“The science of psychedelics is everywhere – but we should treat it with serious scepticism”

… writes Stuart Richie in his latest instalment of Science Fictions.

Ritchie’s work focuses on “fraud, bias, negligence and hype” in science, and this week he turned his attention to the psychedelics space, which was the subject of his freshly-minted Substack.

In short, Ritchie urged his readers to bear the following in mind:

1. The reasons people are so excited about psychedelics for mental illness are not necessarily related to how much evidence there is for the treatment;
2. The conflicts of interest in the psychedelic research field go very deep. It’s completely plausible that these conflicts help bias the studies toward reporting more positive results than are actually true;
3. The discussion of psychedelic research in the media often bears only a passing resemblance to what’s actually in the trials – or at least it sounds a lot more certain and optimistic than is warranted;
4. Even the best-quality trials are flawed in important ways because—mainly due to problems of expectations and blinding—this is an incredibly difficult thing to study;
5. We shouldn’t allow our excitement for psychedelic drug trials to run roughshod over safety concerns, and we shouldn’t be so desperate for a breakthrough mental health treatment that we roll out these drugs before we’ve tested whether they work in high-quality, smartly-designed studies.