ArticleFrontiers in psychology2020
Psychedelic Research and the Need for Transparency: Polishing Alice's Looking Glass.
Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 26 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
26 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 64 citations in OpenAlex.
- Keeping the promise: a critique of the current state of microdosing research.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2024Pooled it
- Meditating on psychedelics. A randomized placebo-controlled study of DMT and harmine in a mindfulness retreat.Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England) · 2024Trial
- Fatalities following DMT use: two case reports and a review of the literature.Journal of analytical toxicology · 2025Review
- Do undergraduates' views of psychedelics relate to the context for psychedelic use?Drug science, policy and law · 2025Article
- History, Hype, and Responsible Psychedelic Medicine: A Qualitative Study of Psychedelic Researchers.Journal of bioethical inquiry · 2025Article
- The Acceptability of Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy Amongst Mental Health Consumers: Utilising the Theory of Planned Behaviour.International journal of mental health nursing · 2025Article
- Psychedelics: Safety and Efficacy.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2025Review
- Use of psychedelic treatments in psychiatric clinical practice: an EPA policy paper.European psychiatry : the journal of the Association of European Psychiatrists · 2025Article
- Stroboscopically induced visual hallucinations: historical, phenomenological, and neurobiological perspectives.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2025Review
- Is microdosing a placebo? A rapid review of low-dose LSD and psilocybin research.Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England) · 2024Review
- Critical appraisal of evidence supporting prescription of psychedelics from clinic websites in Ontario, Canada.PloS one · 2024Article
- History repeating: guidelines to address common problems in psychedelic science.Therapeutic advances in psychopharmacology · 2023Review
- ARC: a framework for access, reciprocity and conduct in psychedelic therapies.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- The psychedelic afterglow phenomenon: a systematic review of subacute effects of classic serotonergic psychedelics.Therapeutic advances in psychopharmacology · 2023Review
- Psychedelics and neonihilism: connectedness in a meaningless world.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Review
- Not in the drug, not in the brain: Causality in psychedelic experiences from an enactive perspective.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Validation of a new instrument for assessing attitudes on psychedelics in the general population.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Review
- Psychedelics in the treatment of unipolar and bipolar depression.International journal of bipolar disorders · 2022Review
- Effects of psilocybin microdosing on awe and aesthetic experiences: a preregistered field and lab-based study.Psychopharmacology · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Psychedelics have a checkered past, alternately venerated as sacred medicines and vilified as narcotics with no medicinal or research value. After decades of international prohibition, a growing dissatisfaction with conventional mental health care and the pioneering work of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Science (MAPS) and others has sparked a new wave of psychedelic research. Positive media coverage and new entrepreneurial interest in this potentially lucrative market, along with their attendant conflicts of interest, have accelerated the hype. Given psychedelics' complex history, it is especially important to proceed with care, holding ourselves to a higher scientific rigor and standard of transparency. Universities and researchers face conflicting interests and perverse incentives, but we can avoid missteps by expecting rigorous and transparent methods in the growing science of psychedelics. This paper provides a pragmatic research checklist and discusses the importance of using the modern research and transparency standards of Open Science using preregistration, open materials and data, reporting constraints on generality, and encouraging replication. We discuss specific steps researchers should take to avoid another replication crisis like those devastating psychology, medicine, and other fields. We end with a discussion of researcher intention and the value of actively deciding to abide by higher scientific standards. We can build a rigorous, transparent, replicable psychedelic science by using Open Science to understand psychedelics' potential as they re-enter science and society.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.