Book review: Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks

I read Hallucinations over the Christmas break, and have been meaning to post a book review ever since. Oliver Sacks will be discussing his book tomorrow at Warwick University, where he is currently a visiting professor. I have booked my seat, and am looking forward to it. I will post my review of his talk, and anything new I learn at the discussion soon.

**Now posted** At the Brain Box, and also cross-posted at Brain Metrics, a Scitable Blog hosted by Nature Education.

Research Briefing: Attention restores forgotten items to visual short-term memory

Our paper, just out in Psychological Science, describes the final series of experiments conducted by Alexandra Murray during her PhD with Kia Nobre and myself at the Department of Experimental Psychology, Oxford University. Building on previous research by Kia and others in the Brain and Cognition Lab, these studies were designed to test how selective attention modulates information being held in mind, in a format known as visual short-term memory (VSTM).

Typically, VSTM is thought of as a temporary buffer for storing a select subset of information extracted during perceptual processing. This buffer is typically assumed to be insulated from the constant flux of sensory input streaming continuously into the brain, allowing the most important information to be held in mind beyond the duration of sensory stimulation. This way, VSTM enables us to use visual information to achieve longer-term goals, helping to free us from direct stimulus-response contingencies (right).

Previous studies have shown that attention is important for keeping visual information in mind. For example, Ed Awh and colleagues have suggested that selective attention is crucial for rehearsing spatial information in VSTM, just like inner speech helps us keep a telephone number in mind. Our results described in this paper further suggest that attention is not simply a mechanisms for maintenance, but is also important for converting information into a retrievable format.

In long term-memory research, retrieval mechanisms are often considered as important to memory performance as the storage format. It is all well and good if the information is stored, but to what end if it cannot be retrieved? We think that retrieval is also important in VSTM - valuable information could be stored in short-term traces that are not directly available for memory retrieval. In this study, we show that attention can be directed to such memory traces to convert them into a format that is easier to use (i.e., retrieve). In this respect, attention can be used to restore information to VSTM for accurate recall.

We combined behavioural and psychophysical approaches to show that attention, directed to memory items about one second after they had been presented, increases the discrete probability of recall, rather than a more perceptual improvement in the precision of recall judgements (for relevant methods, see also here). This combination of approaches was necessary to infer a discrete state transition between retrievable and non-retrievable formats.

Next step? Tom Hartley asked on twitter: what happened to the unattended items in memory? We did not address this question in this study, and the current literature presents a mixed picture, some suggesting the attention during maintenance impairs memory for unattended items (see), whereas others find no such suppression effect (see). It is possible that differences in strategy could account for some of the confusion.

To test the effect on unattended items in behavioural studies, researchers typically probe memory for unattended items every so often. This presents a contradiction to the participant - sometimes uncued items will be relevant for task performance, therefore individuals need to decide on an optimal strategy (i.e., how much attention to allocate to uncued items, just in case...). A cleaner approach is to use brain imaging to measure the neural consequence for unattended items. The principal advantage is that you don't need to confuse your participants with a mixed message: attend to the cued item, even though we might ask you about one of the other ones!!

References:

Awh & Jonides (2001) Overlapping mechanisms of attention and spatial working memory. TICS (pdf)

Bays & Husain (2008) Dynamic shifts of limited working memory resources in human vision. Science (pdf)

Landman, Spekreijse, & Lamme (2003). Large capacity storage of integrated objects before change blindness. Vision Research (link).

Matsukura, Luck, & Vecera (2007). Attention effects during visual short-term memory maintenance: Protection or prioritization? Perception & Psychophysics (link).

Murray, Nobre, Clark, Cravo & Stokes (2013) Attention Restores Discrete Items to Visual Short-Term Memory. Psychological Science (pdf)

Biased Debugging

We all make mistakes - Russ Poldrack's recent blog post is an excellent example of how even the most experienced scientists are liable to miss a malicious bug in complex code. It could be the mental equivalent of missing a single double negative in a 10,000 word essay, or a split-infinite that Microsoft word fails to detect or even a bald-faced typo underlined in red that remains unnoticed by the over-familiar eyes of the author.

In the case reported by Russ last week, although there was an error in the analysis, the actual result fit their experimental hypothesis and slipped through undetected. It was only when someone else independently analysed the same data, but failed to reproduce the exact result, that alarm bells sounded. Luckily, in this case the error was detected before anything was committed to print, but the warning is clear. Obviously, we need to be more careful, and cross-check our results more carefully.

Here, I argue that we also need to think a bit more carefully about bias in the debugging process. Almost certainly, it was no coincidence that Russ's undetected error also yielded a result that was consistent with the experimental hypothesis. I argue that the debugging process is inherently biased, and will tend to seek out false positive findings that conform to our prior hopes and expectations.

Data analysis is noisy

Writing complex customised analysis routines is crucial in leading-edge scientific research, but is also error prone. Perfect coding is as unrealistic as perfect prose - errors are simply part of the creative process. When composing a manuscript, we may have multiple co-authors to help proofread numerous versions of the paper, and yet even then we often find a few persistent grammatical errors, split infinitives, double negatives slip through the net. Analysis scripts, however, are less often so well scrutinised, line by line, variable by variable.

If lucky, coding errors just cause our analyses to crash, or throw up a clearly outrageous result. Either way, we will know that we have made a mistake, and roughly where we erred - we can then switch directly to debugging mode. But what if the erroneous result looks sensible? Just by chance, what if the spurious result supports your experimental hypothesis? What are the chances that you will continue to search for errors in your code when the results make perfect sense?

Your analysis script might contain hundreds of lines of code, and even if you do go through each one, we are notoriously bad at detecting errors in familiar script. Just think of the last time you asked someone else to read draft prose because you had become blind to typos in the text that you have read a million times before. By that stage, you know exactly what the text should say, and that is the only thing you can read any more. Unless you recruit fresh eyes from a willing proofreader, or your attention is directed to specific candidate errors, you will be pretty bad at seeing even blatant mistakes right in front of you.

Debugging is non-random

OK, analysis is noisy - so what? Data are noisy too, isn't it all just part of the messy business of empirical science? Perhaps, but the real problem is that the noise is not random. On the contrary, debugging is systematically biased to favour results that conform to our prior hopes and expectations, that is, our theoretical hypotheses.

If an error yields a plausible result by chance, it is far less likely to be detected and corrected than if the error throws up a crazy result. Worse, if the result is not even crazy, but just non-significant or otherwise 'uninteresting', then the dejected researcher will presumably spend longer looking for potential mistakes that could 'explain' the 'failed analysis'. In contrast, if the results looks just fine, why rock the boat? This is like a drunkard's walk that veers systematically toward wine bottles to the left, and away from police to the right.

More degrees of freedom for generating false positives

With recent interest in myriad bad practises that boost false positive rates far beyond the assumed statistical probabilities (e.g., see Alok Jha's piece in the Guardian), I suggest that biased debugging could also contribute to the proliferation of false positives in the literature, especially in the neuroimaging literature. Biased debugging is also perhaps more insidious, because the pull towards false positives is not as obvious in debugging as it is with cherry-picking, data peeking, etc. Moreover, it is perhaps less obvious how to avoid the bias in debugging practices. As Russ notes in his post, code sharing is a good start, but it is not sufficient - errors can remain undetected even in shared code, especially if not widely used. The best possible safeguard is independent reanalysis - to reproduced identical results using independently written analysis scripts. In this respect, it is more important to share the data rather than the analysis scripts, which should not be re-run with blind faith!


See also: http://www.russpoldrack.org/2013/02/anatomy-of-coding-error.html

Research Briefing: Targeting "silent" brain areas with TMS

A major challenge in neuroscience is how to study brain processes that are securely encased within the skull. Over the last twenty years, there has been enormous progress in non-invasive brain imaging methods. In particular, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) allow researchers to measure brain activity from outside the head.

Although brain imaging methods allow us to peer inside the head and watch the brain in action, we also need to be able to perturb brain function to understand more fully what observed brain activity is actually doing. We will never understand the brain by just watching it - we also need to be able to poke around to see what happens when certain processes are disrupted. In formal terms, we can only verify causality by disrupting brain activity and observing the consequences.

The most effective method for non-invasive brain disruption is transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). TMS is able to disrupt brain activity by delivering a focal magnetic pulse to the overlying scalp surface. The magnetic field passes through the scalp and skull, stimulating brain cells, thereby disrupting brain function.

TMS is the only method currently available in human neuroscience to disrupt specific brain areas and measure the consequence on brain function. TMS has been in use in labs across the world for more than 25 years, and sophisticated methods have been developed for targeting specific brain areas (see neuronavigation, pictured right). Nevertheless, it remain relatively unclear exactly how best to set stimulate intensity.

Setting the right stimulation level is essential for safe and effective use of TMS. Over-stimulation can cause adverse effects, such as seizure. From an experimental point of view, over-stimulation also reduces the focality of disruption, therefore complicating the interpretation of any effects. On the other hand, under-stimulation could compromise treatment in clinical settings, and lead to false negative results in research. Poor control over the stimulation intensity also compromises experimental comparisons between treatment conditions.

In a series of methodological studies performed with Chris Chambers and others, we previously explored the effect of skull thickness on brain stimulation. It is well known that the flux density of a magnetic field declines as a function of distance. As a direct consequence, if people have thicker skulls, they will require a higher intensity field at the scalp surface to activate underlying brain areas. To quantify this dependency, we varied TMS distance over motor cortex.


When TMS is applied to primary motor cortex, stimulation triggers a twitch in the muscle associated with the stimulated portion of the motor map (pictured left). This an extremely reliable and repeatable effect, and therefore provides a very useful tool for assessing the effect of TMS. We simply varied distance between the stimulation coil and the target brain region to characterise the relationship between distance and TMS effect (pictured right). From these initial studies, we suggested that TMS protocols could be usefully calibrated at motor cortex, and corrected for distance to derive a distance-independent estimate of cortical excitability. Distance-corrected levels could then be used to determine the appropriate stimulation intensity for 'silent' brain areas, such as non-motor brain areas for which there is no simple index of effective stimulation.

However, distance adjusted TMS still relies on the assumption that individual differences in response to TMS are due to variations in a general factor of cortical excitability. In this new study we tested this key assumption. We compared peoples' sensitivity to stimulation of motor cortex with stimulation of their visual cortex (indexed by a visual percept known as a phosphene). We found a systematic relationship between individual differences in sensitivity across stimulation sites, consistent with the idea that a common factor of cortical excitability might account for individual differences in the response to TMS.

In conclusion, this research suggests that TMS intensity can be calibrated to distance adjusted motor threshold, and applied to other brain areas. For further information, please see our paper here, or contact me directly.


References

Stokes, Barker, Dervinis, Verbruggen, Maizey, Adams & Chambers (2013) Biophysical Determinants of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation: Effects of Excitability and Depth of Targeted Area. Journal of Neurophysiology, 109: 437– 444 [pdf]

Stokes, Chambers, Gould, English, McNaught, McDonald & Mattingley (2007) Distance-adjusted motor threshold for transcranial magnetic stimulation. Clinical Neurophysiology, 118(7): 1617-1625 [pdf]

Stokes, Chambers, Gould, Henderson, Janko, Allen & Mattingley (2005) A simple metric for scaling motor threshold based on scalp-cortex distance: application to studies using transcranial magnetic stimulation. Journal of Neurophysiology, 94(6): 4520-4527 [pdf]

Helium and Neuroscience

Modern cognitive neuroscience critically depends on helium. The most advanced methods for non-invasive brain imaging, function magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and magnetoencephalography (MEG), operate at near absolute zero (~4° Kelvin). This operating temperature can only be maintained with liquid helium. Although helium is the second most abundant element in the universe, helium supplies are strictly limited on Earth.

Recently, global helium shortages have forced many MEG centres into temporary shut down. MRI facilities have so far been less affected, because they require less frequent helium re-fills. But if the situation was to get much worse, then even MRI centres will be forced to shut down. Cooling down the magnet at the heart of MRI can cause major structural damage, potentially requiring a complete refit.

Writing for the The Independent, science editor Steven Conner explains some of the key factors at play [here]. In an accompanying piece, I  provide some more specific details of how recent shortages have affected our research at the Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity [here]. It is impossible to predict how neuroscience methods will have advanced by the time the world's supply has been depleted in the next 30 years or so, but let's hope we have found new methods for non-invasive brain imaging that don't depend on an unavailable element.

References:
The Independent: A ballooning problem: the great helium shortage
The Independent: Our research is on ice due to shortage of helium

Actors volunteer to be hypontised on TV

We are all pretty familiar with the basic formula of stage hypnosis. Supposedly normal people are hypnotised to do silly and embarrassing things before a wide-eyed audience. It is pretty hard to see exactly how the stage hypnotist is able to make normal folks cluck like a chicken (wiki ideas: peer pressure, social compliance, participant selection, ordinary suggestibility, and some amount of physical manipulation, stagecraft, and trickery). But whatever is going on in people's mind, it seems unlikely that these showman have somehow discovered how to master full mind control with the snap of the fingers.

Yet still, the idea that hypnosis could be used to control all types of behaviour seems to capture the imagination. Recent TV programmes have dived straight into the sensationalist deep end, to pose the question: can people be hypnotised to commit a cold-blooded assassination? On Channel 4's Experiment series, Derren Brown claims to show that a normal everyday kind of guy can be plucked off the street and hypnotised to shoot a celebrity at a public gathering. Similarly, hypnotist Tom Silver was employed by the Discovery Channel programme Brainwashed to test the same idea: can Joe Citizen be hypnotised to commit cold blooded murder?

Both shows set up the question by invoking the case surrounding Bobby Kennedy's assassination. In what seems an absurdly flimsy defence, Sirhan Sirhan claimed to be hypnotised by secret agents to carry out the killing. The counter-evidence for premeditation was over-whelming, and the appeal was unsuccessful - this is hardly a strong starting point for establishing precedent. Rather, Sirhan Sirhan's defence seems to fit somewhere between desperate appeal and paranoid delusion. The Discovery Channel additionally invoked the case of Patty Hearst. This is a fascinating story in its own right. Heiress to the fortune of media mogul William Randolph Hurst (immortalised as Charles Foster Kane by Orson Welles in the classic Citizen Kane) was kidnapped by a self-styled left-wing revolutionary group, involved in bank robberies, two murders, and other acts of violence. After a failed ransom bid, she became an active member of this vanguard army until she was eventually captured by police and put to trial for armed robbery. Her defence, heavily influenced by her extremely influential parents, argued that Patty Hearst had been brainwashed to join the revolutionary group. It seems likely that her parents were unable to accept the more shocking possibility that their daughter would willingly turn on their way of life to adopt an outlaw revolutionary life. Here, the term brainwashed sounds more like an expression of parental disbelief than a systematic process of coercive mind control.

Despite the weak starting premise for mind control, both shows nevertheless set out to demonstrate that hypnosis can be used to programme an ordinary person to carry out a (mock) assassination. On Brainwashed, I was called in to join a panel of experts to assess a series of 'experiments', starting from relatively benign tests of hypnotic suggestion and culminating in the mock assassination. Our role as the scientific experts was relatively limited, but we were able to observe the overall process reasonably closely. We saw no obvious jiggery pokery during production, although post-production clearly used the usual kinds of selective editing tricks that can mould impressions without explicit falsehoods.

Most viewers are pretty wise to the fact that the final cut includes only footage that the director wants you to see. Very many hours of footage never make it to screen, leaving plenty of wriggle room to create a 'coherent narrative'. But what did seem to surprise many viewers was the fact that the star 'assassin' of the show turned out to be a part-time actor, not a regular member of the public as the overall narrative implied. A similar minor scandal erupted when it was suggested that one of Derren Brown's hypnosis subjects was in the acting profession.

But is it really so surprising that a volunteer who signs up to be on TV turns out to be an actor? Presumably most people who volunteer for these kinds of things are either actors, or at least aspiring actors. And presumably the directors know this too. Even if they don't explicitly advertise for actors, they are very likely to get actors answering to the call for participation. And conveniently, actors will no doubt act the part for the cameras - so what more could a director want? It is not impossible that actors can also be hypnotised (maybe good acting is a form of hypnosis anyway), but it is important to keep in mind the relevant context: TV studio, with lights, cameras, etc; and actors (or similar) who want to be on TV. This scenario is not the stuff of controlled scientific research - needless to say, such shows should be viewed with a healthy scepticism. It maybe not be necessary quite yet to abandon your pre-existing sense that you are more or less in control of your own actions and behaviour.

Science, LIVE: A made-for-TV experiment

[also see my related Guardian post]

A few months ago, Channel 4 attracted considerable attention for their sensationally titled – “Drugs Live: the Ecstasy Trial”. The subject matter was clearly designed to court controversy, with Prof Nutt at the centre of the storm. The show "hooked almost 2 million" viewers on the first night, and triggered a lively debate around highly charged questions, such as: Do we need to focus more on the medical/chemical nature of particular drugs, and less on the moral/legal status? Is it right to film volunteers taking a Class A drug, even for a medial experiment? Is Channel 4 glorifying illegal drugs, or contributing to rational discussion?

Much was written and said on either side of this debate (e.g. this conversation between Nutt and Manning). However, as an empirical scientist, I would like to draw attention to another more general issue that was  perhaps neglected in the mêlée of moral and ethical arguments. I would like to know why TV science is conducting experiments in the first place?

The made-for-TV experiment

Drugs Live was structured around an ethically approved double-blinded experiment to test the effects of MDMA. Data were collected from 25 participants under the influence of MDMA and a placebo control (sugar pill). Tests included questionnaire and computer-based tasks to measure changes in mood and cognition, as well as the ever-TV-friendly fMRI to measure changes in brain activity. This sounds like a reasonable set of experiments, but according to Prof Nutt, the Medical Research Council (MRC) declined to fund the research because it did not "fit in with the MRC's portfolio of addiction". Instead, Channel 4 agreed to pick up the tab, presumably for more financial motives compared to the MRC's commitment to "improve human health through world-class medical research" (from mission statement). Perhaps we should celebrate this innovative collaboration between academia and the private sector. In these times of austerity, perhaps TV-funded research is the future big-society answer to maintain Britain’s place as a leading powerhouse of innovation, science and technology.

And indeed, if the research is well-conducted, the results could provide valuable insights into the effects of MDMA, of genuine scientific interest with important political/social relevance. After many weeks and months of painstaking data analysis, the results could be submitted to a reputable scientific journal for rigorous peer-review. If the submitted findings are accepted by the academy as sufficiently trustworthy, then the scientific report would be published for consideration by a wider scientific audience. Journal press-releases might then alert the popular news outlets, who may then report these novel findings to their more general readership. 

This is how scientific findings are normally disseminated to the wider audience. Slowly, but surely, complex data yield their secrets to careful systematic analysis. It is not gripping TV, but this systematic process is the foundation of modern scientific research. Made-for-TV science, on the other hand, can by-pass the process completely and stream their own results directly into living rooms across the country. 

Science to a production schedule: lights, camera, action!

Maybe science needs a bit more of a can-do attitude. Like Jon Snow, who promises on Drugs Live that “tonight we will get to the bottom of it”. Not in another month, six months, or couple of years - but this very evening! And true to his word, by the end of the first episode Snow can already announce that we have all witnessed “two scientific breakthroughs”. He was not very specific, but we may assume that he was referring to the two brain scans that were rotated on a large plasma screen.


The first scan, from actor Keith Allen, appeared to show a relative decrease in communication between two areas previously associated with the so-called default mode network. Firstly, I should leave aside any academic debate about the true nature of this brain network, as tempting as it is to question Prof Nutt’s proclamation that this area is no less than “you, your personality, sense of self”. My purpose here is just to make the point that data from one brain in one volunteer, hastily analyzed and not peer-reviewed, does not constitute a “scientific breakthrough”. Perhaps an interesting hint. A potential clue, maybe. Promising lead, why not? But certainly not a: “scientific breakthrough”.

The second scan was even more ambiguous. The rotating image appeared to show a number of brain regions we are told were more active when the volunteer closed her eyes after taking MDMA. We are told that this reflects the heightened perceptual experience caused by the drug. But to be blunt, these data look like a mess, like random variation in the MRI signal. This is not really all that surprising, considering it is only one scan from one person, analyzed under the unrealistic time pressure of the TV production schedule. I would be amazed, or even suspicious if the result was any clearer. 

Of course science needs to be simplified for a TV audience. Matt Wall, neuroscientist involved in the Drugs Live programme, says of his experience:

"TV needs everything to be black-and-white, and unambiguous... They don’t care that you haven’t run the necessary control experiments, or that the study was only correlational and therefore can’t be used to imply direct causation – they want a neat, clear story above all else"

Oversimplifying the deeper complexities "can very often lead to distortions, or ‘Lies-to-children’". This is a perennial issue for TV science, whether following the classic science reporting formula or made-for-TV experiments. To be able to articulate complex theoretical concepts and technical details to general audience without misrepresentation is a great but rare skill.

Astonishing Science

Jon Snow promised his live audience “astonishing science”. Quite right, TV should bring astonishing science to the wider audience. But this mission is seriously compromised by the production demands associated with made-for-TV experiments.

Advising the Discovery Channel on a recent made-for-TV experiment, I was told by a production assistant: “you don’t have to always be so cynical, you know.” And I absolutely agree with the sentiment. Science TV should convey the excitement of science, not just the limitations. Just like this production assistant, I am also frustrated by too many caveats. The reason I came to science was to discover something about the world, not just to point out flaws in putative findings. But like any empirical scientist, I have learned many times over not to get too excited over half-baked results. Only solid reliable results are really exciting.

But TV science does not have to be boring. TV has many tricks up its sleeve, such as dramatic music, frenetically paced scene cuts, angled screen shots in darkened laboratories, and expensive props like MRI. All these can be used to covey the excitement of science, without resorting to made-for-TV experiments.

Reality-science TV

The enormous success of reality TV tells us that viewers like to experience the activities on screen through people they can relate to. Extrapolating to science TV, I guess viewers like to feel the science experience through personalities that they can relate to. The personal touch can make it seem more real.

Recently, I was asked to help conduct another made-for-TV brain imaging experiment with the show's presenter as the experimental subject. To fit the production schedule, we had to analyse complex brain imaging data within a matter of hours. We did manage to produce some very rudimentary results within this science-improbable time frame - we had to! Production costs are clocked by the hour.

Of course the actual result was of limited scientific value, and we were naturally so circumspect about what we said on camera that it is hard to see how this data could have been of any great interest to the audience. It was essentially just a brain on a screen: demonstration science - what it looks like to do science.
There is of course no harm in such demonstrations - eye-catching demonstrations are bread and butter tools for conveying the excitement of science. We don't need to pretend that they are also conducting novel scientific research. It is important enough to help convey the process of science without pretending to add to the content of scientific knowledge.There are plenty of good and proper TV production devices for engaging public interest in science. And we expect a little bit of TV gimmickry, it is show biz after all. But why not be content with reporting on science, rather than making science as well?

Investigative Journalism

The Drugs Live formula is a hybrid of traditional science programme and the exposé. Borrowing from the rich history of the investigative journalism, TV is not just reporting news, but making news as well. The production company can herald exclusive access to a breaking news story:

“Now, in a UK television first, two live programmes will follow volunteers as they take MDMA, the pure form of ecstasy, as part of a ground-breaking scientific study” [from the Channel 4 series synopsis]

But investigative journalism is also tricky business. The precise outcome of any investigation is impossible to predict, and therefore hard to plan for. Out of the many possible leads, only a minority will reveal something worth reporting. Producers are presumably familiar with the frustration of stories that lead nowhere, and presumably they are reasonably careful about committing to a production schedule until after the results of the investigation are relatively clear. Jumping to premature conclusions can lead to serious false claims, as dramatically highlighted recently by the Newsnight debacle that cost the BBC general director his job. In a recent post-mortem of this botched investigation, David Leigh writes: “to be faithful to the evidence" is essential for successful investigative journalism. And although journalism may not be "rocket science" [in Leigh's words], investigative journalism also demands a genuine commitment to follow the evidence, wherever it leads. 

Conflict of interest

In the shadow of recent revelations of fraud and serious malpractice across a range of scientific disciplines, from psychology to anaesthesiology, many scientists have been asking how to improve the scientific process (e.g., see here and here). Televising the process is unlikely to be the answer. 

Although industry-funding can be a valuable source of revenue, we must always seriously consider potential conflicts of interest. Increasingly, concerns have been raised regarding dubious practices in clinical research funded by pharmaceutical companies. Ben Goldacre’s book, Bad Pharma, is a must read on this serious public health issue. Conflicts of interest can distort many stages of the experimental process to increase the likelihood of finding a particular result. Clinical research is becoming increasingly alert to these problems, and serious steps are being made to avoid the malevolent influence of funding agencies with vested interests.

But even without a commercial interested in a particular result, the pressure to "find something" noteworthy can also motivate bad scientific practice. In academic circles, the pressure to publish is typically considered a major driving factor in scientific malpractice and fraud.The bottom line for Channel 4, of course, is to maximise audience numbers to boost the value of their commercial time. This does not automatically rule out potential scientific merit of TV-funded experiments, but it certainly is worth bearing in mind, especially when thinking about how the particular demands of TV could compromise scientific method. As discussed above, these include short-cuts and rushed analyses to fit a tight production schedule, as well as the pressure to find "something in the data" by the end of the shoot, however unreliable it might turn out to be later. The experimental approach in Drugs Live was also apparently compromised by recruiting celebrities (and other TV-friendly personalities) as experimental subjects, tapping into the proven success of the reality-TV format but skewing the sample of experimental subjects. It is also hard to imagine that omnipresent TV cameras did not influence the results of the experiment.

It will be interesting to follow up on this research to see how the results are received within the academic community. There is no reason not to expect some interesting and important findings, but I wonder if the more detailed and scientifically meaningful results will be heralded with as much fanfare as the actual pill-popping on camera. I fear Channel 4 might be more interested in the controversy surrounding MDMA than the science motivating the research.