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Many Scientists Using Performance Enhancing Drugs
docinthemachine is one of several readers to send word of a new poll published in Nature showing unprecedented levels of cognitive performance-enhancing drug abuse by top academic scientists. The poll, conducted among subscribers to Nature, surveyed 1,400 scientists from 60 nations (70% from the US). 20% reported using performance-enhancing drugs. Among the drug-using population, 62% used Ritalin, 44% used Provigil, and 15% used beta-blockers like Inderal. Frequency of use was evenly divided among those who used drugs daily, weekly, monthly, and once a year. All such use without a prescription is illegal.
It is "drug abuse" when drugs are used without the informed consent of an individual; it is simply "illegal drug use" (and very likely legislative abuse of personal liberties at the same time) when an adult makes an informed choice about drug use that doesn't comply with the current law.
People need to move away from the mindset where media pompously and wrongly attributes polar positions such as "right and wrong" and "use and abuse" to be a 100% lexical replacement for "legal and illegal." Anyone with any sense at all knows better than that. A significant number of the laws on the books in the country I live in (the USA) are inherently wrong, outright un- or anti-constitutional, or something even worse. Using them to define what is "right" leads directly to behaviors that are despicable — or worse.
One can be cynical and simply say that this is because our legislators aren't very good at their jobs. Both from the standpoint of making good law in the first place, and also in the sense that they seem to be almost incapable of admitting they made a mistake and taking bad law off the books. Personally, I think it's because they're not very good at liberty — and very good indeed at lawmaking.
There's an old saw that goes, "never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence", but I think in the case of bad law, we are indeed looking at malice aforethought. It seems to me that these people have agendas that can only be construed to be "for the people" if you slept through history class and have never read any of the founding documents with any interest. Like most Americans. :(
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Caffeine anyone?
The blurb makes it sound as if all this use is illegal. I would imagine most isn't: most of these people will have prescriptions but are using them for off-label purposes. Which is legal.
What the fuck does that have to do with anything? Are you trying to suggest that attention-enhancing drugs actually make people DUMBER? I tried using them once. It was probably the most productive night of academia I've ever had. I wouldn't do it again, but what business is it of yours?
Suppose the fellow goes home at night and has a few too many glasses of scotch. Suppose he has threesomes with sluts. Suppose he does any number of things you don't personally like. Are you gonna take away his funding for that, too?
Just what was in Albert Einstein's pipe?
or his hair?
Table-ized A.I.
It's really unfortunate when it is. My apartment was raided by the police because my roommates (whom I did not elect to live with, but was placed with) were relatively heavy drug dealers. The police found a single adderall pill stuck in the corner of one of my drawers that I had completely forgotten about. I had tried adderall about three times and, although it helped me study, it wasn't worth the disruption to my sleep habits (it gives you horrible insomnia). I threw the last pill I had in a drawer and forgot about it. The pill had been there for about six months.
While I won't be serving any jail time, my future as I intended it is more or less over. I'm currently a convicted felon serving three years probation, having to attend an intensive drug rehab course, and worst of all, I lost my federal aid that was helping pay for my grad school. Once you include the legal fees, the loss of my state entitlements, and the loss of my federal aid, I am currently looking at around a $30,000 price tag that I can't afford because of a single pill that was found because of a search that wasn't even my fault. More than likely, I will have to withdraw from grad school after this semester, despite being less than a year away from completing my PhD.
That sort of report usually relates to any of the amphetamine relatives or methylphenidate (ritalin) relatives (the two are related but not the same). By amphetamine relatives, I include amphetamine, methamphetamine, dexedrine, Adderall (mixed amphetamine salts), and some others. Methylphenidates include Ritalin and Focalin and some others. Brand names vary, especially by country.
All the amphetamine derivatives have the same mode of action in the brain, but they aren't all "the same." Delivery route (oral, injected, insufflated, smoked) matters, as does the specific salt (eg amphetamine sulfate vs amphetamine hydrochloride). These have an impact on how rapidly your body absorbs the drug, and therefore the response vs time curve. Extended release versions also exist (Adderall XR, Concerta (methylphenidate)), which has a similar effect -- the duration is extended, and the response vs time curve flattened (generally considered a good thing -- the response varying with time is generally not what you want).
As always... don't take without a prescription. If you must take it without a prescription, you're much safer buying illicit Adderall than street meth, and you'll probably like the results better too (especially for functional, rather than recreational, purposes). Use an appropriate dosage (aka do your research), realize that the effect will be stronger in someone who doesn't take it regularly, and be aware of what drugs it reacts badly with. (Most notably, avoid mixing stimulants to excess, though the results of mixing with weak ones like caffeine won't surprise you. Do not, under any circumstances, mix stimulants with MAOIs (some antidepressants, possibly other uses) -- that can be fatal.)
I'm not a doctor, this is not medical advice. Don't take drugs you haven't researched. Taking them without a prescription is likely illegal. In general: do your research before taking them, and be really sure you know what you're taking!
Erowid is a great place to start said research, though it's more geared toward recreational / spiritual / exploratory drug use. Wikipedia has a lot of good info. In any case, beware of inaccuracies.
_You_ can drink drugs are "self-defeating".. But who cares? If I used drugs to save my life, then I would say that is good. I won't even stop to think about how I have degraded myself by staying alive. I don't think any cancer survivors feel any smaller because they needed to use drugs to beat cancer..
If I use drugs to clear my head to solve an important problem, then I don't consider that problem any less solved. I'm not working on solving a problem just to see if I can do it... I want to save the world for the world's sake, not my sake.
I would say that this line of thinking is kind of "selfish" in a way. The need for people to believe sports are fair and uncompromised by drugs has skewed the way people think of performance enhancment. Enhancement is good. We like enhancement. Get over it.
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"-B.Franklin
I know at my University for example that there is widespread use of Ritalin for studying purposes once it got out that you can learn entire courses inside and out pulling all-nighters when you're on Ritalin.
A friend of mine is a regular user of Ritalin, and because I knew the guy (and his marks) before he started using I can tell you with some confidence that Ritalin will add a very significant boost to your GPA.
I also have anecdotal evidence of many pre-med students using Ritalin when they study for the MCAT, prerequisite courses, etc. since competition for med school here is so fierce.
If the students are doing it because they're under pressure for higher grades, why wouldn't the professors and scientists be doing it when they're under (arguably greater) pressure to produce research results.
The poll defines "top academic scientist" as a reader of Nature. Obviously this has major issues. For one, very few serious scientists read Nature regularly, since it doesn't speak directly to a given field. In my "top academic" institution, almost all of the people I know who have gone to Nature's website recently are either science undergrads doing low level research for a simple presentation or non-scientists trying to figure out what was meant by article X which they saw referenced in an AP news story. In fact, the poll itself wouldn't be encountered by most scientists looking at Nature, since scientists are almost always entering through an external search portal directly to an article of interest. Scientists with real pressure (say, busy grad students or professors) don't browse Nature. They strategically read an occasional article in Nature, but in most cases the same research will have been published already in greater detail in a more field-specific journal.
Collectively, all of this means that Nature's pool of respondents was almost certainly not "top scientists." Instead, they were selecting undergrads, non-scientists, and generally people with a lot of extra time on their hands. Yes, we know undergrads use Ritalin to cheat on tests. We have no indication, however, that Ritalin helps one to do the deep creative thinking necessary for involved science.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
It is unfair to force people not to abuse their bodies. If we as a society can't stomach the thought of letting them die, it is our decision to help them, not them forcing our hand to do so.
You can't be compassionate but then attach strings (I'll help you, but only if you don't abuse drugs). People almost always have some hand in what fate befals them, and almost never have complete control over it.
It is an exercise in futility to try to judge who is worthy of charity by setting regulatory standards and making sweeping moral judgements.