Ethics

NYT on Cognitive Enhancement

By Adam Kolber

You may have seen this article in the NYT over the weekend on cognitive enhancement, especially among professional academics.  The Neuroethics & Law Blog has posted about this before.  Here's a taste:

Yet an era of doping may be looming in academia, and it has ignited a debate about policy and ethics that in some ways echoes the national controversy over performance enhancement accusations against elite athletes like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.

In a recent commentary in the journal Nature, two Cambridge University researchers reported that about a dozen of their colleagues had admitted to regular use of prescription drugs like Adderall, a stimulant, and Provigil, which promotes wakefulness, to improve their academic performance. The former is approved to treat attention deficit disorder, the latter narcolepsy, and both are considered more effective, and more widely available, than the drugs circulating in dorms a generation ago.

Letters flooded the journal, and an online debate immediately bubbled up. The journal has been conducting its own, more rigorous survey, and so far at least 20 respondents have said that they used the drugs for nonmedical purposes, according to Philip Campbell, the journal?s editor in chief. The debate has also caught fire on the Web site of The Chronicle of Higher Education, where academics and students are sniping at one another.

And here's Martha Farah:

?I think the analogy with sports doping is really misleading, because in sports it?s all about competition, only about who?s the best runner or home run hitter,? said Martha Farah, director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania. ?In academics, whether you?re a student or a researcher, there is an element of competition, but it?s secondary. The main purpose is to try to learn things, to get experience, to write papers, to do experiments. So in that case if you can do it better because you?ve got some drug on board, that would on the face of things seem like a plus.?

Full post as published by Neuroethics and Law on March 10, 2008 (boomark / email).