuroscience…

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Science

Scientists want to try using… [synthetic psilocybin] to revive people in vegetative states

Do [synthetic] psychedelics raise any ethical issues that are unique? Andrew Peterson, an assistant professor at the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at George Mason University, said his gut reaction was “‘Are you tripping!?’—pun intended.” But later, he felt it was worth consideration. In the new work, Peterson and his co-author, neuroscientist Enzo Tagliazucchi,…

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Science

…psilocybin producing E. coli

…engineered bacteria to produce psilocybin in their cells and poop it out. This is a biosynthesis process that relies on changing cells so they will produce compounds they don’t naturally produce, or in quantities they don’t naturally produce. Original Article (Science Alert):Scientists Engineered a Bacterium That Poops Out Huge Amounts of Psilocybin Artwork Fair Use:…

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Science

Chemical & Engineering news discusses entourage effect

A July 21, 2019 article in the American Chemical Society’s Chemical & Engineering News by Britt E. Erickson… discussed the importance of the entourage/[ensemble] effect in cannabis health. Like magic mushroom fruiting bodies, cannabis plant material includes multiple active ingredients (cannabinoids, terpenoids, and other “minor components”), which modulate its biological and clinical properties.  Original Article (Psilocybin Technology):Chemical &…

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Cannabis and magic mushrooms – a near perfect analogy

Famous author Michael Pollan succinctly summarized this apparent lack of incentive for developing psilocybin “technology”: “there’s no IP here. There’s no intellectual property.” Both Cannabis and Psilocybin Mushrooms are naturally occurring organisms. They live and grow in nature. Each plant or mushroom produces its own cocktail of chemical compounds — cannabinoids, terpenes, psilocybin [mushroom containing bioactive compounds], etc… Why…

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The secondhand harms of drinking impact 1 in 5 adults [53 million Americans], study says

Katherine Karriker-Jaffe, a senior scientist with the Alcohol Research Group at the Public Health Institute in Emeryville, California, who was an author of the study. “So it might be an underestimate of the negative impacts of alcohol on people other than the drinker,” she said. Aesoon Park, an associate professor of psychology at Syracuse University in New York noted…

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Psilocybin 101

Data suggests that psilocybin is far less potent than a drug like LSD and that it carries a very low risk of overdose toxicity (estimated to be 1,000 times an effective dose), but it can still produce negative effects. It is unclear how psilocybin might produce therapeutic benefits that span months despite only being acutely effective for a few hours.…

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How long is… [LSD] detectable in the body? [A 12-step summary]

LSD is unstable, and the liver breaks it down rapidly. The time that LSD is detectable in the tissues is restrictive, so doctors need to analyze the samples quickly. *this article is a generalization, and not intended to replace the original source article. please view the original source article for full and detailed description, including…

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Effects of ‘secondhand drinking’ hurt 53 million Americans: study

The most common type of harm reported was threats or harassment. Forget secondhand smoke. Now you have to worry about the secondhand drinking. One fifth of adults — or an estimated 53 million people in the United States — suffer from other people’s boozing annually, making this “a significant public health issue,” according to a new…

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