"But the potential for researchers to bias the outcomes of these trials has become a common critique of the psychedelic research field."

"It is unusual for a drug under F.D.A. consideration to also be used personally and recreationally by the researchers studying it, or even for clinical trial researchers and clinicians to be encouraged to test the drug themselves. But that’s exactly what Lykos has done with MDMA. In a phone conversation after the F.D.A. decision, Dr. Doblin told me that therapists should be 'strongly encouraged' to have their own psychedelic experiences, as it 'really helps therapists to better understand their patients.' He says almost all of the researchers in the Lykos phase 3 clinical trials underwent MDMA experiences themselves, and many studying the drug are open about their own recreational use. It’s difficult to disentangle the personal enthusiasm for psychedelics with the study of these drugs as therapeutic interventions. And the extraordinary claims of some of its leading researchers — Dr. Doblin has professed a belief that psychedelics will usher in world peace — as well as criticisms of the quality of the clinical trials only accentuate how much the enthusiasm has gotten ahead of the science...."

From "How Psychedelic Research Got High on Its Own Supply" (NYT)(free-access link).

"Some of the criticisms of the current research and the ethics of its leaders have been present from the start. As part of a postwar pharmacological boom, psychiatrists in the 1950s explored psychedelics enthusiastically. About a thousand research papers were produced; tens of thousands of patients were prescribed LSD. But as the lines between scientific, clinical and recreational drug experimentation among researchers blurred, experts who once saw potential in psychedelics warned against their potential dangers. 'The trouble is, LSD attracts unstable therapists as much as it does the neurotic patient,' said Sidney Cohen, a leading psychedelic researcher and psychiatrist, in 1963. 'It gives them an intoxicating sense of power to bestow such a fabulous experience on others.'"