Self-experimentation

Self-experimentation refers to single-subject research in which the experimenter conducts the experiment on themselves. Usually this means that a single person is the designer, operator, subject, analyst, and user or reporter of the experiment.

Also referred to as Personal science or N-of-1 research,^[1] self-experimentation is an example of citizen science,^[2] since it can also be led by patients or people interested in their own health and well-being, as both research subjects and self-experimenters.

Biology and medicine

Human scientific self-experimentation principally (though not necessarily) falls into the fields of medicine and psychology. Self-experimentation has a long and well-documented history in medicine which continues to the present day.^[3]

For example, after failed attempts to infect piglets in 1984, Barry Marshall drank a petri dish of Helicobacter pylori from a patient, and soon developed gastritis, achlorhydria, stomach discomfort, nausea, vomiting, and halitosis.^[4] The results were published in 1985 in the Medical Journal of Australia,^[5] and is among the most cited articles from the journal.^[6] He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2005.

Evaluations have been presented in the context of clinical trials and program evaluations.^[7][8]

Psychology

In psychology, the best-known self-experiments are the memory studies of Hermann Ebbinghaus, which established many basic characteristics of human memory through tedious experiments involving nonsense syllables.^[9]

Chemistry

Several popular and well-known sweeteners were discovered by deliberate or sometimes accidental tasting of reaction products. Saccharin was discovered by a scientist, Constantin Fahlberg, mishearing the instruction to "test" the compounds as to "taste" them.^[10] Fahlberg noticed a sweet taste on his fingers and associated the taste with his work in the chemistry labs at Johns Hopkins; he subsequently identified the active compound and named it saccharin. Cyclamate was discovered when a chemist noticed a sweet taste on his cigarette that he had set down on his bench. Aspartame was also discovered accidentally when chemist Schlatter tasted a sweet substance that had stuck to his hand. Acesulfame potassium is another sweetener discovered when a chemist tasted what he had made.

Leo Sternbach, the inventor of Librium and Valium, tested chemicals that he made on himself, saying in an interview, "I tried everything. Many drugs. Once, in the sixties, I was sent home for two days. It was an extremely potent drug, not a Benzedrine. I slept for a long time. My wife was very worried."^[11]

Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann first discovered the psychedelic properties of LSD five years after its creation, when he accidentally absorbed a small amount of the drug through his fingertips. Days later, he intentionally self-experimented with it.^[12]

See also

• Participant observation
• Psychonautics
• Personal science
• Quantified self
• Seth Roberts

References

- Hanley et al 2019, "Review of Scientific Self-Experimentation: Ethics History, Regulation, Scenarios, and Views Among Ethics Committees and Prominent Scientists"

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