The Science of Tripping Comes to Town: challenges of studying psychedelics at the annual Psychedelic Science conference in Denver

Psychedelic Science conference brings together researchers and practitioners in Denver, but the reporting highlights how hard it is to run rigorous psychedelic studies. A central problem is that participants often figure out whether they received the real psychedelic or a placebo, which can undermine blinding and skew results. Possible workarounds mentioned include unblinding strategies, withholding study-arm information, and exploring so-called non-psychedelic analogues that aim to preserve brain effects tied to plasticity while keeping perception more familiar. The piece also notes reliance on brain-imaging proxies like fMRI, EEG, and PET, while warning that visuals such as brain heat maps can be misleading and are not unique to psychedelics, since other substances can show similar increases in brain activity.