RE: MAPS: Aspiring psychedelic researcher looking for guidance

["Jon Frederick, Ph.D." <smiile@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm going to recap some advice given to me 10 years ago. Although much
progress has been made toward bringing psychedelic research back into the
mainstream, and consciousness studies in general have gained a lot more
credibility, the fact remains that you will be taken a lot more seriously
after you get the MD or PhD after your name. I'm not just being arrogant
because I've got my degree & you don't-- I'm just telling you that I spent
an additional five or more years as a student because of my idealism,
where my ability to contribute was severely limited by the fact that one
cannot be a primary investigator on a grant as a graduate student. There's
a whole "secret society" that you get admitted to when you finish your
graduate degree, where you can spout off the same fantastic maniacal
rhetoric about psychedelics and people will actually listen.

There are lots people in MAPS and elsewhere making very important
contributions without the MD or PhD, and I don't want to discourage those
contributions. However, if you want to make an important contribution to
psychedelic research as a graduate student, I think the most important
contribution you can make is to graduate as soon as possible, without
making any sacrifices in the quality of your education. Although it is
worth investigating opportunities to earn your degree working with a
professor who is doing psychedelic research, it is more important to find
a professor who has co-authored at least one peer-reviewed research paper
per year, for the past five years, allowing graduate students to take
first authorship on these papers most of the time. When interviewing
faculty, ask which conferences you'll be expected to present at, and when.
You meet lots of cool people at conferences and lay the foundations for
finding a job later. Published conference abstracts count for a great deal
on a graduate student's resume, even though peer-reviewed research papers
count for more.

For finding a job as a researcher, having a resume that demonstrates that
you are effective at doing all stages of research is just as important as
getting the framed piece of paper on your wall. For doing psychedelic
research, you need to realize that you will be held to higher standards of
credibility and professionalism than your colleagues whose research is
crap.

My statistician at the University of Tennessee offered me the best advice
for graduating quickly: "See what your professor has published most
recently, and propose the smallest possible variation on it." I chose not
to follow this advice for my first dissertation prospectus at UT (see
http://www.sahs.uth.tmc.edu/jafrederick/prospectus.htm ) and ended up
taking an extra year pursuing this project (without much active active
support/encouragement from my advisor) for a year until it became clear
that the experiment had some serious design problems. My dissertation (
http://www.sahs.uth.tmc.edu/jafrederick/diss/frederick-diss.pdf ) came a
lot closer to following this advice and went through the approval process
very smoothly.

I imagine that anyone looking into graduate school now with the same
motives I did 10 years ago will not follow any of this advice. I also
realize how important it is to live life to its fullest with courage and
authenticity here and now. I had an opportunity to complete my Ph.D. in
neuroscience at the University of Michigan in less than a year in 1996,
and ended up leaving because I was so alienated from the research paradigm
I was stuck doing there. (I quite simply have cut the heads off enough
rats for one lifetime.) Graduate school is definitely time to take
advantage of your freedom to explore... but I have to agree with what they
commonly say, that it's definitely not time to attempt "Nobel-prize
winning research." You can accomplish a lot more after you finish, and
your net contribution will probably be more if you finish sooner rather
than later.

Jon Frederick


-------------------------
Jon Frederick, Ph.D., Ctr. Comp. Biomed. UTexas Houston HSC

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