Cultivating Bureaucratic Expertise in Clinical Trials with Psychedelic Drugs

• In Event: Citizen Bureaucraft - I

Abstract

Over the past twenty years there has been a resurgence of clinical research into the therapeutic use of psychedelic substances. Sponsored by small non-profit organizations, clinical trials studying the use of drugs such as MDMA—better known as Ecstasy—are part of a concerted effort by psychedelic activists to build an evidentiary case for the regulated, psychotherapeutic use of these substances. Drawing from two years of ethnographic research with the sponsor of the MDMA clinical trials, this paper examines the cultivation of bureaucratic expertise by researchers and activists. Pharmaceutical clinical trials draw from scientific as well as bureaucratic evidentiary standards. The experiment must meet criteria for objectivity through the use of placebos and double blinds, but it must also produce a paper trail that meets international standards for documentation. While citizen science scholarship has called attention to the cultivation of expertise outside of and in challenge to institutionalized science, this paper argues that the expertise cultivated by clinical researchers working with psychedelics is both scientific and bureaucratic. This paper will examine both the relationship between bureaucratic and scientific expertise within the form of the clinical trial, as well as how this expertise might rethink the politics of citizen science research.

Author

• Katherine M Hendy, University of Michigan