Webinar Nov 18th, 2024 Balázs Szigeti: Is psychedelic citizen science the future?

One of the key challenges related to researching psychedelics is the high cost involved. One way to get around this challenge is by citizen science which involves the active participation of the public in the scientific process. Psychedelic science stands to benefit significantly from this approach due to the widespread use of these substances. Millions of individuals use psychedelics recreationally, and capturing scientifically meaningful data from even a fraction of these experiences could greatly enhance our understanding of these drugs.

On Monday Nov 18th, 6PM UTC+2, psychedelic citizen science pioneer Balázs Szigeti will present his work in a webinar organized by the Finnish Association for Psychedelic Research. In his own words:

“In the first part of the talk, we will discuss the ‘self-blinding microdose trial’ as an example of a complex psychedelic citizen science project. This project used a novel ‘self-blinding’ paradigm, where voluntary citizen scientists implemented their own placebo control without clinical supervision. This trial, costing approximately 0.1% of a traditional clinical trial, recruited 191 participants, making it one of the largest placebo-controlled studies ever conducted on psychedelics. The combination of low costs and large sample size underscore the potential of psychedelic citizen science.

In the second half of this talk, I will focus on PsyDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization designed to support psychedelic citizen science. PsyDAO is part of the broader decentralized science movement, which seeks to leverage blockchain technology to modernize the scientific enterprise, which includes incentivizing psychedelic citizen scientists to capture and share data from their psychedelic experiences.”

The event contains a Q&A section and the total length is 2 hours. The event is free of charge – you can register here. You can support us in organizing such free events by paying your membership fee for this year or, if you’re not already a member, becoming one. You’ll find our membership products on the main page of our web store. We also accept donations. 

About the speaker:

Balázs studied physics at Imperial College and then earned a PhD in data science from the University of Edinburgh. After graduating, he worked as a biomedical software engineer before starting to research psychedelics. Balázs invented ‘self-blinding’, a novel method to enable self-experimenters to implement their own placebo control, and using this methodology he led the largest placebo-controlled study on psychedelic microdosing to-date. Later, Balázs joined Imperial College’s Center for Psychedelic Research as a postdoctoral research associate. Currently, he works at UCSF’s Translational Psychedelic Research Program as a clinical data scientist while he continues his research into expectancy and placebo effects in psychedelic medicine.