Making psychedelics researchable: science, medicine, and the social construction of legitimacy

Abstract

Psychedelic drugs have moved repeatedly between scientific legitimacy, cultural controversy, prohibition, and renewed medical interest. This article develops the concept of “researchability” to explain how social and institutional forces shape whether psychedelics can be studied, by whom, through which methods, and with what forms of legitimacy. Tracing psychedelic research from the mid-20th century through the contemporary “psychedelic renaissance,” the analysis examines changing scientific paradigms, regulatory standards, moral panic, criminalization, nonprofit and philanthropic infrastructures, medicalization, biomedicalization, and pharmaceutical development. Describing the “selective acceleration” of psychedelic science in recent years–including the cases of veterans, popular culture, federal coordination, the influence of pharmaceutical corporations, and the emerging psychedelic market–the article argues that psychedelic researchability is historically contingent and socially constructed: public meanings shape legal, scientific, and funding conditions, while scientific and regulatory institutions, in turn, reshape the meanings and forms of knowledge considered credible. The contemporary expansion of psychedelic science has increased researchability while also privileging interventions that can be standardized, quantified, regulated, and commercialized, raising questions about whether these characteristics necessarily align with those most important to therapeutic efficacy.