{"id":2743,"date":"2011-03-01T06:27:35","date_gmt":"2011-03-01T06:27:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/2011\/03\/blogroll-mind-altering-blogs.html"},"modified":"2011-12-20T11:07:11","modified_gmt":"2011-12-20T11:07:11","slug":"blogroll_mindaltering_blogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/2011\/03\/blogroll_mindaltering_blogs.html","title":{"rendered":"Blogroll: Mind-altering blogs"},"content":{"rendered":"

[As mentioned in this post<\/a>, we’re posting the monthly blogroll column here on the Sceptical Chymist. This is a slightly longer version of March’s article<\/a>.]<\/em><\/p>\n

What responsibilities are borne by the creators of compounds that end up as ‘legal highs’?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nature<\/em> kicked off the International Year of Chemistry in style, with its first issue of the year<\/a> containing lots of features, comment and papers on the central science. In its pages was a ‘World View’ column from David Nichols, in which he \u201cdescribes how his research on psychedelic compounds has been abused \u2014 with fatal consequences.\u201d Nichols refers to the makers of ‘legal highs’, who use his work on psychedelic drugs for treating disease in rather less academic ways. Perhaps surprisingly for a one-page opinion article, this got quite a lot of attention \u2014 even reaching the BBC<\/span> website<\/a>. It certainly reached Derek Lowe who blogged about it in strong terms at In the Pipeline<\/a>. Lowe expressed his \u201cdisgust for the people who are making and selling these things – they show a horrifying and stupid disregard for human life\u201d, and his sympathy for Nichols.<\/p>\n

These sentiments were echoed by David Kroll on Terra Sigillata<\/a>. In a lengthy post Kroll discussed Nichol\u2019s work, the social responsibilities of scientists and even personal freedoms. He summed up by voicing his admiration and \u201crespect Dr. Nichols for coming out and discussing his personal feelings about how his science is used\u201d.<\/p>\n

But the chemistry blogosphere was not entirely in agreement. Andrea Sella used his Solarsaddle blog to ask \u201cIs David Nichols just a wee bit disingenuous?<\/a>\u201d. Sella had been on a BBC<\/span> radio programme<\/a> discussing Nichols’s article and was surprised to discover Nichols’s close links to Alexander Shulgin, author of PiHKAL: A Chemical Love Story<\/em>. He even goes so far as to say that Nichols’s \u201copinion piece strikes me as a kind of lame attempt to deflect criticism of his work\u201d. Kroll responded in a second post<\/a> acknowledging that Nichols did admit that \u201cpart of the reason\u201d behind the article was to \u201cdistance himself from the psychedelic community\u201d.<\/p>\n

And finally…KJHaxton launched a new series of posts on Endless Possibilities titled ‘What Am I?’<\/a>. Haxton gives some chemical clues to the ingredients of a household product and leaves the reader to deduce its identity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[As mentioned in this post, we\u2019re posting the monthly blogroll column here on the Sceptical Chymist. This is a slightly longer version of March\u2019s article.]  … Read more<\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs-we-like"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2743\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}