Joe Rogan on science: what the evidence says · JRE #1069
SUBJECT: SCIENCE
The short answer
Rogan reads/relays a claim from an article that chlorophyll eye drops (based on a chemical binding retinal opsin proteins) let a test subject identify dark-adapted figures with 100% accuracy versus about 30% for untreated subjects. The figures Rogan cites trace to a March 2015 self-experiment by the biohacker collective Science for the Masses, in which researcher Gabriel Licina had eye drops containing chlorin e6 (Ce6), a chlorophyll derivative, applied to his eyes and was then reportedly able to identify people and shapes in darkness with a 100% success rate versus roughly 33% for untreated controls.
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
Allowed him to pick up figures in the dark with 100% accuracy where non-treated test subjects could only make out to about 30%. That's pretty significant.
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
The figures Rogan cites trace to a March 2015 self-experiment by the biohacker collective Science for the Masses, in which researcher Gabriel Licina had eye drops containing chlorin e6 (Ce6), a chlorophyll derivative, applied to his eyes and was then reportedly able to identify people and shapes in darkness with a 100% success rate versus roughly 33% for untreated controls. This was a single-subject (n=1), self-published report, not a peer-reviewed clinical study, and it lacked a placebo arm, blinding, or independent replication. Separately, legitimate peer-reviewed research has since examined the underlying chemistry, showing that Ce6 can bind rhodopsin and alter its light-sensitivity properties in laboratory and computational models, which lends some biological plausibility to the concept but does not itself validate the specific 100%-versus-30% human vision-test numbers. No controlled human trial confirming those figures has been published in the scientific literature.