Self-experimentation

Self-experimentation refers to single-subject research in which the experimenter conducts the experiment on themself.

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

Main article: Self-experimentation in 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 synthetized in 1879 in the chemistry labs of Ira Remsen at Johns Hopkins by a student scientist, Constantin Fahlberg, who noticed "curious sweet taste on his fingers while eating his dinner, [and] realized that it came from something he had spilled on his hand during the day". Fahlberg subsequently identified the active compound, ortho-benzoic sulfimide, and named it saccharin.^[10][11] Cyclamate was discovered when a chemistry research student noticed a sweet taste on his cigarette that he had set down on his bench.^[10] Acesulfame was discovered when a laboratory worker licked his finger.^[10] Aspartame was also discovered accidentally when chemist James Schlatter spilled a solution of it on his hands, then later licked one of his fingers to pick up a piece of paper.^[10][12] Sucralose was discovered by a foreign student, mishearing instructions of his supervisor, Prof. L. Hough, to "test" the compounds as to "taste" them.^[10]

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."^[13]

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.^[14]

Chemist Alexander Shulgin synthesized tens of molecules in search of psychoactive materials, and evaluated them via careful self-experimentation together with his wife Ann Shulgin and a small research group of good friends.^[15][16][17]

See also

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

Further reading

• Lawrence K. Altman: Who Goes First? The Story of Self-Experimentation in Medicine. (1987) Wellingborough
• Seth Roberts & Allen Neuringer: Self-Experimentation, In: Handbook of Research Methods in Human Operant Behavior von Kennon A. Lattal & M. Perone (Eds.), S. 619–655. New York: Plenum Press (englisch).