PT458 Imran Khan When Science, Society, and Policy Collide
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In this episode, Joe interviews Imran Khan: Executive Director of the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics.
Khan shares his journey into the world of science and policymaking, beginning with science journalism and inspired by David Nutt\\u2019s famous \\u2018Equicy\\u2019 paper and subsequent firing for telling the truth. Realizing how strong the disconnect was between political and science worlds, his goal became to represent science when it comes under attack; using campaigning, lobbying, advocacy work, etc., and essentially becoming a translator between science and society \\u2013 bringing these overly complicated concepts down to a level every day culture can understand. At UC Berkeley, he\\u2019s focusing on research, training scientists to be better communicators, educating the public on the benefits of psychedelics, and trying to make research more trustworthy.
He discusses the word \\u201cscience\\u201d and how it\\u2019s used to describe lots of things; the hard problem of consciousness; color constancy, perception, and the influence of priors; the risk of abuse in all therapies; trust and why people don\\u2019t always \\u201ctrust the science\\u201d; the risks of putting too much faith in experience insights; the word \\u201csacred\\u201d; and more. He concludes by discussing the findings of the first UC Berkeley psychedelic survey, which revealed public sentiments and attitudes towards psychedelics, and, while mostly positive, truly proved the need for people like Khan to be out there educating the public.
Click here to head to the show notes page.\\xa0