Hello readers,
It has been a great while since I've posted in this blog, so I hope I haven't disappointed my followers with a lack of updates. Much surrounding my work has stayed the same, but I'm sure I can think of some things to post over the next few weeks to fill up some of the Internet real estate that I've claimed on this blogspot page.
I continue to work in the Res Lab at the NYSPI, continuing with the same experiment on marijuana withdrawal in conjunction with varenicline. I believe that I've been through about three rounds of the experimental cycle since I've started this blog in the Fall of 2013. The first study was called NIDA-146, and now we are working on completing NIDA-148 (I'm not sure if this means that there has been 48 rounds of the study so far, or even 148 rounds of the study (less likely). I do know that the titles of the study are in sequential order).
The fact that I've really only been working on the same study for the last 6 months reveals much about the pace of clinical research. I'm not sure how long Dr. Haney has been conducting this marijuana/varenicline study, or how long she intends to continue running the study. Just as in any scientific research, the objective is to collect a sample size large enough to evaluate a hypothesis with a certain statistical certainty. The trouble with clinical studies like this is that we are dealing with a topic that takes time to evaluate. The effects that we are trying to measure can only be observed over days and weeks, so we unfortunately can only collect data 4 subjects at a time, month by month. Patience is a virtue.
