Amazing work by @neselsd.bsky.social and the rest of the @psymposia.bsky.social team reporting on SV hijacking of psychedelic research initiatives via takeover of nonprofits

This is your archetypal right wing tech-money influence network, documented with tons of primary sources

Announcing: "The Psychedelic Syndicate: How Silicon Valley Used Veterans to Hijack the Psychedelic Industry"

Now on @Psymposia's website in four parts.

www.psymposia.com/psychedelic-...

the more you learn about genAI, the less likely you're to use it!!!

www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-a...

I've repeatedly said in the past that meaningful change to the current disastrous reality is via combating big tech narrative & rhetoric and critical public awareness, which enables refusal/resistance

Psymposia has finally been vindicated! While we've been harassed, MAPS/Lykos supporters have known FOR A YEAR that they were pushing a false narrative that scapegoated us for the FDA's rejection of MDMA. They wanted to hide their terrible science & force politicians to approve it.

Confirmed speakers:
- Albino J. Oliveira-Maia
- Alessandra Martini
- Alexis Goosdeel
- Carolina Seybert
- Jules Evans
- Marion Haberkamp
- Neşe Devenot
- Peter Kéri
- Robert Schoevers
- Tiago Machado
More speakers to be announced soon!
#PsychedelicTherapy #Evidence #Equity #ChampalimaudFoundation

Israeli human rights groups B'Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights – Israel published on Monday two reports concluding that Israel is committing the crime of genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, as defined by international law.

www.haaretz.com/israel-news/...

I wrote about how a $20,000 psychedelic medicine training that promised education & healing ended with warring lawsuits, a hospitalized trainee, & multiple allegations of sexual assaults. Unpaywalled link for accessibility in reply www.businessinsider.com/dark-side-sh...

Talking FREE RADICALS and the discovery of nitrous oxide
www.drugscience.org.uk/podcast/epis...

"Bioethics scholarship is fundamentally concerned with interrogating power dynamics, interpretive authority & the epistemic risks posed by insular professional paradigms. My analysis reflects these scholarly responsibilities."

The retaliation for my work was never justified. /8

Re: MDMA-AT: "Real science is built on…transparency… Practices that cannot withstand scrutiny from those outside its own self-reinforcing belief system do not belong in the practice of medicine, let alone in treatments for conditions that…impact the most vulnerable populations." /7

"MAPS/Lykos' training culture empowered therapists to override verbal refusals of touch when they believe these refusals are part of 'trauma processing'…. Since this [mechanism enabled the assault in Phase 2], these methods cannot be ethically deployed in clinical settings." /6

NB: Veronika Gold explicitly acknowledged using Grofian focused bodywork to accentuate somatic "symptoms of trauma" in MAPS' clinical trials: "In the MDMA clinical trials, we use more of the same bodywork as Stan taught in holotropic breathwork and the LSD Psychotherapy book." /5

Grof: "Any other reactions of the subject are then ignored and are considered part of the experience. Such statements as 'You are killing me,' 'It hurts,' 'Don't do this to me,' unless they come in connection w/ the [safe word] are taken as reactions to the symbolic protagonists." /4

Veronika Gold was a MAPS Phase 3 therapist, trainer, and supervisor who advocated for the use of a "safe word" to moderate psychodramatic enactments of struggle with therapists during altered states of consciousness, which was also sanctioned by the MAPS therapy manual itself. /3

My new publication: "It is undeniable that MAPS/Lykos’ Phase 3 informed consent document included false information… MAPS/Lykos did not disclose that the risks of 'focused bodywork' and 'nurturing touch' far exceed the expected risks of psychotherapy." /2 chemicalpoetics.substack.com/p/veronika-g...

Hamilton Morris described my FDA testimony: "It's a federal crime… This was…a knowing misrepresentation."

His followers brigaded: "Nese outright lied at the MAP advisory hearing. This is federal crime"

Finally, my analysis passed a review by The American Journal of Bioethics.

For this special issue, we focused specifically on institutional obligations regarding research integrity. What should funders, universities, journals, publishers, regulators be doing to minimize structural incentives to engage in research misconduct and how should they respond when it does arise?

www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...

“Why are people going to be willing to contribute to science and enroll in these studies if they feel like the rug can be pulled out from under them at any time?” Fernandez Lynch told me.

Answer: They won't.

Kseniia Petrova, a Russian scientist at Harvard Medical School, was detained at Logan Airport after returning from France and sent to an ICE detention in Louisiana, The Insider reports.

A big critic of Putin and the war in Ukraine, she may now be deported to Russia.

This is for all the politicians, doctors, health officials and journalists who, since 2020, have been decrying the “politicization” of public health—a deeply unhelpful, misleading framing of public health that has facilitated its partisan capture and destruction now. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Speak out. Organize. Across all the silos. They are testing to see what they can get away with.

This is appalling.
But how interesting that marijuana made the list and psychedelics didn't.

More of a general concern, this is the kind of scicom that facilitates an irresponsible hype around psychedelic and MDMA based therapies, and doesn't help the scientific credibility of the field.

I wrote about the NYT story that claimed “a small band of anticapitalist activists helped sink the first psychedelic compound to come before the F.D.A.”

Let’s just say it was missing some important context…and it’s interesting to consider why that might be

slate.com/technology/2...