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Raw Queries and Responses

1. Shard Calculation

Query:

Response:

Calculated Shard: 27 (from laksa076)

2. Crawled Status Check

Query:

curl -X POST \
  'http://laksa027.int.ahrefs:8124/' \
  -H 'Content-Type: text/plain' \
  -H 'X-ClickHouse-Database: crawler3' \
  -H 'Authorization: Basic YXBpOg==' \
  -d 'SELECT getAhrefsURLFromUnparsed(src_unparsed) AS found_url, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(download_stamp), 0) AS crawl_time, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(props_url_first_seen), 0) AS first_indexed_time, download_http_code AS http_code, src_unparsed AS src_unparsed, src_root_hash AS src_root_hash, history_drop_reason AS history_drop_reason, meta_title AS meta_title, meta_descriptions AS meta_descriptions, attrs_boilerpipe_text AS attrs_boilerpipe_text, attrs_markdown AS attrs_markdown, attrs_readable_markdown AS attrs_readable_markdown, meta_canonical AS meta_canonical FROM crawler3.page_info_local FINAL PREWHERE (src_root_hash, src_unparsed) IN ((getAhrefsRootHashFromUnparsed(getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://gizmodo.com/scientists-pump-the-brakes-on-psychedelic-antidepressant-hype-2000735810\')), getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://gizmodo.com/scientists-pump-the-brakes-on-psychedelic-antidepressant-hype-2000735810\'))) FORMAT JSONEachRow'

Response:

{"found_url":"https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/scientists-pump-the-brakes-on-psychedelic-antidepressant-hype-2000735810","crawl_time":1774024107,"first_indexed_time":0,"http_code":200,"src_unparsed":"com,gizmodo!\/scientists-pump-the-brakes-on-psychedelic-antidepressant-hype-2000735810 s443","src_root_hash":"11133720442686862227","history_drop_reason":null,"meta_title":"Scientists Pump the Brakes on Psychedelic Antidepressant Hype","meta_descriptions":["Turns out, it's very hard to remove a test subject's own bias about their psychedelic test treatment."],"attrs_boilerpipe_text":"The hype has been deafening on psychedelics as a promising treatment for depression, sometimes justified, sometimes not. Seemingly everything, from DMT to \nmagic\nmushrooms to (a personal favorite)\nthe trip-inducing venom of the Colorado River toad\n, has seen its mettle tested in the lab in recent years.\nBut a sweeping new review scrutinizing the results of two dozen clinical trials has brought the volume down a little on that noise. A trio of psychiatric researchers from London, Philadelphia, and San Francisco have determined that, at least, some of the positive benefits attributed to psychedelics can be chalked up to the\nplacebo effect.\nQuite simply, you can’t not know when you’re taking psychedelics. No matter how hard clinical researchers try, their patient volunteers (trust me) are always well aware (vividly aware, third eye opened) of the fact that they’re tripping.\nThat reality has put traditional antidepressants at a disadvantage in clinical studies. In these studies, researchers are much more capable of neutralizing a subject’s awareness that they’re taking the actual drug versus an inert placebo via various “blinding” or treatment-anonymizing strategies. So, in order to level the playing field, the team restricted their new meta-analysis to only “open label” trials of traditional antidepressants—meaning studies that did not include “blinding”—for a fairer comparison against clinical studies that have examined psychedelics as antidepressants.\nAbout the same, no better\nPsychedelics and traditional antidepressants, the team found, performed more-or-less just as effectively as one another. In fact, traditional antidepressants appeared to just slightly outperform psychedelics by 0.3 units on a common depression-rating questionnaire for patients, the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (\nHAM-D\n). The difference was not enough to prove either drug class as better in any statistically or clinically significant way, as they\nreported\ntheir results in the journal JAMA Psychiatry on Wednesday.\n“Our results do not disprove the exciting results about psychedelic treatments,” study coauthor Balázs Szigeti, a clinical data scientist at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), emphasized to\nNew Scientist\n. “We also show that psychedelics are effective at treating depression.”\n“It is just that they are not more effective than open-label traditional antidepressants,” he explained, “which feels underwhelming given the attention.”\nBut psychedelics hit differently\nTraditionally, whenever depression researchers have attempted to test psychedelics against a true inactive placebo, as a control, the mind-expanding drugs have dramatically outperformed.\nBased on a 17-item version of the HAM-D, researchers found that psychedelics typically scored a mean of 7.3 HAM-D units better than a placebo. Conventional antidepressants, by contrast, only fared about 2.4 HAM-D units better than their placebos.\nThe researchers combed through the peer-reviewed journal literature, considering and discarding nearly 600 studies before landing on the 24 that helped them develop a more fair basis of comparison. They focused on 16 open-label trials of traditional antidepressants, with a total of 7,921 patients, in which the participants were expressly told whether they were taking the real drug or the placebo. They then compared these to eight studies of psychedelics, with a total of 249 patients, in which patients really couldn’t help but notice which kind of pill they had swallowed.\nDespite all that effort, however, some researchers felt the team might have introduced errors by collating studies that could vary in terms of patient inclusion criteria, total sample size of the patient pool, and other factors.\nRobin Carhart-Harris, a professor of neurology and psychiatry at UCSF who was unaffiliated with the work, described the results to New Scientist as inconclusive.\n“It’s proposed as comparing apples with apples, when really it’s more like comparing apples with oranges,” said Carhart-Harris, whose own work has\ncompared\npsychedelics to ordinary antidepressants head-on.\nClearly, a mind-expanding, higher consciousness will be needed to devise new testing methods that could finally remove these unintended biases from future psychedelics research. But for now, it’s not about the destination. It’s the trip.","attrs_markdown":"![](https:\/\/sb.scorecardresearch.com\/p?c1=2&c2=39636245&cv=3.9.1&cj=1)\n\n[Skip to content](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/scientists-pump-the-brakes-on-psychedelic-antidepressant-hype-2000735810#main)\n\n[Gizmodo](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/)\n\n- [Latest](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/latest)\n- [News](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/tech)\n- [Reviews](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/reviews)\n- [io9](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/io9)\n- [Science](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/science)\n- [Deals](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/deals)\n- [Downloads](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/download\/)\n\n[Newsletters](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/newsletters)\n\n[Health](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/science\/health)\n\n# Scientists Pump the Brakes on Psychedelic Antidepressant Hype\nTurns out, it's very hard to remove a test subject's own bias about their psychedelic test treatment.\n\nBy  [Matthew Phelan](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/author\/matthew-phelan)\n\nPublished March 20, 2026\n\nReading time 3 minutes\n\n![Psilocybe mushrooms, seen above, are just one of the many psychedelics under review to treat depression. ](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/10\/magicmushrooms.jpg)\n\nPsilocybe mushrooms, seen above, are just one of the many psychedelics under review to treat depression. © Fotema via Shutterstock\n\nRead Later\n\nRead Later\n\n[Comments (4)](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/scientists-pump-the-brakes-on-psychedelic-antidepressant-hype-2000735810#comments)\n\nThe hype has been deafening on psychedelics as a promising treatment for depression, sometimes justified, sometimes not. Seemingly everything, from DMT to [magic](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/magic-mushroom-ingredient-passes-major-trial-paving-way-for-fda-approval-2000723399) mushrooms to (a personal favorite) [the trip-inducing venom of the Colorado River toad](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/psychedelic-toad-venom-depression-anxiety-treatment-1851461998), has seen its mettle tested in the lab in recent years.\n\nBut a sweeping new review scrutinizing the results of two dozen clinical trials has brought the volume down a little on that noise. A trio of psychiatric researchers from London, Philadelphia, and San Francisco have determined that, at least, some of the positive benefits attributed to psychedelics can be chalked up to the [placebo effect.](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/why-do-placebos-work-1837983414)\n\nQuite simply, you can’t not know when you’re taking psychedelics. No matter how hard clinical researchers try, their patient volunteers (trust me) are always well aware (vividly aware, third eye opened) of the fact that they’re tripping.\n\nThat reality has put traditional antidepressants at a disadvantage in clinical studies. In these studies, researchers are much more capable of neutralizing a subject’s awareness that they’re taking the actual drug versus an inert placebo via various “blinding” or treatment-anonymizing strategies. So, in order to level the playing field, the team restricted their new meta-analysis to only “open label” trials of traditional antidepressants—meaning studies that did not include “blinding”—for a fairer comparison against clinical studies that have examined psychedelics as antidepressants.\n\n## About the same, no better\nPsychedelics and traditional antidepressants, the team found, performed more-or-less just as effectively as one another. In fact, traditional antidepressants appeared to just slightly outperform psychedelics by 0.3 units on a common depression-rating questionnaire for patients, the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale ([HAM-D](https:\/\/www.med.upenn.edu\/cbti\/assets\/user-content\/documents\/Hamilton%20Rating%20Scale%20for%20Depression%20\\(HAM-D\\).pdf)). The difference was not enough to prove either drug class as better in any statistically or clinically significant way, as they [reported](https:\/\/jamanetwork.com\/journals\/jamapsychiatry\/fullarticle\/2846479) their results in the journal JAMA Psychiatry on Wednesday.\n\n“Our results do not disprove the exciting results about psychedelic treatments,” study coauthor Balázs Szigeti, a clinical data scientist at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), emphasized to [New Scientist](https:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/2519824-psychedelics-may-be-no-better-than-antidepressants-for-depression\/). “We also show that psychedelics are effective at treating depression.”\n\n“It is just that they are not more effective than open-label traditional antidepressants,” he explained, “which feels underwhelming given the attention.”\n\n## But psychedelics hit differently\nTraditionally, whenever depression researchers have attempted to test psychedelics against a true inactive placebo, as a control, the mind-expanding drugs have dramatically outperformed.\n\nBased on a 17-item version of the HAM-D, researchers found that psychedelics typically scored a mean of 7.3 HAM-D units better than a placebo. Conventional antidepressants, by contrast, only fared about 2.4 HAM-D units better than their placebos.\n\nThe researchers combed through the peer-reviewed journal literature, considering and discarding nearly 600 studies before landing on the 24 that helped them develop a more fair basis of comparison. They focused on 16 open-label trials of traditional antidepressants, with a total of 7,921 patients, in which the participants were expressly told whether they were taking the real drug or the placebo. They then compared these to eight studies of psychedelics, with a total of 249 patients, in which patients really couldn’t help but notice which kind of pill they had swallowed.\n\nDespite all that effort, however, some researchers felt the team might have introduced errors by collating studies that could vary in terms of patient inclusion criteria, total sample size of the patient pool, and other factors.\n\nRobin Carhart-Harris, a professor of neurology and psychiatry at UCSF who was unaffiliated with the work, described the results to New Scientist as inconclusive.\n\n“It’s proposed as comparing apples with apples, when really it’s more like comparing apples with oranges,” said Carhart-Harris, whose own work has [compared](https:\/\/www.nejm.org\/doi\/full\/10.1056\/NEJMoa2032994) psychedelics to ordinary antidepressants head-on.\n\nClearly, a mind-expanding, higher consciousness will be needed to devise new testing methods that could finally remove these unintended biases from future psychedelics research. But for now, it’s not about the destination. It’s the trip.\n\nExplore more on these topics\n\n[antidepressants](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/tag\/antidepressants)   [Psychedelics](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/tag\/psychedelics)\n\nShare this story\n\n## Sign up for our newsletters\nSubscribe and interact with our community, get up to date with our customised Newsletters and much more.\n\n[Spectrum’s Invincible WiFi Ensures You’re Always Connected—No Matter What](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/spectrums-invincible-wifi-ensures-youre-always-connected-no-matter-what-2000717654)\n\n[![Spectrum Invincible WiFi](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/app\/uploads\/2026\/02\/00-hero.jpg)](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/spectrums-invincible-wifi-ensures-youre-always-connected-no-matter-what-2000717654)\n\n## Latest news\n[Mar 20 11:26 am So What’s the Deal With the ‘Steel Ball Run’ Release Schedule?](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/jojos-bizarre-adventure-steel-ball-run-release-schedule-netflix-2000736037)\n\n[Mar 20 11:03 am DJI Osmo 360 Camera Combo Falls Further This Week to Its Lowest Price Yet, Including a Selfie Stick Kit and Batteries](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/dji-osmo-360-camera-combo-falls-further-this-week-to-its-lowest-price-yet-including-a-selfie-stick-kit-and-batteries-2000735728)\n\n[Mar 20 10:40 am Scientists Pump the Brakes on Psychedelic Antidepressant Hype](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/scientists-pump-the-brakes-on-psychedelic-antidepressant-hype-2000735810)\n\n[Mar 20 10:40 am US Startup Wants Someone With a ‘History of Being Let Down by Technology’ to ‘Bully’ AI](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/us-startup-wants-someone-with-a-history-of-being-let-down-by-technology-to-bully-ai-2000735786)\n\n[Mar 20 10:33 am Sonos Adds Beam Gen 2 Soundbar to Amazon’s Spring Sale Lineup at an All-Time Low Following Speaker Deals](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/sonos-adds-beam-gen-2-soundbar-to-amazons-spring-sale-lineup-at-an-all-time-low-following-speaker-deals-2000735956)\n\n[Mar 20 10:30 am Amazon Is Hell-Bent on Making Another Phone](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/amazon-is-hell-bent-on-making-another-phone-2000736012)\n\n[Mar 20 10:03 am Amazon’s Smart Fire TV Gets a 40% Price Cut, Stock May Not Last Until the Big Spring Sale](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/amazons-smart-fire-tv-gets-a-40-price-cut-stock-may-not-last-until-the-big-spring-sale-2000735501)\n\n[Mar 20 10:00 am ‘Severance’ Star Dichen Lachman Has a New Job: Vampire Slayer](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/dichen-lachman-interview-severance-season-3-2000732076)\n\n[Show All Latest news](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/latest)\n\n## Latest Reviews\n[Mar 18 6:00 pm Nothing Headphone A vs. Headphone 1: Which Pair of ANC Wireless Headphones Wins?](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/nothing-headphone-a-vs-headphone-1-which-pair-of-anc-wireless-headphones-wins-2000735152)\n\n[Mar 18 4:00 pm Of Course, Asus ROG Makes the Best Open-Ear Wireless Earbuds for Gaming](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/asus-rog-cetra-open-wireless-gaming-earbuds-review-2000734672)\n\n[Mar 17 4:25 pm Nintendo’s Talking Flower Is Annoying as Hell. I Love It](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/nintendos-talking-flower-is-annoying-as-hell-i-love-it-2000734658)\n\n[Mar 15 7:30 am Level Lock Pro Review: As Good as a Secret Smart Lock Gets](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/level-lock-pro-review-as-good-as-a-secret-smart-lock-gets-2000727162)\n\n[Mar 13 4:45 pm Apple Studio Display XDR Review: It Looks So Good, I Wish It Were an iMac](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/apple-studio-display-xdr-review-it-looks-so-good-i-wish-it-were-an-imac-2000733073)\n\n[Mar 13 9:30 am RayNeo Air 4 Pro Review: My Eyes Love These Video Glasses, but My Nose Disagrees](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/rayneo-air-4-pro-review-my-eyes-love-these-video-glasses-but-my-nose-disagrees-2000730209)\n\n[Mar 12 4:10 pm M5 MacBook Air Review: A Laptop With Real Middle Child Energy](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/m5-macbook-air-review-a-laptop-with-real-middle-child-energy-2000732830)\n\n[Mar 10 9:03 am MacBook Neo Review: No Other Budget Laptop Can Compete](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/macbook-neo-review-no-other-budget-laptop-can-compete-2000731635)\n\n[Show All Latest Reviews](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/reviews)\n## Related Articles\n\n©2026 GIZMODO USA LLC.\n\nAll rights reserved.\n\n- [𝕏](https:\/\/x.com\/Gizmodo \"X (Twitter)\")\n\n- [About Us](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/about)\n- [Other editions](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/scientists-pump-the-brakes-on-psychedelic-antidepressant-hype-2000735810)\n  - 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Seemingly everything, from DMT to [magic](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/magic-mushroom-ingredient-passes-major-trial-paving-way-for-fda-approval-2000723399) mushrooms to (a personal favorite) [the trip-inducing venom of the Colorado River toad](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/psychedelic-toad-venom-depression-anxiety-treatment-1851461998), has seen its mettle tested in the lab in recent years.\n\nBut a sweeping new review scrutinizing the results of two dozen clinical trials has brought the volume down a little on that noise. A trio of psychiatric researchers from London, Philadelphia, and San Francisco have determined that, at least, some of the positive benefits attributed to psychedelics can be chalked up to the [placebo effect.](https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/why-do-placebos-work-1837983414)\n\nQuite simply, you can’t not know when you’re taking psychedelics. No matter how hard clinical researchers try, their patient volunteers (trust me) are always well aware (vividly aware, third eye opened) of the fact that they’re tripping.\n\nThat reality has put traditional antidepressants at a disadvantage in clinical studies. In these studies, researchers are much more capable of neutralizing a subject’s awareness that they’re taking the actual drug versus an inert placebo via various “blinding” or treatment-anonymizing strategies. So, in order to level the playing field, the team restricted their new meta-analysis to only “open label” trials of traditional antidepressants—meaning studies that did not include “blinding”—for a fairer comparison against clinical studies that have examined psychedelics as antidepressants.\n\n## About the same, no better\nPsychedelics and traditional antidepressants, the team found, performed more-or-less just as effectively as one another. In fact, traditional antidepressants appeared to just slightly outperform psychedelics by 0.3 units on a common depression-rating questionnaire for patients, the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale ([HAM-D](https:\/\/www.med.upenn.edu\/cbti\/assets\/user-content\/documents\/Hamilton%20Rating%20Scale%20for%20Depression%20\\(HAM-D\\).pdf)). The difference was not enough to prove either drug class as better in any statistically or clinically significant way, as they [reported](https:\/\/jamanetwork.com\/journals\/jamapsychiatry\/fullarticle\/2846479) their results in the journal JAMA Psychiatry on Wednesday.\n\n“Our results do not disprove the exciting results about psychedelic treatments,” study coauthor Balázs Szigeti, a clinical data scientist at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), emphasized to [New Scientist](https:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/2519824-psychedelics-may-be-no-better-than-antidepressants-for-depression\/). “We also show that psychedelics are effective at treating depression.”\n\n“It is just that they are not more effective than open-label traditional antidepressants,” he explained, “which feels underwhelming given the attention.”\n\n## But psychedelics hit differently\nTraditionally, whenever depression researchers have attempted to test psychedelics against a true inactive placebo, as a control, the mind-expanding drugs have dramatically outperformed.\n\nBased on a 17-item version of the HAM-D, researchers found that psychedelics typically scored a mean of 7.3 HAM-D units better than a placebo. Conventional antidepressants, by contrast, only fared about 2.4 HAM-D units better than their placebos.\n\nThe researchers combed through the peer-reviewed journal literature, considering and discarding nearly 600 studies before landing on the 24 that helped them develop a more fair basis of comparison. They focused on 16 open-label trials of traditional antidepressants, with a total of 7,921 patients, in which the participants were expressly told whether they were taking the real drug or the placebo. They then compared these to eight studies of psychedelics, with a total of 249 patients, in which patients really couldn’t help but notice which kind of pill they had swallowed.\n\nDespite all that effort, however, some researchers felt the team might have introduced errors by collating studies that could vary in terms of patient inclusion criteria, total sample size of the patient pool, and other factors.\n\nRobin Carhart-Harris, a professor of neurology and psychiatry at UCSF who was unaffiliated with the work, described the results to New Scientist as inconclusive.\n\n“It’s proposed as comparing apples with apples, when really it’s more like comparing apples with oranges,” said Carhart-Harris, whose own work has [compared](https:\/\/www.nejm.org\/doi\/full\/10.1056\/NEJMoa2032994) psychedelics to ordinary antidepressants head-on.\n\nClearly, a mind-expanding, higher consciousness will be needed to devise new testing methods that could finally remove these unintended biases from future psychedelics research. But for now, it’s not about the destination. It’s the trip.","meta_canonical":null}

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Meta Title	Scientists Pump the Brakes on Psychedelic Antidepressant Hype
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Boilerpipe Text	The hype has been deafening on psychedelics as a promising treatment for depression, sometimes justified, sometimes not. Seemingly everything, from DMT to magic mushrooms to (a personal favorite) the trip-inducing venom of the Colorado River toad , has seen its mettle tested in the lab in recent years. But a sweeping new review scrutinizing the results of two dozen clinical trials has brought the volume down a little on that noise. A trio of psychiatric researchers from London, Philadelphia, and San Francisco have determined that, at least, some of the positive benefits attributed to psychedelics can be chalked up to the placebo effect. Quite simply, you can’t not know when you’re taking psychedelics. No matter how hard clinical researchers try, their patient volunteers (trust me) are always well aware (vividly aware, third eye opened) of the fact that they’re tripping. That reality has put traditional antidepressants at a disadvantage in clinical studies. In these studies, researchers are much more capable of neutralizing a subject’s awareness that they’re taking the actual drug versus an inert placebo via various “blinding” or treatment-anonymizing strategies. So, in order to level the playing field, the team restricted their new meta-analysis to only “open label” trials of traditional antidepressants—meaning studies that did not include “blinding”—for a fairer comparison against clinical studies that have examined psychedelics as antidepressants. About the same, no better Psychedelics and traditional antidepressants, the team found, performed more-or-less just as effectively as one another. In fact, traditional antidepressants appeared to just slightly outperform psychedelics by 0.3 units on a common depression-rating questionnaire for patients, the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale ( HAM-D ). The difference was not enough to prove either drug class as better in any statistically or clinically significant way, as they reported their results in the journal JAMA Psychiatry on Wednesday. “Our results do not disprove the exciting results about psychedelic treatments,” study coauthor Balázs Szigeti, a clinical data scientist at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), emphasized to New Scientist . “We also show that psychedelics are effective at treating depression.” “It is just that they are not more effective than open-label traditional antidepressants,” he explained, “which feels underwhelming given the attention.” But psychedelics hit differently Traditionally, whenever depression researchers have attempted to test psychedelics against a true inactive placebo, as a control, the mind-expanding drugs have dramatically outperformed. Based on a 17-item version of the HAM-D, researchers found that psychedelics typically scored a mean of 7.3 HAM-D units better than a placebo. Conventional antidepressants, by contrast, only fared about 2.4 HAM-D units better than their placebos. The researchers combed through the peer-reviewed journal literature, considering and discarding nearly 600 studies before landing on the 24 that helped them develop a more fair basis of comparison. They focused on 16 open-label trials of traditional antidepressants, with a total of 7,921 patients, in which the participants were expressly told whether they were taking the real drug or the placebo. They then compared these to eight studies of psychedelics, with a total of 249 patients, in which patients really couldn’t help but notice which kind of pill they had swallowed. Despite all that effort, however, some researchers felt the team might have introduced errors by collating studies that could vary in terms of patient inclusion criteria, total sample size of the patient pool, and other factors. Robin Carhart-Harris, a professor of neurology and psychiatry at UCSF who was unaffiliated with the work, described the results to New Scientist as inconclusive. “It’s proposed as comparing apples with apples, when really it’s more like comparing apples with oranges,” said Carhart-Harris, whose own work has compared psychedelics to ordinary antidepressants head-on. Clearly, a mind-expanding, higher consciousness will be needed to devise new testing methods that could finally remove these unintended biases from future psychedelics research. But for now, it’s not about the destination. It’s the trip.
Markdown	![](https://sb.scorecardresearch.com/p?c1=2&c2=39636245&cv=3.9.1&cj=1) [Skip to content](https://gizmodo.com/scientists-pump-the-brakes-on-psychedelic-antidepressant-hype-2000735810#main) [Gizmodo](https://gizmodo.com/) - [Latest](https://gizmodo.com/latest) - [News](https://gizmodo.com/tech) - [Reviews](https://gizmodo.com/reviews) - [io9](https://gizmodo.com/io9) - [Science](https://gizmodo.com/science) - [Deals](https://gizmodo.com/deals) - [Downloads](https://gizmodo.com/download/) [Newsletters](https://gizmodo.com/newsletters) [Health](https://gizmodo.com/science/health) # Scientists Pump the Brakes on Psychedelic Antidepressant Hype Turns out, it's very hard to remove a test subject's own bias about their psychedelic test treatment. By [Matthew Phelan](https://gizmodo.com/author/matthew-phelan) Published March 20, 2026 Reading time 3 minutes ![Psilocybe mushrooms, seen above, are just one of the many psychedelics under review to treat depression. ](https://gizmodo.com/app/uploads/2025/10/magicmushrooms.jpg) Psilocybe mushrooms, seen above, are just one of the many psychedelics under review to treat depression. © Fotema via Shutterstock Read Later Read Later [Comments (4)](https://gizmodo.com/scientists-pump-the-brakes-on-psychedelic-antidepressant-hype-2000735810#comments) The hype has been deafening on psychedelics as a promising treatment for depression, sometimes justified, sometimes not. Seemingly everything, from DMT to [magic](https://gizmodo.com/magic-mushroom-ingredient-passes-major-trial-paving-way-for-fda-approval-2000723399) mushrooms to (a personal favorite) [the trip-inducing venom of the Colorado River toad](https://gizmodo.com/psychedelic-toad-venom-depression-anxiety-treatment-1851461998), has seen its mettle tested in the lab in recent years. But a sweeping new review scrutinizing the results of two dozen clinical trials has brought the volume down a little on that noise. A trio of psychiatric researchers from London, Philadelphia, and San Francisco have determined that, at least, some of the positive benefits attributed to psychedelics can be chalked up to the [placebo effect.](https://gizmodo.com/why-do-placebos-work-1837983414) Quite simply, you can’t not know when you’re taking psychedelics. No matter how hard clinical researchers try, their patient volunteers (trust me) are always well aware (vividly aware, third eye opened) of the fact that they’re tripping. That reality has put traditional antidepressants at a disadvantage in clinical studies. In these studies, researchers are much more capable of neutralizing a subject’s awareness that they’re taking the actual drug versus an inert placebo via various “blinding” or treatment-anonymizing strategies. So, in order to level the playing field, the team restricted their new meta-analysis to only “open label” trials of traditional antidepressants—meaning studies that did not include “blinding”—for a fairer comparison against clinical studies that have examined psychedelics as antidepressants. ## About the same, no better Psychedelics and traditional antidepressants, the team found, performed more-or-less just as effectively as one another. In fact, traditional antidepressants appeared to just slightly outperform psychedelics by 0.3 units on a common depression-rating questionnaire for patients, the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale ([HAM-D](https://www.med.upenn.edu/cbti/assets/user-content/documents/Hamilton%20Rating%20Scale%20for%20Depression%20\(HAM-D\).pdf)). The difference was not enough to prove either drug class as better in any statistically or clinically significant way, as they [reported](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2846479) their results in the journal JAMA Psychiatry on Wednesday. “Our results do not disprove the exciting results about psychedelic treatments,” study coauthor Balázs Szigeti, a clinical data scientist at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), emphasized to [New Scientist](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2519824-psychedelics-may-be-no-better-than-antidepressants-for-depression/). “We also show that psychedelics are effective at treating depression.” “It is just that they are not more effective than open-label traditional antidepressants,” he explained, “which feels underwhelming given the attention.” ## But psychedelics hit differently Traditionally, whenever depression researchers have attempted to test psychedelics against a true inactive placebo, as a control, the mind-expanding drugs have dramatically outperformed. Based on a 17-item version of the HAM-D, researchers found that psychedelics typically scored a mean of 7.3 HAM-D units better than a placebo. Conventional antidepressants, by contrast, only fared about 2.4 HAM-D units better than their placebos. The researchers combed through the peer-reviewed journal literature, considering and discarding nearly 600 studies before landing on the 24 that helped them develop a more fair basis of comparison. They focused on 16 open-label trials of traditional antidepressants, with a total of 7,921 patients, in which the participants were expressly told whether they were taking the real drug or the placebo. They then compared these to eight studies of psychedelics, with a total of 249 patients, in which patients really couldn’t help but notice which kind of pill they had swallowed. Despite all that effort, however, some researchers felt the team might have introduced errors by collating studies that could vary in terms of patient inclusion criteria, total sample size of the patient pool, and other factors. Robin Carhart-Harris, a professor of neurology and psychiatry at UCSF who was unaffiliated with the work, described the results to New Scientist as inconclusive. “It’s proposed as comparing apples with apples, when really it’s more like comparing apples with oranges,” said Carhart-Harris, whose own work has [compared](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2032994) psychedelics to ordinary antidepressants head-on. Clearly, a mind-expanding, higher consciousness will be needed to devise new testing methods that could finally remove these unintended biases from future psychedelics research. But for now, it’s not about the destination. It’s the trip. Explore more on these topics [antidepressants](https://gizmodo.com/tag/antidepressants) [Psychedelics](https://gizmodo.com/tag/psychedelics) Share this story ## Sign up for our newsletters Subscribe and interact with our community, get up to date with our customised Newsletters and much more. 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Readable Markdown	The hype has been deafening on psychedelics as a promising treatment for depression, sometimes justified, sometimes not. Seemingly everything, from DMT to [magic](https://gizmodo.com/magic-mushroom-ingredient-passes-major-trial-paving-way-for-fda-approval-2000723399) mushrooms to (a personal favorite) [the trip-inducing venom of the Colorado River toad](https://gizmodo.com/psychedelic-toad-venom-depression-anxiety-treatment-1851461998), has seen its mettle tested in the lab in recent years. But a sweeping new review scrutinizing the results of two dozen clinical trials has brought the volume down a little on that noise. A trio of psychiatric researchers from London, Philadelphia, and San Francisco have determined that, at least, some of the positive benefits attributed to psychedelics can be chalked up to the [placebo effect.](https://gizmodo.com/why-do-placebos-work-1837983414) Quite simply, you can’t not know when you’re taking psychedelics. No matter how hard clinical researchers try, their patient volunteers (trust me) are always well aware (vividly aware, third eye opened) of the fact that they’re tripping. That reality has put traditional antidepressants at a disadvantage in clinical studies. In these studies, researchers are much more capable of neutralizing a subject’s awareness that they’re taking the actual drug versus an inert placebo via various “blinding” or treatment-anonymizing strategies. So, in order to level the playing field, the team restricted their new meta-analysis to only “open label” trials of traditional antidepressants—meaning studies that did not include “blinding”—for a fairer comparison against clinical studies that have examined psychedelics as antidepressants. ## About the same, no better Psychedelics and traditional antidepressants, the team found, performed more-or-less just as effectively as one another. In fact, traditional antidepressants appeared to just slightly outperform psychedelics by 0.3 units on a common depression-rating questionnaire for patients, the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale ([HAM-D](https://www.med.upenn.edu/cbti/assets/user-content/documents/Hamilton%20Rating%20Scale%20for%20Depression%20\(HAM-D\).pdf)). The difference was not enough to prove either drug class as better in any statistically or clinically significant way, as they [reported](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2846479) their results in the journal JAMA Psychiatry on Wednesday. “Our results do not disprove the exciting results about psychedelic treatments,” study coauthor Balázs Szigeti, a clinical data scientist at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), emphasized to [New Scientist](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2519824-psychedelics-may-be-no-better-than-antidepressants-for-depression/). “We also show that psychedelics are effective at treating depression.” “It is just that they are not more effective than open-label traditional antidepressants,” he explained, “which feels underwhelming given the attention.” ## But psychedelics hit differently Traditionally, whenever depression researchers have attempted to test psychedelics against a true inactive placebo, as a control, the mind-expanding drugs have dramatically outperformed. Based on a 17-item version of the HAM-D, researchers found that psychedelics typically scored a mean of 7.3 HAM-D units better than a placebo. Conventional antidepressants, by contrast, only fared about 2.4 HAM-D units better than their placebos. The researchers combed through the peer-reviewed journal literature, considering and discarding nearly 600 studies before landing on the 24 that helped them develop a more fair basis of comparison. They focused on 16 open-label trials of traditional antidepressants, with a total of 7,921 patients, in which the participants were expressly told whether they were taking the real drug or the placebo. They then compared these to eight studies of psychedelics, with a total of 249 patients, in which patients really couldn’t help but notice which kind of pill they had swallowed. Despite all that effort, however, some researchers felt the team might have introduced errors by collating studies that could vary in terms of patient inclusion criteria, total sample size of the patient pool, and other factors. Robin Carhart-Harris, a professor of neurology and psychiatry at UCSF who was unaffiliated with the work, described the results to New Scientist as inconclusive. “It’s proposed as comparing apples with apples, when really it’s more like comparing apples with oranges,” said Carhart-Harris, whose own work has [compared](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2032994) psychedelics to ordinary antidepressants head-on. Clearly, a mind-expanding, higher consciousness will be needed to devise new testing methods that could finally remove these unintended biases from future psychedelics research. But for now, it’s not about the destination. It’s the trip.
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