Assignment Psilocybin and mystical type expierences having sustained spiritual signifigance

OnCloud9

Bluelighter
Joined
Aug 26, 2010
Messages
178
Hey everyone.

I'm writing a paper and have to analyze this investigation for psychology. There's some questions I hope you guys could clear up for me.

First off the participants are hallucinogenic virgins who participate in religious or spiritual activities. 36 people were used in the study picked in a random way, although all are healthy with no previous histories of psychotic disorders.

Two or three sessions were done at 2 month intervals. Thirty volunteers got psilocybin and methylphenidate in counterbalanced order. To obscure the study design six extra volunteers received methylphenidate in the first two sessions and unblinded psilocybin in a third session.

My question is why are they using that 6 group of participants, it seems confusing to me. And i don't know what they mean by this is a double blind between group crossover design that involved 2 or 3 eight hour sessions at 2 month interval . (by the way i know what double blind means)

Also I think this study is an experiment? Would you agree or is it also a correlation?

Note: If more information about study is needed let me know, its quite an elaborate study.
 
Last edited:
Two or three sessions were done at 2 month intervals. Thirty volunteers got psilocybin and methylphenidate in counterbalanced order. To obscure the study design six extra volunteers received methylphenidate in the first two sessions and unblinded psilocybin in a third session.

My question is why are they using that 6 group of participants, it seems confusing to me.

This confuses me I don't how the 6 groups are arranged and how the numbers balance. All I got from that is that 6 people get MPH, MPH, psilo. Details on other 5 groups of 6 people are needed. Also, the 2 OR 3 sessions thing is weird, it has to be one or the other for the counterbalance order to work out and not have the results flawed by others getting an extra (or one less) session.

Also, is there a link to the study for us to look at, it would help a lot.

This seems very similar to Tim Leary's March Chapel experiment. Is someone actually doing a replication?
 
This confuses me I don't how the 6 groups are arranged and how the numbers balance. All I got from that is that 6 people get MPH, MPH, psilo. Details on other 5 groups of 6 people are needed. Also, the 2 OR 3 sessions thing is weird, it has to be one or the other for the counterbalance order to work out and not have the results flawed by others getting an extra (or one less) session.

Also, is there a link to the study for us to look at, it would help a lot.

This seems very similar to Tim Leary's March Chapel experiment. Is someone actually doing a replication?

There is a link, although I think it might violate my university's copyright rules. I'll attempt to make the study a bit more clear tomorrow.

And no, this study is not Tim Leary's March Chapel experiment.
 
There is a link, although I think it might violate my university's copyright rules. I'll attempt to make the study a bit more clear tomorrow.

And no, this study is not Tim Leary's March Chapel experiment.

You don't have to post the link publicly; we just need much more specific information about the methodology. We can take it to PM if you wish. Links on PM's shouldn't be copyright violations. Also you're just collaborating with another student, asking a few questions via an online medium, no harm done.
 
It certainly is unorthodox from the perspective of a clinical drug trial. I guess the authors wanted some external validation of the subjective drug experience, but based on your description, I fear that there is a serious compromise to the blinding of the study. Also, in regards to the cross-over design, what are your questions exactly? The main point is that both study groups received methylphenidate and psilocybin after 2 month washout, as opposed to each group simply receiving one or the other.
 
After reading the "Methods" section, it appears as though the authors used the unblinded group as a sort of test to determine is subjects could accurately determine whether or not they had psilocybin previously. These 6 subjects received methylphenidate for the other 2 administrations, not psilocybin. At no point was it revealed that they had not been given psilocybin, but they were aware of the psilocybin administration for their third and final test. The authors never do make it clear exactly how they use this data though. Cool study.
 
I'm working on my report and was wondering if you guys can clarify/confirm I'm doing this right. For the full experiment please scroll up to hyper-link (regards to PepperSocks)

The point my research is to think critically about a research topic that is frequently viewed to be true, but in reality is false.

I had to apply the 6 flags of critical thinking for those of you who are not familiar with them they are:

1. ruling out rival hypotheses, 2. correlation vs. causation, 3. falsifiability (a falsifiable claim can be disproven), 4. replicability, 5. extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and 6. Occam’s Razor

The flags I found relevant on this experiment were Replicability, Rival Hypothesis and correlation vs causation.

Replicability: Study mimics the Good Friday Experiment(some questionnaires are the same),similar purpose , although there are distinct differences noted in experiment design, including stronger blinding procedures, both male and female participants(not just male in Friday Exp), different settings and environments and some other variations I might of missed. The study results indicate a higher percentage of participants in this recent study had a more complete mystical experience, but these findings are not duplicated anywhere else and since the researchers didn't follow the same recipe the findings should be viewed as skeptical.

Rival Hypothesis: Participants who strongly believed in having a mystical experience, may have induced a more powerful mystical or life changing event, since expectantancy plays a large role in the effects of psilocybin and other hallucinogens.

Correlation vs causation: 61% of participants experienced a profound mystical or life-changing event, that still effected them to this day. Would that mean that the the correlation strength r=0.61 represent a moderately strong correlation associated with high dose psilcybin creating a mystical experience? The third variable problem may be present here as we would be unaware of participants impulses that may of lead to such an experience thereby affecting the primary correlation which is high dose psilcybin creates mystical experiences that are imprinted in participants short and long-term memories.

Hopefully I'm on the right track here guys, let me know what you think and if you want to add something else please do! I also discussed the research methods like Hawthorne effect,validity, random selection, biases, double blind strengths .ect. but don't have time to discuss those right at this moment.
 
Panic and Pepper make legit points. You are on the right track, but honestly, I am not a big psychology buff.
 
Thanks for your reply Kokaino .

Can anyone else please review my work, its due quite soon and I just need a confirmation I'm on the right track.
 
Top