Pills That Stop Racism. A Real Study

We’ve become an extremely pill dependent society.  There are pills for weight loss, pills for hair loss, pills for heartburn, pills to negate the effects experienced by pills people have previously taken.  So much faith has been put into the power of medication a group of researchers now feel they’ve discovered a pill that will end a person’s racist tendencies.  I wonder if they could work on making a pill that would end researchers desire to do such studies and thinking we regular people actually believe what they say.  My extremely valuable insights are in italics.

According to the Press Association

Researchers from Oxford University released a new study in the international medical journal Psychopharmacology showing that taking propranolol reduces “implicit negative racial bias.”  Experimental psychologist Dr. Sylvia Terbeck, from Oxford University, who led the study published said: “Our results offer new evidence about the processes in the brain that shape implicit racial bias.

I wonder if they could discover evidence about the processes in the brain that causes someone to implicitly feel such a study is actually not worth the money paid to do it.

“Implicit racial bias can occur even in people with a sincere belief in equality. Given the key role that such implicit attitudes appear to play in discrimination against other ethnic groups and the widespread use of propranolol for medical purposes, our findings are also of considerable ethical interest.”

They’re kidding us, right?  I love the “even in people with a sincere belief in equality.”  What does this mean?  These participants believed everyone is equal but for having a brain that processes discrimination, they wouldn’t be against it.  I doubt it’s possible to invent a pill that would make this stuff believable.

Thirty-six white people were used in the study.  Half of them received propranolol and the other half got a placebo.  Researchers then used a feeling thermometer to rate how “warm” they felt toward different groups.  Each volunteer was asked to undertake a “racial Implicit Association Test” (IAT) one to two hours after taking propranolol or the placebo. 

They did an experiment where all 36 participants were white.  Interesting how they had an experiment about discrimination by discriminating.  (Sarcasm alert since an anti-sarcasm pill has yet to be invented.)  Hey, I guess with 36 white people they were able to gain knowledge about every aspect of discrimination in every race around the world.  Who knew that a planet with billions of people could have their behavior explained by 36 white people?  Experiments like this make me wonder just how hard being a researcher could possibly be.

The test involved categorizing positive and negative words, and pictures of black and white individuals on a computer screen.  They also found that there was no significant difference between the propranolol and placebo groups toward religious or sexual prejudice.

What about age discrimination, gender discrimination, ugly discrimination or ten-letters –in-the-last-name discrimination?  Does “no significant differences” mean these 36 white people hated everyone equally?  Is it me or is this a bit limiting?  Will there need to be a pill created for each type of discrimination?

“Man I hate white people.”

“But you’re white.”

“Oops, guess I accidentally took the self-hating race pill by mistake.”

“Here take the love white people pill and you should be okay.”

“Thanks.”

“The main finding of our study is that propranolol significantly reduced implicit but not explicit racial bias,” researchers concluded.

These researchers think we all have the IQ of a one celled animal.  What does this mean?  The participants would not think discriminatory thoughts but just acted discriminatorily?  Maybe the 36 white people were biased at a subconscious level against researchers doing senseless work.  I don’t know what’s worse.  People doing such research and thinking it has some value or the media running stories about it because they think it has some value.  Could someone please make a truth and reality pill for the researchers and media people responsible for bringing this to the public? 

Here is a link to the article

https://washington.cbslocal.com/2012/03/13/study-finds-heart-disease-drug-combats-racism/

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