The Elementary Kool-Aid Acid Test

In the early 1960’s, a psychologist named Gary Fisher carried out a radical experiment on severely emotionally disturbed children at a residential hospital in Southern California. Fisher believed these children’s behavioral problems could be traced back to profound trauma they had suffered in their early childhoods, but had never adequately processed. He thought very large doses of LSD might cure them.

Whether Fisher’s experiment was reckless or whether it was heroic depends on how you think about science, and what risks we’re willing to take in pursuit of something groundbreaking.