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AlbinoWino11 t1_j0d0nvz wrote

Reply to comment by elixirsatelier in Concentrations of psychoactive compounds in mushrooms are extremely variable by mightx

*Alan Rockefeller. While he is a contributor…he doesn’t appear to be PI on this?

How would you build a study like this? Consider that the mushrooms come with legal challenges. Also that they were sourced from around the world as well as collected wild from a couple of places - which is always going to come with a high degree of variability.

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elixirsatelier t1_j0d2p6l wrote

If there was any attempt to characterize active content for comparison purposes, the starting point would be harvesting at similar growth phases, then immediate desiccation and sample preservation. Testing old unpreserved samples is worthless beyond demonstrating presence of the active compounds. You can't not know if one sample degraded to 10% of original content and another sample degraded to 2% of original content and then make comparisons between them and imply there's relevance to fresh harvested samples. That's junk science.

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AlbinoWino11 t1_j0dca54 wrote

I guess I struggle to see how this could be done with wild harvested mushrooms in a meaningful way. Perhaps with cultivated mushrooms. But then we won’t really know if the results are relevant to real world situations.

Have you considered contacting the authors with feedback?

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pseudocultist t1_j0e2dod wrote

I don’t know anyone who has taken wild grown psychedelics since the 70s. It’s all cultivated these days. It’s dangerous to take wild mushrooms and thankfully we have gotten that point across.

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AlbinoWino11 t1_j0e4aqk wrote

Heaps of folks near me (Australasia) hunt wild Psilocybe. I help moderate several specialist groups focused on ID and harm reduction so do get to see quite a lot of activity. Although US and some EU countries loosening restrictions definitely has skewed things towards cultivation.

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pseudocultist t1_j0f5ctt wrote

Ahh yeah in North America you only really get to do that if you're near a horse farm with a cool owner.

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Zealousideal-Spend50 t1_j0f0hdo wrote

It wouldn’t be difficult. Go out and collect some mushrooms. Bring them to a lab, dry them out and then do the extraction. As long as that was done quickly and consistently and then the results would be fairly reliable.

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AlbinoWino11 t1_j0f8is1 wrote

You’ve basically described what the authors did. But the other commenter is saying several variables were not suitably controlled for. Which I don’t think is very easy given the hurdles and complications of wild Psilocybe collection from around the world.

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Zealousideal-Spend50 t1_j0fak66 wrote

< You’ve basically described what the authors did.

Not at all. The criticism is that the authors didn’t perform the analysis at a consistent time point after sample collection or account for the different times in their analysis. I described an analytical method that would fix some of those concerns.

> Collecting and possessing wild Psilocybe isn’t very legal for most folks or labs in most places.

I’m not sure how that is relevant. The people involved in the study are already collecting these samples, so either they are licensed to handle controlled substances or don’t care if they are following the law. Either way, they should standardize their sample collection methods or not run the study. If they can’t run the study correctly then they shouldn’t perform the study.

> On top of that these mushrooms don’t just grow everywhere. Or at the same time. And they’d would all probably need to be sent to the same lab.

Somehow, other scientists have been able to run these analytical studies correctly. If it is not feasible for the authors to use the correct procedures then that is a good reason not to attempt the study.

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kendamasama t1_j0dvcc9 wrote

> harvesting at similar growth phases,

How would you characterize the similarity of a growth phase in a meaningful way? The size of fruits and rate of growth is variable within the same flush. How do I know that one fruit is at the same point relative to it's final size or age as another? Are you using the start of sporalation as a landmark? How do you control for sporalation variability, especially in wild-type species with no ability to cultivate?

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elixirsatelier t1_j0gldld wrote

All the mushrooms in the study have the same growth pattern. I would document how open the cap was and if the veil was still in tact / partially in tact. There is a goldilocks period for picking mushrooms. But more importantly I'd make the huge investment in glass sample jars and desiccants. Especially if my last even worse written study went on and on about mushroom stability yet actually only showed that mushroom samples are wildly unstable when not kept fully dessicated because of botching sample handling in that study as well.

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