alt Hacker NewsThe study design does try to mitigate blinding issues and expectancy effects, but with half of the participants reporting past use of hallucinogens, this is not going to be very effective blinding.
A majority of your low dose 1st group likely very much realizes that they're on the inactive dose.
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Is it even possible to solve the issue of there being no convincing placebo? Would a different hallucinogen like 4-HO-MET work, where the visual experience component is similar, but the visceral effect on consciousness and thought patterns is less pronounced, almost sober like?
"Well everything looks exactly the same to me, and the guy over there is staring at the carpet and whispering about The Fractals, so I think I'm in the control group"
Or they could give them a different psychedelic to test the efficacy of psilocybin specifically would be my thought.
I think this says more about the usual psy drugs we're prescribed and use.
they don't do jack shit.
There's an argument to be made that traditional blinding and placebo techniques are not really relevant for interventions targeting mood or personality. e.g. anything that makes you feel better is an effective mood intervention, by definition. "blinding" in these studies is really just going through the motions to make certain authorities happy.
I would be more interested in polling the close friends and family of study participants and asking them about perceived changes. Instruct participants not to tell anyone about their experience in the study (whether they think they got a drug or how much).
It looks like the study tried to do something like this with "session monitors" who interviewed the participants the day after. They call it double-blind, but it's more like single-blind because the 3rd person assessment is the outcome measure.