A year ago, a startling finding rocked the glow stick, techno music and adult pacifier industries: The drug ecstasy can mess you up real bad.
How bad? The study released by Johns Hopkins University last September said that one hit could permanently damage the brain and even cause Parkinson's disease. Previous studies had only shown that "E," also known as "X," could make you feel really nice and want to touch things.
But Johns Hopkins found startling new results the only way science knows how - by injecting the substance into baboons. (The university was able to appease PETA protesters by saying they only intended to make the baboons have a really, really good time.)
But the baboons didn't enjoy getting their roll on. They tweaked big time. In addition to saying the techno still sucked, their brains were messed up. The bad guys from "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" later refused to eat the brains.
"It really sucks," said Maharaja Zalim Singh, the annoying little kid with the voodoo doll of Dr. Jones. "Those scientists ruined my favorite dessert." The study tasted pretty sweet to the anti-ecstasy movement, though. It wasn't long before they used the results to scare ravers straight and deter people who were thinking about trying the party drug.
But the scientists aren't having anything as sweet as chilled monkey brains these days. They're eating C. brachyrhynchos, which is the scientific name for crow. That's a scientist joke, for all you scientists out there.
Here's why: It recently came out that the monkeys got speed instead of ecstasy, thus explaining how they were able to fling twice as much poop during the tests.
That means the study was wrong - ecstasy can't kill you in one hit. Spikes can still kill Mega Man in one hit, but according to the star of the popular video game series of the '80s, "X" is significantly less dangerous.
How could scientists at the premier medical school in the country mess up this one?
It's simple, really. The Johns Hopkins researchers rely on suppliers to provide them with chemicals for their experiments. They also rely on the suppliers to tell them what the chemicals are. For example, a vial that says "ecstasy" should contain ecstasy, not methamphetamine.
Lead researcher George Ricaurte said it best when he told The Observer, "We're scientists, not chemists."
In light of that statement, the National Association for the Respect of Chemists has adopted a new motto: "Chemists: We're scientists, too. Only with chemicals."
Regardless of whether chemists are actual scientists, this mistake proves once and for all that drug dealers are smarter than most smart people (i.e. scientists).
Because of the horrible mistake, Science, the journal that originally published the study, will issue a retraction this week. Next week, I will publish a retraction for misquoting Mega Man and the Maharaja Zalim Singh.
The problem with publishing retractions is that it makes us look like we didn't know what we were talking about in the first place. And that's never fun. But here's the difference: I was making two dorky pop culture references, while Johns Hopkins was trying to pass off a botched study as fact, which is a serious error.
Moreover, the people who propagandized the misinformation that one hit of ecstasy can kill you will not be publishing a retraction. Instead, they will probably shelf that commercial and release one saying that meth causes Parkinson's.
When it comes to drug education, the only lesson here is that from now on, kids will doubt the legitimacy of information on the anti-drug commercials targeted to them. And it's troubling to think that with misinformation like this, kids might learn more about ecstasy from Eminem's "Drug Ballad" than they will in school.
If not, they will buy the information from a drug dealer for $35 or so.
After writing this column, Tim Agne had his heart ripped out and was lowered into a pit of fire. Reach him at tim.agne@asu.edu.
