Resolved: that the Scientific Method actually has limits

Homepage of the Drug War Philosopher, Brian Quass

Resolved: that the Scientific Method actually has limits

a protest against the medicalization of mind and mood medicine

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher (Substack version)

August 16, 2026

Today I would like to address a concern that some readers have about my habit of chastising the scientific establishment in my essays. I say "some readers," but I am actually referring to one reader in particular: an anonymous reader who was kind enough to share his viewpoints on this matter. I received the following comments this morning, apparently in response to my essay of yesterday entitled Pity the Ethnobotanist (or view on Substack).

"Science is not intended to isolate and is in no way intended to prevent experimentation, modern liberal-conservative bourgeois..." and "Addendum to previous reply in defense of science and materialism, a quote, as the philosopher Rudolf Carnap so clearly said: Science is a system of statements based on direct experience, and controlled by experimental verification..."

Thanks a million for the feedback.

As you can see, your comments seem to have been truncated, and I hereby promise to fix the issue at once (by which I mean tomorrow) if, as seems likely, the problem is on my end and not yours.

As to your comments, I hope that the following essay will help clarify my position about science and the philosophy of materialism. I think that, to some extent, our differences are semantic in nature, but I'll let you decide for yourself to what extent this may be true. And thanks again for remaining in touch.

RESPONSE: I do not deny the power of science in the inorganic realm. We owe the existence of modern technology to the scientific spirit of experimentation and the isolation of variables. But I hold that it is a category error to place scientists in charge of deciding what mind and mood medicine make sense for a given human being to use. The proof is extant. It can be seen in the absurdities that result when we place scientists in that position. In Forbes magazine in 2021, Dr. Robert Glatter questioned whether laughing gas could help the depressed! Laughing gas! Such scientists are gaslighting the depressed! There are obvious ways that such a substance could help the depressed, absolutely obvious. Yes, of course there are dangers of use as well, but that's not the point here. The point is that I have gone a lifetime without common sense medicine and that "scientists" are part of the reason for that injustice. They surely know better, and yet they pretend that the use of laughing gas would not make scientific sense for the depressed.

There is a danger here that we will start arguing about semantics, however. I have just described certain actions and beliefs of modern scientists that show that they are blind to common sense when it comes to the subjects of human behavior and motivation. The problem here is not necessarily with science itself, but rather with the misapplication of the scientific method. Let me put it this way. I think that scientists are like great NASCAR racers: they speed around the lap of life accomplishing great things as they go, but they cause nothing but destruction whenever they refuse to stay in their own lanes. The fact that scientists are experts when it comes to inorganic matter does not imply that they are experts when it comes to human mood and mentation. I am the expert on my own mood and mentation and it is absurd for a scientist to say that he or she knows better what makes sense for me when it comes to motivating and inspiring me. Yet scientists have gladly accepted that highly remunerating role today, as can be seen on the Mad in America website. That site is supposed to be all about depressed individuals, but who are the "experts" that they feature there? Not the depressed. The experts, in the opinion of site founder Robert Whitaker, are scientists -- scientists that never see any benefits in outlawed substances. These are NOT the real experts, however -- the real experts are the depressed themselves who dare to say the obvious, that endless drugs exist that could help them here and now -- and yet, according to Robert, such statements are not "scientific" and therefore must not be published.

This is the problem that I am driving at: the absolute blindness to drug benefits that is evident in almost all Americans who call themselves scientists. We can call this a problem with science or we can call this a problem with science "as it is practiced today": my point is that this enormous problem exists and that I seem to be the only one who is pointing it out -- or rather the only one who is TRYING to point it out. Robert Whitaker is hardly alone in refusing to publish my views on this subject, after all. My insights have been scorned as well by High Times, the Atlantic, Reason magazine, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, MAPS, Surviving Antidepressants, the William James Foundation, the Philosopher's Forum, the Harvard Psychology Department, the Yale Philosophy Department, the Cambridge Philosophy Department -- even the humble philosophy department of my own alma mater in Richmond, Virginia. As far as my critics in the media and academia are concerned, I'm just a "patient," thank me very much, what do I know?

One final word. Carnap himself reveals the problem that I'm talking about above when he tells us that scientific statements are "controlled by experimental verification." That's the whole problem. There can BE no experimental verification of the fact that a psychoactive drug works for me. The only verification we have of that statement is my own belief that the drug is indeed working to motivate and inspire me. That is the proof -- to the extent that any proof is possible at all. When we say otherwise, we are turning outsiders into the experts on how other people feel. This is the absurdity that I was attempting to highlight when I published the AI-generated photograph about the therapeutic use of laughing gas. Even if you tell me that you have given me only a placebo, any positive outcome is still the result of the drug itself -- not of the drug chemistry, but of the drug's reputation: its power to bring out the untapped skills of the human mind. When Alexander Shulgin went through surgery in peace, convinced that he had been given morphine, that did not disprove the power of morphine: it rather showed the power of the human mind that morphine can help to stimulate -- not just chemically, but via the drug's own reputation. The real lesson here is that the effects of psychoactive drug use are the result of a joint venture: between the mind and the drug -- and not always the physical drug itself but rather the very idea of the power that it can impart. This mere idea can empower the mind to bigger and better things.

AFTERWORD

There is a collateral concern that is often expressed by critics who suspect me of being anti-science. They question my use of the word "materialism" as a reproach. My response to this criticism is much the same as my response to the charge of being anti-science. I feel that the belief of materialists, the belief in the existence of a stable and externally existing world that we can manipulate both predictably and at will, has heuristic value as a method. It is good as far as it goes, at least on the human scale. The problems result when the materialist assumes that this approach is applicable to "fixing" not just inorganic matter, like an unstable building, but mental and emotional problems as well. At this point, the scientist has switched from methodological materialism to metaphysical materialism, implicitly telling us that the human being is just another object, and is therefore at least theoretically amenable to being manipulated both predictably and at will through physical interventions. It was this simplistic philosophy of human emotion, motivation, and behavior that underlay the attempts of chemists to treat human sadness with one-size-fits-all pills beginning in the 20th century. After all, they reasoned, this approach would change the behavior of something physical -- namely, molecules. Yes, the sufferer could use substances that cheered them up at once, but the metaphysical materialist considered such treatments to be unscientific insofar as they did not target any physical thing but simply worked without so much as a by-your-leave from biochemical theorists. According to the materialist, then, the efficacy of a substance must be determined by looking under a microscope and not by asking the user what they think of a drug. What do the users know, after all? They are not scientists.

I feel the same way about the modern scientific approach to mind and mood medicine as William Wordsworth felt about the materialist approach to life in the 18th-century. That was when the French Philosophes told us that all problems would henceforth be solved by mathematics -- and they did mean "all." In the words of Alfred North Whitehead, Wordsworth "felt that something had been left out, and that what had been left out comprised everything that was most important." I have a similar feeling about modern academia in the age of drug prohibition, by the way. I believe that the residents of the Ivory Tower have left something out, something that is most important. Take the field of mental health, for instance. The field is full of highly learned theories on new approaches to treating illnesses. What illnesses? The illnesses that psychiatrists invented for the DSM as they went about pathologizing the many downsides that resulted from the demonization and outlawing of godsend medicines like cocaine and opium. The entire mental healthcare field is in complete denial about the very existence of the vast (and theoretically unlimited) pharmacopoeia of medicines that inspire and elate, as can be seen by anyone who searches Substack on the topic of so-called "mental illness." And so we are told in mainstream science magazines that depression is a tough nut to crack, a statement that is clearly false and yet is cleared for publication by editors who know that their readers are as brainwashed as they are when it comes to psychoactive substances. This de rigueur ignorance has been practiced for so long now that it seems to have congealed into a fact of publishing life in academia: "thou shalt not write positively about outlawed substances. Indeed, thou shalt not write about psychoactive substances at all, except when absolutely necessary, and then only in order to pooh-pooh their use with scarce-concealed contempt."

One corollary of this drug-hating understanding is the rule that academics should never hold drug prohibition responsible for the problems that it causes. This latter taboo helps explain why the field of sociology also leaves something out, something that comprises everything that is most important in that field. The sociologist's dogmatic deference for the ideology of drug prohibition has turned sociology into a guessing game, one in which the obvious cause of violence and hatred in the hood is ignored -- namely, the prohibition which necessarily brings violence to city streets, as every American has known since the days of the speakeasy. Having declared the prime suspect of drug prohibition to be "off-limits," our sociological detectives speculate extravagantly on the causes of inner-city violence, citing economic forces, gang involvement, a lack of role models, the poor quality of inner-city schools, and even global warming -- anything at all, as long as they do not mention the gorilla in the room, that is to say, the drug prohibition that brought guns and violence to the hood in the first place. Nor do our political scientists discuss the existence of entheogenic and empathogenic medicines which could help bring political leaders together. I refer not simply to their silence about the potential use of modern empathogens such as MDMA to help bring about understanding between world leaders; I am thinking also of the historic use of the pacifying Kava drink among the peoples of the Pacific islands.

And therein lies the subject matter for my next essay: the Kava drink comes to America. In researching this essay, I discovered that there are already hundreds of kava bars in the States, albeit half of them are in Florida. But enjoy it while you can. There are already signs that Drug Warriors are unhappy about all this substance-related freedom, and you can hardly blame them: it is strange that Kava should be considered a non-drug when America ferociously criminalizes so many substances that could inspire comparable states of mind. One thing's for sure, however: the long-term status of Kava in the States (and hence in the rest of the western world) will be based on political considerations, not on a dispassionate look at the facts -- in which latter case, of course, a sane government would never think of butting in in the first place.

Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US

The Drug War is based on two HUGE lies: 1) that prohibition has no downsides, & 2) that drug use has no upsides.

Folks like Sabet accuse folks like myself of ignoring the "facts." No, it is Sabet who is ignoring the facts -- facts about dangerous horses and free climbing. He's also ignoring all the downsides of prohibition, whose laws lead to the election of tyrants.

The best step we could take in harm reduction is re-legalizing everything and starting to teach safe use. Spend the DEA's billions on "go" teams that would descend on locations where drugs are being used stupidly -- not to arrest, but to educate.

If drug warriors were serious about saving lives, they'd outlaw guns, cars, and all pleasure trips to Mars.

I'm going to get on the grade-school circuit, telling kids to say no to horses. "You think you can handle horses, kids? That's what Christopher Reeves thought. The fact is, NOBODY can handle horses!!!"

"Chemical means of peering into the contents of the inner mind have been universally prized as divine exordia in man’s quest for the beyond... before the coarseness of utilitarian minds reduced them to the status of 'dope'." -- Eric Hendrickson

It's disgusting that folks like Paul Stamets need a DEA license to work with mushrooms.

Drug prohibition represents the biggest power grab by government in human history. It is the state control of pain relief and mental states.

The Shipiba have learned to heal human beings physically, psychologically and spiritually with what they call "onanyati," plant allies and guides, such as Bobinsana, which "envelops seekers in a cocoon of love." You know: what the DEA would call "junk."

Drug testing labs are the modern Inquisitors. We are not judged by the content of our character, but by the content of our digestive systems.

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Unless otherwise indicated, no AI is used in the creation of site content. These essays represent the original ideas of their author and not the ideas that the author SHOULD have based on an algorithmic parsing of existing data. For more on this subject, consider the AI-related viewpoints to which the author subscribes as delineated in the New York Times opinion piece entitled "What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity" by Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution.

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Resolved: that the Scientific Method actually has limits

a protest against the medicalization of mind and mood medicine

Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US

Break the ice with a sledgehammer: place this book on your coffee table.

Diary of a Drug Fiend