Report of Ecstasy Drug's Great Risks Is Retracted

New York TImes ^ | Sept. 6, 2003 | Donald G. McNeil, Jr.

[Wolfie]

REPORT OF ECSTASY DRUG'S GREAT RISKS IS RETRACTED

A leading scientific journal yesterday retracted a paper it published last year saying that one night's typical dose of the drug Ecstasy might cause permanent brain damage.

The monkeys and baboons in the study were not injected with Ecstasy but with a powerful amphetamine, said the journal, Science magazine.

The retraction was submitted by the team at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine that did the study.

A medical school spokesman called the mistake "unfortunate" but said that Dr. George A. Ricaurte, the researcher who made it, was "still a faculty member in good standing whose research is solid and respected."

Rest of article here.

[Wolfie]

Asked why the vials were not checked first, he answered: "We're not chemists. We get hundreds of chemicals here. It's not customary to check them."

Oh gee, that's reassuring.

[Rain-maker]

Makes you wonder about the medical field's elite at John Hopkins,
if they don't know what they are injecting.

[Wolfie]

Dr. Ricaurte's critics accused him of rushing his results into print because a bill known as the Anti-Rave Act was before Congress.

Oh great, bad research into bad law.

[AntiGuv]

I am utterly shocked, stunned, and saddened - deeply saddened - that a drug warrior would lie to the people in such an extreme fashion!

[Wolfie]

One would think that since 1/5th of the test subjects died, a heretofore unseen result in the real world, the good doctor would have questioned his results sooner. My guess is somebody has him by the short hairs, and he had to come clean with his "we didn't know what was in the vials" BS explanation before the turth came out elsewhere.

[Crawdad]

Party on, dude.

[jmc813]

WOD Ping

[Wolfie]

Sure thing. Just not with anything the idiots at Johns Hopkins are passing out, since they don't keep track of what's in it.

[Mike4Freedom]

Oh great, bad research into bad law.

Yes indeed. The false story stayed citable just long enough to get the Rave Act through. The fact that the basis was false will not be enough to get it repealed.

This is actually a classic ploy. Similar tactics got us Marujuana prohibition in the 1930s.

It appears that government equals "staged lies".

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

Does any reputable news outlet have this
story or only the ny slimes?

[auntdot]

'The study was ridiculed at the time by other scientists working with the drug, who said the primates must have been injected with huge overdoses.

Two of the 10 primates died of heat stroke, they pointed out, and another two were in such distress that they were not given all the doses.'

It is a policy of all reputable scientific journals, and Science is certainly up there, that all articles get reviewed by at least two other workers in the field prior to publication.

Those reviewers can recommend publication or not, or ask questions of the authors that need to be answered before a final decision about publication is reached.

It appears from the quote above that there was sloppy science here, and one has to wonder if Science magazine abandoned the review policy in this case.

If so they did no service to the scientific community.

As more garbage 'scientific research' is published, people justifiably lose confidence in the research community, many of whom are dedicated to finding and publishing the truth.

The scientific method is rigorous. When those who are given our trust, and our bucks, to carry it out consciously err, it feebles a system we depend upon to make us more secure.

Science magazine should be put under scrutiny and the Ecstasy researcher taught how to say 'Do you want fries with that?'

[steve50]

You got the first part down, where you discredit the source. Now you're supposed to make some degrading, unrelated charge against the author.

Instructions are all over the web for this procedure, read up.

[avenir]

I can't remember who, but some comedian on Jay Leno awhile back quipped "Oh, Ecstasy's great...if you don't mind waking up without a spine twenty years later."

Not exactly hard science, but even the idea of that bugged me since I took more than my fair share of X back in the Starck Club days in Dallas.

Actually, though, they had outlawed Ecstasy proper (MDMA); something called "Eve" (MDE) was being sold in its place. This was before the Designer Drug Law outlawed analogs.

I remember going to some of the offbeat record stores and buying hits of Eve for $20 each (they advertised this on chalkboard signs!). Supposedly Eve was amphetamine-heavy and harsher than X, but we didn't care!

With that era safely, gladly, behind me I have wondered if true Ecstasy (MDMA) is back on the market again, since all designer drugs are illegal now. People always spoke lovingly of X in the Eve era, claiming it was "more mellow".

As far as testing the stuff, even if they find MDMA to be low risk, how can any user be sure true MDMA is what they're ingesting? There is always risk in the drug world, with perhaps a bit of confidence thrown in by a well-known dealer (no benefit in killing off your clientele).

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

I think the ny slimes degrade themselves

[FourtySeven]

I hate to sound like a PETA nut here, but SHEESH, why don't we just GIVE the enviro-whackos MORE reason to hate animal testing! It's shoddy science like this that gives them more reason to do so.

[steve50]

What you think about the "nyslimes" has nothing to do with the accuracy of the story. It appears creditable as the info was taken from a medical journal and "from the horse's mouth", so to say. You're just attacking the source, not an honest method of discounting the story.

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

Anything from cnn abc ny times la times is suspect
because they print and make up stories!

[Dead Corpse]

They must be hopped up on goofballs. We must preserve our sacred juices from the Red Menace. Can't have those white women having sex with latino and black jazz musicians.

If you want to continue to lower the discourse level, let's get all the way back to the rhetoric Anslinger used shall we? At least it has entertainment value.

[steve50]

Attack the source. Much easier than disputing the story.

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/

Read up, take the advanced course