It is perfectly reasonable exploratory research.
This is, of course, a relatively common epistemological failure for many individuals - the reduction of science to a binary proof/refutation system where a study can only transform your priors into a posterior of zero or one, so I guess it's hard to blame you.
Despite the long words in your sentence, this comment amounts to "you foolish binary thinker!"
This study has little predictive power and is hardly distinguishable from noise. It has a poor experimental design and is not a good example of how to do research.
It deserves a complete do-over with a better design and more subjects.
I chose the words to not direct any criticism towards your person or identity but to a mistake that I also make sometimes. No insult was intended. But, all right, I won't talk about this with you any more.
You could have just said "Well, Science isn't binary". Which is fine. Instead, you had to go on about how it's so tragic that everyone is wrong about it.
So, to put it more simply, you're saying that this study should increase his confidence in psilocybin as a miracle cure for migraines from 0% to what? 0.1%? Whatever that updated degree of confidence is, it's very small. It's safe to ignore this study.
OC isn't saying this is unreasonable research. He's saying it's not attention worthy due to low statistical power.
Had I ever thought about this question before, I would have started out at higher than 0% because I think a lot of migraines have psychiatric/psychological causes, which psilocybin can help with, I think.
So maybe an increase from ~10 to ~11 percent confidence in this hypothesis, for me.
The key to the experiment was this: "Initial studies at the time seemed to suggest psychedelic drugs that activate 5-hydroxytryptamine 2A (5-HT2A) receptors could significantly reduce headache burden in chronic migraine sufferers."
We still need to do more studies and experiments and change our explanations to test those new explanations. That's all they've said. And here the initial comment was just going to cancel it outright because, probably, it didn't fit their internalized cultural moral landscape.
The experiment in question was testing an explanation, there is a HUGE lack of understanding of things that are banned, like Psilocybin--because they are banned.
See also: The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch
But prediction is the proof that your explanation (i.e. model) is correct, no?
The only purpose of science is prediction. The rest is bottle-washing and button-pushing.
Many nonpsychedelic indole alkaloids that are structurally related to psilocybin, (e.g., methysergide, ergotamine, dihydroergotamine, and methylergonovine) are used as treatments for cluster headache, although they do not abort cluster periods or extend remission period as psilocybin is noted to do.[1]
2-Bromo-LSD is also used to treat cluster headaches. In fact if you look, essentially every drug used to treat migraine/cluster headaches is closely related to and acts on the same serotonin receptors as approved medicines.
[Psychoactive substances as a last resort—a qualitative study of self-treatment of migraine and cluster headaches] These patients are in a desperate and vulnerable situation, and illicit psychoactive substances are often considered a last resort. There appeared to be little or no interest in psychoactive effects per se as these were rather tolerated or avoided by using sub-psychoactive doses. Primarily, psilocybin, lysergic acid diethylamide, and related psychedelic tryptamines were reportedly effective for both prophylactic and acute treatment of cluster headache and migraines. Treatment results with cannabis were more unpredictable. No severe adverse events were reported, but it was observed how desperation sometimes spurred risky behavior when obtaining and testing various treatment alternatives.[2]
Given their longstanding legal status, much of the research has been amateur/anecdotal/self-experimentation by people desperate for any kind of treatment. Cluster headaches are also known as "suicide headaches" given how many sufferers without effective treatment choose to kill themselves rather than live with the pain. You will find widespread anecdotal reports of people finding lifesaving relief from psilocybin, LSD, MDMA, 5-MeO-DALT, etc.
All of which is just to say this sort of generic "underpowered study!" skepticism isn't very helpful. Maybe it's not a great study, but you should update your confidence starting from more like 50-90% that at least a subset of people suffering from migraines/cluster headaches would greatly benefit from psychedelic treatment. And if you're not aware of any of this background, it might be worth doing some reading before telling people to have 0.1% confidence in a low risk treatment that just might save their life.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3345296/ [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5584001/