Call them the steroids of the scientific set: A British journal found that drugs like Ritalin and Provigil are popular among some scientists, mostly under 35, to enhance focus and ward off fatigue. A full 80 percent of the 1,258 respondents in the Nature survey believed “healthy humans” had the right to use performance-boosting drugs to give them an edge in their work.
AP via Breitbart.com:
Twenty percent of scientists admit to using performance-enhancing prescription drugs for non-medical reasons, according to a survey released Wednesday by Nature, Britain’s top science journal.
The overwhelming majority of these med-taking brainiacs said they indulged in order to “improve concentration,” and 60 percent said they did so on a daily or weekly basis.
The 1,427 respondents—most of them in the United States—completed an informal, online survey posted on the “Nature Network” Web forum, a discussion site for scientists operated by the Nature Publishing Group.
More than a third said that they would feel pressure to give their children such drugs if they knew other kids at school were also taking them.
“These are academics working in scientific institutions,” Ruth Francis, who handles press relations for the group, told AFP.
The survey focused on three drugs widely available by prescription or via the Internet.
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Jump to Comments
By melly, April 13 at 5:38 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)
Great post on improving your concentration. I used to have concentration problems. Here’s a website that I thought I might share with you. This informative website offers more than just simple tips and guides to improve concentration. It’s at http://www.attention-deficit-disorder.net
Report thisBy GrammaConcept, April 11 at 9:53 am #
can lead, ultimately, only to it’s own source…
Caveat Emptor.
Report thisBy Blackspeare, April 11 at 8:58 am #
“Bloody mad..... drug-crazed world!!!!!!!”
Yeah, but what about Viagra, et al----without doubt the most beneficial and popular performance enhancing drug sort after! Why it’s even advertised on TV, radio and the web ‘round the world!
Report thisBy Bill Blackolive, April 11 at 7:36 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
Being an old and practicing acid head from the sixties I deduct this cheapo shit, Ritalin and such regulated Speed, is what our present administration is on. Note the coldness about collateral damage and how one speech W. is frayed and the next he is chipper. Note the utter seperation from simple math, uncaring about even the populas of this US of A. LSD/psychedelics got criminalized because the subject questions authority, and the subject sees in even a beer or cup of coffee what is happening. Yes, Aegrus speaks truth - We are what we have power to be, this of homo sapiens surviving over 200,000 years same critter on streets of New York, and a real man will just gather his family and amigos and walk away from some chief who has gone addled.
Report thisBy Douglas Chalmers, April 11 at 6:03 am #
Quote: “It alerted us to the fact that scientists, like others, are looking for short cuts,”....... Ritalin, he noted, can become addictive, even if it has proven safe and effective when taken as prescribed........ The third class of drugs included in the survey was beta blockers, prescribed for cardiac arrhythmia...”
And these people call themselves “scientists”, uhh! Now they’ve turned themselves into their own guinea pigs......... and will reap the consequences.
“Beta blockers” cause impotence. So they’ll then take Viagra to give themselves a boost...... just like any other drug addict. Uppers and downers...!!!
I’ve been watching my doctor for years now. She used to take stuff for depression which affected her (women GP’s are 6 time more likely to commit suicide than male doctors).
Finally, she has even given up carrying a cell phone around with her to talk to her children with. Hiopefully, they won’t get brain acncer and she won’t grow a tumor.......!?!?
When will they ever start to give up their fantastic EGOs and learn to live like human beings???
They need our encouragement, too, duh!
Report thisBy Aegrus, April 11 at 5:27 am #
Bah, the only brain-boosting drug I know about is a combination of beer and adrenaline.
Report thisBy republicanSScareme, April 11 at 12:26 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
Today’s booster is tomorrow’s fryer.
Report thisBy C.P.T.L., April 10 at 4:56 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)
“Call them the steroids of the scientific set...”
No, I’ll call them performance-enhancing drugs or drugs used to enhance performance: whatever they are. Steroids are steroids, and the world is chock full of colloquialisms and mis-used language and jack-ass news-twisted phraseology as it is.
Where and when did news folks first succumb to that absurd and extremely tedious impulse to make a stupid pun, or do cutesy word play?
And when exactly might they grow the f up?
Report thisBy TDoff, April 10 at 3:25 pm #
Republicans immediately formed an anti-brain-boosting-drug committee, promising to introduce legislation to label all brain-boosting drugs as a new ‘high’, Level 10, among dangerous substances.
‘We all got along just fine without no brain-boosting drugs all this time, and we don’t need none now. If the good lord had wanted to boost our brains, he’d a’ done it without no drugs. Them whippersnapper ‘scientists’ are perverts, changing the intelligent design of the lord, and they ain’t gon go to no heaven, no sirree. That’s the devil’s work, and we don’t need none of that here in god’s country. Amen, hallelujah, all praise to Jaysus’.
Report thisSo speaketh the ex-speaker of the House.