Should we be leery of being Leary? Concerns about psychedelic use by psychedelic researchers.

Psychedelic research is proceeding rapidly, despite ongoing legal and regulatory barriers and lingering questions about study design, such as the difficulty of ensuring adequate blinding, the relative overrepresentation in studies of participants who have previously used psychedelics, and the importance of personal experience with psychedelics for those who provide psychedelic-assisted therapy. Here we wish to explore a distinct concern: whether personal use of psychedelics by researchers could threaten the objectivity and ethical conduct of psychedelic research itself. In 2020, Anderson et al.

Biphenyl Cyclobutenone Photoelectrocyclizations.

In this work, we demonstrate that readily available conjugated bis-aryl cyclobutenones undergo photoelectrocyclization reactions to give the corresponding dihydrophenanthrene cyclobutanones when exposed to 350 nm light, TFA, and TMSCl. We have also found that cyclobutenone electrocyclizations and cycloreversions are in equilibrium.