Is Nature pushing drugs to scientists?
So last year, Nature did an editorial about "cognitive enhancement" drugs, and now they've done a web survey to follow up on the editorial, asking their readers to comment on whether they've used prescription or other drugs for enhancing their performance. It's been widely reported that this is a survey of scientists (Nature's main audience), although being a web survey it's probably not all that representative.
The magazine reports on the results this week:
One in five respondents said they had used drugs for non-medical reasons to stimulate their focus, concentration or memory. Use did not differ greatly across age-groups (see line graph, right), which will surprise some.
The graph mentioned shows that the 60-year-olds dose themselves just as much as 30-year-olds, and nearly as much as those less than 25. The main drugs are Ritalin, Provigil, beta blockers (which combat anxiety), and Adderall. The number who use these under prescriptions is dwarfed by those using them illicitly.
But here's what I find interesting:
The most popular reason for taking the drugs was to improve concentration. Improving focus for a specific task (admittedly difficult to distinguish from concentration) ranked a close second and counteracting jet lag ranked fourth, behind 'other' which received a few interesting reasons, such as "party", "house cleaning" and "to actually see if there was any validity to the afore-mentioned article".
In other words, some proportion of the respondents started using drugs because they read about it in Nature.
Jeez, I wonder what other things people start believing just because they read it in Nature...
John Hawks Department of Anthropology
University of Wisconsin—Madison
Copyright © 2007 John Hawks