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by thisisforyou 3364 days ago
You do raise an interesting point: would there be any value in emulating (some of) the subjective effects of a psychedelic to 'increase' blinding. Perhaps have all study participants wear VR headsets piping in video from their surroundings, then randomly assign a 'trippy' filter across groups so that some of the placebo group might (mistakenly) think that they were tripping?
2 comments
hprotagonist 3364 days ago
It's been done before. The marsh chapel experiment had an active control -- participants who didn't get psylocibin got niacin instead, which causes some short-term physiological changes.

It isn't perfect, but it's probably as close as you could get.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_Chapel_Experiment

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dTal 3362 days ago
Not quite the same, but my dad did an alcohol study once where the blinding was achieved by giving the test group a strong vodka-and-orange, and the control group a glass of orange juice into which had been poured a small amount of vodka over the back of a spoon, so that it floated on top. Both drinks therefore smelled strongly of alcohol.

It's trickier with substances where the dose is undetectably tiny, but it seems there's certainly value in making people feel "trippy" so that they think they've had the active substance.

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