ScienceCogs: results of a survey on the use of cognitive enhancers

Do you remember the time when the discussion on whether it would be ethical to use cognitive enhancers not for medical reasons, but to improve one's mental function?

The buzz was so great that Nature set up a in-house survey, to be voluntarily completed over the Internet, to investigate what the general attitude (in the scientific crowd, that is) to cognitive enhancers is, how much they are used, for what reasons, and so on. The buzz was also big enough that an April Fool's joke centred on these enhancers, and started on a personal blog, ended up reaching up to the pages of Nature News - by the way, not surprising, seeing that some of the "co-conspirators" for the joke are on the Nature Network. The joke was so amazing that it even included a fake website to corroborate the bloggers' report.

Anyway, I am meandering! Let's go back to the results of the Nature cognitive enhancement survey. The survey data includes results collected from about 1400 people from more than 60 countries. The first obvious problem with the data is that it was collected voluntarily - which means, the data might be already skewed and unreliable from the start - but so is life when it comes to surveys. On the good side, 1400 is quite a sizable number. However, do not be fooled by the number of countries: the responses originated overwhelmingly from the United States, followed by Great Britain, Canada and Australia. The other countries were only represented by trace amounts, so to speak.

While one would have expected that the majority of respondents would be involved in science research, a good chunk of the respondent where not, or did not want to reveal their occupation. When asked about their field of work, 35.5% of respondents chose "other". The given options were biology, chemistry, physics, environmental science, engineering, media, education and medicine. For some reason, computer science and maths were completely absent. This question makes me wonder about what population the survey was scouting for - because the phrasing of the question does not allow one to measure, say, what proportion of respondents involved in grant-driven areas resorts to cognitive enhancement. We get a potpourri of responses, but we already cannot answer that simple question, which is really what spurred the initial debate to start with.

The age of the respondents seemed to be skewed towards younger ages, as 57.2% of participants in the survey were 25-35 years old. Again, there are two different ways one can interpret this: either younger people seem to be more receptive to this issue (cognitive enhancement), or it is simply that younger people are those who would feel more comfortable with filling in an online survey. In fact, only 2.2% of the respondents were 66 year old or older.

The large majority of participants (66.3%) reported that they have never used prescription drugs for cognitive enhancement purposes. Among those who do, Ritalin seems to be the drug of choice. While trying to achieve better focusing and concentration seem to be the main motives behind the drug use, users evenly split between those who take the drugs daily, weekly, monthly or even once a year.


This is bizarre. Focusing and achieving better concentration are two things that are almost indistinguishable from each other, and that is probably why the respondents are so evenly split between them - because they are probably considering them to be almost equivalent, and picking the answer almost at random. Now, assuming that that's the case, focusing/concentrating seems to be necessary at different frequencies for different people. And that's where a good wording to question 2(occupation) would have come really handy. Are people in research-driven occupations more likely to take drugs, and more often than other people? Is the different pressures linked to different occupations also reflected in difference in the use of cognitive enhancers?

The Nature article reviewing the results of the survey also reports that

perhaps surprisingly, a high four-fifths thought that healthy adults should be able to take the drugs if they want to. And 69% reported that they would risk mild side effects to take such drugs themselves.

I am not very surprised by the fact that people would risk mild side effects. That's what human beings do every time they open a bottle of beer, or drink coffee to keep themselves awake early in the morning. In my humble opinion, however, the fact that people would not see any problem in healthy adults exposing themselves to the risks of addiction that these drugs can cause...is really alarming. Especially when it comes from a highly-educated sample population (the readers of Nature).

The survey also asked questions about using drugs for cognitive enhancement in children:

When asked whether healthy children under the age of 16 should be restricted from taking these drugs, unsurprisingly, most respondents (86%) said that they should. But one-third of respondents said they would feel pressure to give cognition-enhancing drugs to their children if other children at school were taking them.

Again, the latter data is quite worrying. But this really is the fulcrum of the question: when other people around you, be it at work or school, are taking enhancement drugs that they do not need, but which give them some kind of an advantage (be it based on placebo or not), are you stupid if you refuse to take them - because you know have a higher risk of falling behind? Or are you wise - because you are not exposing yourself to the risk of physical or psychological addiction? That's what the dilemma is, and where the "pressure" is probably coming from.

This issue needs urgent ethical attention from legislators. And better surveys should be run to assess what proportion of researchers is already resorting, or thinking to resort, to potentially addictive medications to try and get an edge.

If our work is so stressing that we need cognitive enhancement, is it not time to start reconsidering our mentality (especially in research-driven academia) and focus on creating a healthier work environment for the body and the mind, just like every other decent company has been doing for years? Given the inherent stress of having to publish and get grants to maintain one's position, wouldn't a stronger emphasis on research workers' wellness be something we urgently need? I shall point my finger to universities that want research faculty to bring in money, but are unwilling to spill any of their own...but also, to the faculty members' themselves, and to the mentality that, if "shit comes down, tough luck, you're gonna have to deal with it somehow" and nobody is going to give a crap about your mental and physical health.

Update: other bloggers are weighing in on the results. Some are concerned, while others aren't. This section might expand with new links coming in the next few hours/days, so stay tuned.

P.S.: The latest meeting of the Skeptics' Circle has been hosted by Archeoporn. Flying piggies included.


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