Hacker News Reader

> "placibo sessions" are noted in a couple parts of the paper.

I can't imagine any participant not realizing they've been subject to a placibo after no more than an hour into the session (unless they have no idea it is a psilocybin study).

View on HN

Scientists usually use active placebos for psilocybin therapy, so the difference isn't necessarily going to be obvious.

Huh, didn't know that active placebos existed. (I'm not in the medical field) Would you go more in depth on this? What would they use as a placebo, if not psilocybin? Couldn't an active placebo affect the patients and skew the results/measured effectiveness of the main drug being studied?

I'm not in the medical field either, but I remember they used niacin (a form of vitamin B₃) as an active placebo in the Good Friday Experiment[0] in 1962. The niacin doses produced some noticeable physiological effects, but it didn't take long before it became abundantly clear for everyone present who had gotten the psilocybin and who had gotten the niacin.

[0]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_Chapel_Experiment

niacin as the other person said, but also: in my experience a placebo can be just as strong as a low dose acid trip.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com