It's hard to do a test like this when there's a significant chance you're buying nothing but powdered rice regardless of what the bottle says.<p><a href="http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/03/sidebar-whats-in-those-supplements/" rel="nofollow">http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/03/sidebar-whats-in-th...</a><p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/05/science/herbal-supplements-are-often-not-what-they-seem.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/05/science/herbal-supplements...</a><p>Want to do a double-blind study on whether St. John's Wort improves your mood? None of the bottles tested from Walmart, Target, GNC or Walgreens actually contained any St. John's Wort in 2015. That's despite all the reports years earlier about the same problem. There's little reason to believe things have improved or will improve so long as supplements remain largely unregulated.
Isn't there a huge potential for crowd sourced research platforms to take off and help advance the state of the art?<p>So far it seems like most studies are done by scientists / academics in a very closed off kind of way, but the true nature of science is open to everyone and with the right platform we might be able to use normal people to gather enough data to confirm or deny our hypotheses in a way that's much more open than the standard study.<p>Essentially, anyone would be able to test their hypotheses and either help advance scientific knowledge or at least provide extremely interesting markers that could be used as a basis to get funding for more rigorous / controlled studies. This approach obviously won't work well for every kind of question but just as the OP has highlighted: it's particularly well-suited for making self-experimentation more rigorous and I imagine it would work well for the social sciences.<p>Imagine if we gave independent researchers like Gwern the tools they needed to help answer more questions. If it was designed right: it would also be an incredible learning tool for the scientific method (since you could participate in the experiments + propose new ones.)<p>Are there any platforms like this in existence, I wonder? U-Uber for science?
This makes me wonder if there is a simple procedure for doing a pseudo-double-blind study on oneself (without a third party). That is, trying something that can be prepared in pill form in such a way that you don't know during any given day/week/month if it was a placebo, but that you can still determine that later to collate the data. I know a lot of people that swear by particular unregulated supplements or dietary choices and it would be really interesting to have an easy way to see if something they're taking is having the effect they think it does.
A very cool idea @ the high level, but one fatal flaw:<p>"At the end of each day you will fill out a short survey with a few questions evaluating the effects of the pills."<p>Self-reporting is an unsuitable mechanism to draw out scientific results.<p>There's an excellent detailed explanation available (1) but in TL;DR here are four of the most compelling factors at work:<p>1 - Honesty/Image management<p>2 - Introspective ability<p>3 - Understanding / Question Interpretation<p>4 - Response bias<p>Take Image Management & Response Bias - participants know that they will be able to see their results vs. the control group and it's not a leap to realize how easily our ego and even subconscious need for validation could dramatically skew the full study results.<p>(1) <a href="http://www.sciencebrainwaves.com/the-dangers-of-self-report/" rel="nofollow">http://www.sciencebrainwaves.com/the-dangers-of-self-report/</a>
I would not mess with Saint Johns wart. It will make you feel happy and cheery; but side effects are brutal. And if you participate in other drugs it might have harsh side effects.
I have done a lot of alternative med stuff. I know good protocols for how to test the waters, introduce new supplements, figure out what they are doing, etc. I would not use the service you are offering. It sounds to me like you are asking me to be a guinea pig.<p>To make this useful, I think you need to do the following things:<p>1) Educate people on good practices generally. Your current site looks to me to be an invitation to be someone's guinea pig and pay for the privilege instead of being paid.<p>2) Offer doubleblinded kits for a wide variety of supplements that people can choose from. The one supplement you are currently offering is one I never heard of. So I don't care. But I might care if you offered me the chance to pick and choose from a list of supplements.<p>I am no longer taking supplements, but I did take a lot of supplements at one time. I can see a service like this having a use for people, but not in its current format.<p>Also, I would remove the phrase "self experimentation." That sounds incredibly Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde to me. "Self testing" might be okay, but that's a terrible phrase and should be stricken from company vocabulary.
Did you come up with this idea, or why was doubleblinded registered just after this Reddit post?<p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Nootropics/comments/3p0y2x/crowdfund_crowdsource_trials_for_nootropics/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/Nootropics/comments/3p0y2x/crowdfun...</a><p><a href="https://www.123-reg.co.uk/order/domain?X-CSRF-Token=45b5001971906ca700fadd142a6f975d24dab8e6&domain=doubleblinded" rel="nofollow">https://www.123-reg.co.uk/order/domain?X-CSRF-Token=45b50019...</a><p>That doesn't seem very trustworthy
This sounds like it could very easily be abused as a way to peddle supplements while skimping on the experimentation aspect. It's a good idea though. Do you have plans to include something other than supplements? For instance, common foods (to be consumed daily for long periods of time) or simple activities/exercises? You could still derive revenue by selling the equipment/ingredients through your platform but it would allow you to vary the product while maintaining the consumer base. Also, doing it with something other than supplements could be cheaper and more newsworthy if you do discover something. Very interesting!
I just reported results from experimenting on myself at a bio-tech conference called "Basel Life Science Week 2015".<p>Cocoa seems to have made me two years younger.<p>The poster I presented is at<p><a href="http://morse.kiwi.nz/kingsley/lib/exe/fetch.php?cache=&media=science:screening_anti_aging_interventions_for_fun_and_profit.png" rel="nofollow">http://morse.kiwi.nz/kingsley/lib/exe/fetch.php?cache=&media...</a>
I wonder why they picked L-Theanine for their first experiment - the effects are commonly known (caffeinated tea vs caffeinated coffee). Maybe this knowledge was used deliberately so people "feel" a drug the first time around, and want to keep going.
Is there motivation to cheat? If I want to sell this stuff what's to stop me from signing up a bunch of people, having the pills tested, then reporting what I want you to find so I that you'll tell the public my product is effective?