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Science Retracts Ricaurte's Fraudulent E Study

WOW

Dr. Ricaurte has been on many TV and newspaper publications. Ive been watching the guy for years. I personally feel that he has government money as his motivation to report his studies as dangerous.

He seems to be sincere and caring about the toxicity of MDMA in young peoples brains. He claims that when we damage our receptors, they dont repair themselves and we will have an entire soceity of depressed people walking around. A sad image if you ask me.

Of course a non-biased, independant study would be nice. Hopefully the people at dancesafe will one day have the funds to sponsor such a study.

In the meantime, test your pills, dont over-indulge, and be careful. You've only got one brain, take care of it.

Tim : )
 
monkyfunky said:
No, we don't know that at all. We only now know that this study is invalid, it doesn't prove that mdma is not neurotoxic. It would still be a wise precaution to assume that it is bad for you, which it most likely is to some degree. At the moment we cannot be sure just how big, or small that degree is.
Exactly. Absence of proof is not proof of absence.
 
am i the only one who thinks he is full of shit saying they accidentally used the wrong chemical?

just trying to cover his ass, and make excuses for the blatant disregard for truth by covering it up saying they used the wrong chem.
 
I'll give him some credit on that front - it is entirely possible they were sent the wrong chemical and used it trusting the pharmaceutical company. However, they probably should have checked it first - it takes two minutes to run a sample through an IR, which I'm sure they would have had access to, and even a simple melting point check would have shown something was wrong. Normally something like this would be OK, because the supplier would usually get it right, and also the study wouldn't normally have such a potential impact on the public. However for something like this they really should jhave double checked... and I hope every lab that works with ecstasy (and other drugs) will now do an IR or something to make sure they've got the right stuff!!

As to the study's outcome for meth, as I understand it has been known for a while that meth (and cocaine) leads to neuron degeneration and can cause, for example, Parkinsons. That's one of the reasons that Ricaurte's study should never have gotten through the peer review - I understand that a number of the scientists who read his paper before it was published made comments that this was more in line with meth than with previous studies on MDMA, and the results should be checked, but the journal went on and published anyway (AND they published a version that was never peer-reviewed, after Ricaurte resubmitted). So if that's right, it was partly the journal's stuff-up as well.
 
Highly Sceptical

I'm sorry but I can't help but to feel that this was dishonest science.

As a research scientist myself, I FIND IT EXTREMELY QUESTIONABLE THAT THE RESULTS OF THAT STUDY WEREN'T FOUND TO BE UNUSUAL PRIOR TO EVEN THE SUBMISSION OF THE ARTICLE TO THE JOURNAL. One of the basic exercises of research is to place the results within the context of the existing research and this is done well in advance of the articles submission.

I think that many of you would agree that this highly respected scientist would be expected to realize well before the release of the article that his results, when extrapolted to humans (which is reasonable since the test animal was a money) would translate into an unrealistic death rate. A "respected" scientist is always up on the current research and what other scientists are publishing and a "respectable" scientist is ALWAYS conserned about how their results agree/disagree with that of the scientific community.

Moreover, it is customary in "respectable" science to repeat the experiment 2 even 3 times in order to obtain conclusive results. Then I ask, why didn't he repeat the experiment to be completely sure about the contradictory result before releasing article to the journal? Oh, but I imagine he did but with the same bottle of d-methamphetamine:p

This site is cool.;)
 
the thing is, methamphetamine is way more active than MDMA.
A 50$ bag, supposedly a point (100 mg) of speed is really betweem 10 and 20 mg of d-meth, while a single dose of dl MDMA is 100 mg.

So that idiot Ricuarte was administering a 5-10 fold 'Recreational dose' of speed, intraveinously. While 50 mg of meth can be fatal to a human with weak tollerance to stimulants, experienced speed users can inject far larger amounts. Somehow I dont think that these monkeys had a past of meth addiction, so it is not at all surprising that two of them kicked the bucket.
 
monkyfunky said:
Yeah, I also would like to know this. If meth is as bad as mdma was previously thought to be, then meth is pretty damn bad!

One of the best arguments for the saftey of common street/club drugs such as ecstacy and speed (all of it's variants) actually stems from the claims made by these 'scientists' (term used loosely when applied to Ricaurte). The claim that these drugs cause Parkinson's disease has been around for some time now but is not backed up by experience.

Club drugs began to become popular in the early eighties, leading to various governments listing various drugs as illegal. That means it has been two to two and a half decades since their use became widespread. If these substances did indeed cause Parkinson's disease then an increase in the instances of Parkinson's among the populations most likely to have used these drugs would have been noticed. No such increase has been seen reported, even by groups who moniter such things.

It has been said that not enough time has elapsed for the lack of disease to prove anything (apparently it takes quite some time for Parkinson's to take hold) but after two decades with nothing but fond memories it is looking less and less likely that there is a problem.

Although I can't remember the exact source I got this from the information can be easily verified simply by the fact that it hasn't been reported in the media. If one fraudulent study can recieve so much attention then surely legions of shaking, stammering ex-clubbers would make at least third page news?

No one can say for sure that these drugs are completely safe but reasonable people know from experience that they are not as bad as claimed and that their dangers can be minimised. They are certainly less dangerous than regular doses of pizza and TV.

Play safe! :)

P.S. (Personal opion only from this point on): Ricaurte is a LIAR. That a chemical supplier should mislabel any chemical is very unlikely. That they should mislabel something as heavily controlled as MDMA, and indeed label it with the label of another heavily controlled substance, is laughable. You don't simply make a vat of this stuff and have the work experience kid draw off a vial and whack a label on it, every molecule has to be accounted for. Also, if this company did mislabel the substance and destroy and expensive, government funded experiment, and possibly Ricaurte's career, they would have been sued into bankruptcy.

So how did the monkeys die? I don't know. What I will say is that these 'scientists' were looking to find brain damage, so they would not dick around with low doses. So you're giving first time users massive doses of intravenous MDMA? I get agitated on a come up and I'm an experienced user taking moderate oral doses. No wonder they were distressed. And too much of anything is bad. If you inject someone with too much water or the chemicals used to treat cancer in chemo therapy they can die, but you don't see these substances being banned, do you?
 
i absolutely love this thread (damnit, why didn't i see this earlier), someone must e-mail it to our friend ricuarte, i think he can learn from every one of us.

"They will take nothing seriously now. They will feel themselves deceived and they may well dismiss legitimate evidence for the risk of this and other drugs in the future."

we were deceived. stop the misinformation.
 
so much intelligence on these boards :)

i find the fact that he didnt test his result before publishing his journal Very questionable. Also, the fact that it has taken this long for it to be withdrawn when the problem would have become apparent VERY quickly. Especially with the critisism the report recieved.
 
It was recently discovered that research causes cancer in lab rats.


unfortunately, the withdrawal of the study wont have any impact on the legality of mdma. its still schedule 1 and that is unlikely to change any time in the near future, however this may open the doors to allow more real studies, such as using it for treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, to be permitted.
 
Does anyone find it interresting that the "immature junkie" drugies are making such intelligent observations (and quite possibly while on some drug, as I am) here on Bluelight, while the "respected and educated" scientist fucks up a multi-million dollar, very high-profile experiment, thus wasting perfectly good mdma?
 
Yeah for us!!!!

Dr. Ricaurte's laboratory has received millions of dollars from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and has produced several studies concluding that Ecstasy is dangerous


Gee, I wonder why the studies showed X as being dangerous?:p
 
Noones touched this in about a month so I'll unsticky it and move it to the Archives once it drops off the first page :)
 
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