Hi everyone, I'm a co-author on this paper and also the co-founder of Quantified Citizen (we built the mobile research platform used in this study). What a nice experience to see this on the front page this morning.
I'll address a few of the comments made here so far below, but feel free to reply with more questions (or reach out directly, email in bio) and I'll try to get back to them throughout the day.
There are a lot of comments re-iterating concerns already covered in the limitations section of the paper. It's clear that an observational approach like this cannot establish causality and that self-selected recruitment can introduce bias, and the paper acknowledges this. RCTs will happen on this subject, but there aren't many significant ones published yet, and other types of evidence also provide value.
The subject of microdosing is one where the community practice and experimentation is far ahead of where the science is, which is different from research into regulated medicines where drugs are either not on the market or prescribed by doctors. There are a lot of health-related topics like this that are understudied where practice within a community that is not served by mainstream medicine moves forward slowly through anecdotes and informal discovery processes. Think not just about stigmatized subjects like psychedelics, but also about chronic disease communities, biohackers, athletes, etc. Sometimes alternative therapies and bottom-up health practices like these end up being validated by the scientific community, and other times the relative lack of rigor leads to years of people taking harmful or fruitless approaches. Bringing a more scientific lens to what people are already doing and speeding up the feedback loop with the research community is a big part of what we're doing with our company.
For microdosing specifically, there is a lot to discover by gathering evidence on motivations, demographics, and methods of real-world usage. The paper linked to above brings new insights into these topics, and is the first published research looking at the practice of stacking. One advantage of a large (n=8703) observational approach like this is that it helps pull signals from the noise to help inform further study.
The patient-reported data on depression and anxiety comes form the standardized DASS-21 scale which is a widely used self-report tool in psychological research. In addition to this data, we also included various quantitative cognitive tasks in the app (data will be analyzed in upcoming papers, stay tuned). While this data isn't collected in a controlled environment our approach collects data from so many participants that we have power across various demographics and methods of use. We also encouraged non-microdosers to participate, and the relatively low burden of participating meant that many submitted data throughout the study period.
I'll address a few of the comments made here so far below, but feel free to reply with more questions (or reach out directly, email in bio) and I'll try to get back to them throughout the day.
There are a lot of comments re-iterating concerns already covered in the limitations section of the paper. It's clear that an observational approach like this cannot establish causality and that self-selected recruitment can introduce bias, and the paper acknowledges this. RCTs will happen on this subject, but there aren't many significant ones published yet, and other types of evidence also provide value.
The subject of microdosing is one where the community practice and experimentation is far ahead of where the science is, which is different from research into regulated medicines where drugs are either not on the market or prescribed by doctors. There are a lot of health-related topics like this that are understudied where practice within a community that is not served by mainstream medicine moves forward slowly through anecdotes and informal discovery processes. Think not just about stigmatized subjects like psychedelics, but also about chronic disease communities, biohackers, athletes, etc. Sometimes alternative therapies and bottom-up health practices like these end up being validated by the scientific community, and other times the relative lack of rigor leads to years of people taking harmful or fruitless approaches. Bringing a more scientific lens to what people are already doing and speeding up the feedback loop with the research community is a big part of what we're doing with our company.
For microdosing specifically, there is a lot to discover by gathering evidence on motivations, demographics, and methods of real-world usage. The paper linked to above brings new insights into these topics, and is the first published research looking at the practice of stacking. One advantage of a large (n=8703) observational approach like this is that it helps pull signals from the noise to help inform further study.
The patient-reported data on depression and anxiety comes form the standardized DASS-21 scale which is a widely used self-report tool in psychological research. In addition to this data, we also included various quantitative cognitive tasks in the app (data will be analyzed in upcoming papers, stay tuned). While this data isn't collected in a controlled environment our approach collects data from so many participants that we have power across various demographics and methods of use. We also encouraged non-microdosers to participate, and the relatively low burden of participating meant that many submitted data throughout the study period.