Psychedelics research: A blog post with Beth Morling

Now and again, I run across a news article or psychological question that is so big that it bleeds out of straight statistics and requires a thorough understanding of the research methodology that guides statistical choices.When that happens, I email my buddy and fellow W.W. Norton author, Beth Morling, and we write a joint blog post.Recently, I emailed her because research on using psychedelics to treat many different mental disorders has been in the news. President Trump fast-tracked this research, and the Journal for the American Medical Association recently published a big meta-analysis on the topic.Psychedelic research has always interested me because of psychology, but it has always amused me because how do you run a proper double-blind research study if your experimental participants KNOW that they are hallucinating and your control group participants know they are not? This broader question offers a few great discussion options for you and your students as you work through…