Not to blow up my own spot but the bit about GHB being a powerful CNS depressant is just as true about alcohol and it strikes me as a bit dramatic.<p>There are reasons why researchers are interested in pursuing it as a potentially helpful tool for opium addicts, and focusing on the prurient aspects of a substance is exactly what makes research into _controlled_ therapeutic use of GHB or Cannabis or psilocybin so hard to do in this country.
The petition has a very small number of signers. Perhaps we can help out there.<p><a href="https://www.change.org/petitions/governor-mark-dayton-of-minnesota-investigate-psychiatric-research-misconduct-at-the-university-of-minnesota-2" rel="nofollow">https://www.change.org/petitions/governor-mark-dayton-of-min...</a>
Some background, which may have even appeared on HN before. Markington, the suicide victim, was coerced to join the study through a dubious sounding scheme.<p><i>"Dan was acutely psychotic, plagued by delusions about demons, and he had repeatedly been judged incapable of making his own medical decisions. Even worse, he had been placed under an involuntary commitment order that legally compelled him to obey the recommendations of the psychiatrist who recruited him into the study."</i><p><a href="http://www.minnpost.com/community-voices/2013/03/why-university-minnesota-psychiatric-research-scandal-must-be-investigated" rel="nofollow">http://www.minnpost.com/community-voices/2013/03/why-univers...</a>
I can't claim to be well-versed on this story, but I would like to point out that a couple weeks ago the author of this piece was accused of misrepresenting the issue in the local paper, The Star Tribune. In particular he was called out for glossing over the fact that there have already been several investigations of the matter, which I see he has again failed to mention in the piece linked here.<p><a href="http://www.startribune.com/local/yourvoices/207993521.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.startribune.com/local/yourvoices/207993521.html</a>
When institutions behave like this they're not just tarnishing their own image. They're destroying civilization.<p>Got into a debate around here a while back trying to explain why otherwise-rational people are afraid of GMO foods. This is an example of my point. Things like this erode trust not just in the particular institution in question but of <i>all</i> institutions in our society. At some point many people actually start to assume the worst and flip over into seeing official pronouncements as contrarian indicators: "oh, the paid shills say it's safe and it's produced by a big agribusiness corporation so it <i>must</i> be bad for you..."<p>Even worse still, we have junk like this:<p><a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=moon-landing-faked-why-people-believe-conspiracy-theories" rel="nofollow">https://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=moon-landi...</a><p>I've seen a rash of these articles lately, deconstructing in elaborate detail why people distrust science and officialdom and believe in increasingly outlandish "conspiracy theories." They're all elaborate dances to avoid the obvious issue: trust.<p>It's almost a kind of blame-the-victim mentality: yes you have been lied to, but you should ignore that. If the fact that you've been treated contemptuously causes you to begin harboring suspicions, it's because you are irrational and stupid. Now shut up and believe what you're told.<p>No, it's not the victim's fault. It is the authorities' fault. Trust is <i>earned</i> through consistent transparency and honorable behavior. When the institutions of society behave dishonorably and unethically, trust is systematically weakened across the entire society.<p>Once a person learns that their authorities may well be shills, liars, quacks, fools, or worse, then it becomes increasingly easy to harbor increasingly-damning suspicions about what <i>else</i> "they" might be lying about. Hence 9/11 was an inside job, moon hoax, and other conspiracy theories.<p>Keep in mind that sometimes such suspicions are correct. The executive branch lied the US into war in Iraq, to give one example. With examples of that magnitude, I personally question whether belief in outlandish conspiracy theories is even particularly irrational.<p>And it's very, very dangerous. Trust is one of the key differences between the first world and the third world. Part of why places like sub-Saharan Africa can never develop is that nobody trusts anyone and nobody dares do anything. They "know" (and sometimes with good reason) that anything they do will simply be stolen by their kleptocracies, and that anything their authorities say is probably a lie. (Hence the prevalence of things like HIV/AIDS denialism in those cultures... another symptom of decayed trust.)<p>If our leaders, authorities, and institutions continue to treat the public with dismissive contempt, the third world is where we are headed. The prevalence of conspiracy theories and alt-health fearmongering is a leading indicator of an overall breakdown in the implicit trust relationships and social contract that underlies advanced Western societies.
What really gets me about this, beyond the tragedy itself, is the amount of bullshit I have had to go through to get IRB approval for completely insignificant projects (monitoring decibel levels in public spaces, for example, which is NOT even subject to IRB exemption but I still was forced by the funding source to pursue). Ugh.
Recently one of the pediatric residents at my hospital was found watching child pornography in the call room. After being reported, the institution did nothing about it, and tried to sweep it under the rug. It bothers me that a prestigious academic institution would rather save face than to deal with a serious issue at hand.
This ethical question is particularly interesting. Just to play Devil's Advocate, let's assume that Big Pharma is not involved. Rather, the people who are doing the research are honest researchers who gain utility through the act of research and finding breakthroughs.<p>If phrased this way, the incidents may suddenly now be sympathized as being yet another statistic - after all, sacrifices must be made in the name of scientific progress. The matter of coercion becomes trivial in the sense of The Greater Good (of course, not all research will yield positive results, and that's the whole point of research).<p>Now, if one were to have this sort of view going into doing medical trials, who's to say that one's wrong? Why is it still evil, if the net result are better drugs to control one's moods?