I'd say no, with caveats. 1/n

(Nothing cures boredom like methodology threads...) https://twitter.com/thenewimpostor/status/1250175842803687425

Social researchers who consume & experience a drug in its context acquire tacit knowledge that is impossible to gain by any other method. By definition, tacit knowledge is gained thru direct experience. It's fundamentally inaccessible through interviews/observation alone.

Therefore:
If research goal=inward experience of a drug's effects, without question this would be impossible without engaging in the experience of interest. Tacit knowledge about experience of a drug can't be transferred fully through interviews. Much gets lost in translation.

But the primary goal for social researchers is analysis, not experience. The goal is to produce insight into the social aspects of a given experience. While experience is inward in nature, social scientific products are outward accounts of those experiences and their contexts.

So, while acquiring tacit knowledge may help you produce a strong analysis, it doesn't guarantee one& while direct experience can mean greater validity, it doesn't eliminate the problem of tacit knowledge lost in translation-it displaces the translation& loss to the writing phase

Finally there are lots of great works by social researchers who for various reasons do not, or cannot, acquire the same experiences and tacit knowledge of participants in. communities they study.

A key qual research skill ability generate insight into social/cultural dimensions of practice without needing to be a practitioner. This is cultural competence means

One final point on drug research, which tends to be more politically fraught than other settings. The context of a researcher's inexperience with a drug matters. Abstaining as a means of maintaining analytic distance is not the same as abstaining out of disapproval etc...

And of course if you don't have the experience in a drug, the use of which you are hoping to understand-- it's vital to acknowledge that this lack of perspective threatens your analysis& and remedy that by enlisting experiential experts (ie community members) as collaborators.