<story><title>Magic mushrooms found to lift severe depression in clinical trial</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/may/17/magic-mushrooms-lift-severe-depression-in-clinical-trial</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zimbu668</author><text>Roland Griffiths at John&amp;#x27;s Hopkins is trying to do proper research on psilocybin, i.e. with control groups. Although it&amp;#x27;s kind of hard since the effects of psilocybin are rather noticeable.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.tedmed.com&amp;#x2F;speakers&amp;#x2F;show?id=526372&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.tedmed.com&amp;#x2F;speakers&amp;#x2F;show?id=526372&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Just in case anyone here hasn&amp;#x27;t already seen this:
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;xkcd.com&amp;#x2F;1462&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;xkcd.com&amp;#x2F;1462&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>exelius</author><text>From personal experience in my youth, I can definitely say that psychedelics (mushrooms in particular) can help you think in different ways that make your problems seem trivial and imminently solvable. Those changed patterns of thought seem like a revelation at the time -- like the clouds opened and an answer came down from the sky. So I&amp;#x27;m not at all surprised with this.&lt;p&gt;That said, this study had only 12 participants with no control group -- so it&amp;#x27;s hard to draw any meaningful conclusions. But as a canary study, it says that there might be something here, so further, more rigorous studies are warranted.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tonyarkles</author><text>I forget which interview I was listening to about doing LSD research but I remember the gist of the quote: &amp;quot;We tried doing double-blind studies, but 15 minutes into the experiment we realized it was pointless. The people who were given LSD... they knew they&amp;#x27;d been given the real stuff, the scientists knew very obviously who&amp;#x27;d been given the real stuff... There&amp;#x27;s no way to give someone LSD and not have everyone in the room know what&amp;#x27;s going on.&amp;quot;</text></comment>
<story><title>Magic mushrooms found to lift severe depression in clinical trial</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/may/17/magic-mushrooms-lift-severe-depression-in-clinical-trial</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zimbu668</author><text>Roland Griffiths at John&amp;#x27;s Hopkins is trying to do proper research on psilocybin, i.e. with control groups. Although it&amp;#x27;s kind of hard since the effects of psilocybin are rather noticeable.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.tedmed.com&amp;#x2F;speakers&amp;#x2F;show?id=526372&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.tedmed.com&amp;#x2F;speakers&amp;#x2F;show?id=526372&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Just in case anyone here hasn&amp;#x27;t already seen this:
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;xkcd.com&amp;#x2F;1462&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;xkcd.com&amp;#x2F;1462&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>exelius</author><text>From personal experience in my youth, I can definitely say that psychedelics (mushrooms in particular) can help you think in different ways that make your problems seem trivial and imminently solvable. Those changed patterns of thought seem like a revelation at the time -- like the clouds opened and an answer came down from the sky. So I&amp;#x27;m not at all surprised with this.&lt;p&gt;That said, this study had only 12 participants with no control group -- so it&amp;#x27;s hard to draw any meaningful conclusions. But as a canary study, it says that there might be something here, so further, more rigorous studies are warranted.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dogma1138</author><text>Not every medical procedure can or has to undergo double blind testing with control groups.&lt;p&gt;Pretty much any treatment that has very aggressive effects is usually done without it.&lt;p&gt;Even treatments that can be tested using a control group are quite often tested without it if you can isolate your metrics well enough.&lt;p&gt;But technically you can still use a control group for psychoactive drugs because in every trial the first rule is not to give the test subjects any information about possible effects or side effects in order not introduce bias, you also quite often isolate the subjects from each other completely.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m also not sure if the dose that is given in this case is even high enough to induce hallucinations in the first place.</text></comment>