I am of course, just kidding.

this is a thread for me to hear your thoughts on being payed £40 to taking a commonly administered low oral dosage antipsychotic drug whilst being MRI scanned...

Better than a poke in the eye, as my dad would say.

Someone asked me yesterday how I'd feel about selling one of my kidneys for £50,000...

i'd rather be payed £40 to be gently poked in the eye than to test the effects of antipsychotic drugs!

Have you been offered this £40, or is it just an abstract dilemma?

I have seriously started to consider taking part in clinical trials to help with money while I'm at university. But obviously not selling a kidney, that'd be a bit extreme. That said, money isn't a problem at the moment... so I don't know.

Any advice?

Do the psychological tests - you can't see the scars! I did them a bit at university and they were generally really straightforward and interesting and not dangerous. One I didn't like involved looking at gruesome photos of injuries, but I kept shutting my eyes so that was OK (although it messed up their results).

Don't worry, i'm doing the psychological ones as well. The other day i got a fake scar put on and i had to talk to a woman about life at uni. THE WOMAN DIDN'T KNOW IT WAS A FAKE SCAR. I also looked at some gruesome scar pictures.
I'm still not sure about this one, but it isn't an abstract situation.



I suppose really i should get a real job.

Where was your fake scar? On your face? Did she keep looking at it? That's really interesting.

I did one once where they flashed up words on the screen too fast to be readable, and then showed pictures of black people and white people. The 'bad' unreadable words primed me for the black people and my reactions were quicker (and vice versa), which meant I secretly associated black people with BAD and white people with GOOD.

I was quite disturbed by that, but the psychologist woman said it only meant that society/media etc had warped my mind, not that I was evil.

it was on my cheek. The woman was really nice. She put a latex paste on my face, then pinched my cheek in order to fold the skin together, if you know what i mean. it didn't look gross or anything. I don't think she looked at it once, i think actually she made more eye contact than normal, maybe to try and stop herself from staring. Or maybe she just generally makes a lot of eye contact. It was quite interesting. and i was entered into a £50 draw!

I won £50 on Premium Bonds a couple of years ago...

The most interesting thing I ever got offered whilst a student was taking part in trials of new cereal bars - I think they were the forerunners of Rice Krispies Squares.

I wouldn't even mind that... I've watched so much CSI that I'm fairly well desensitized to most things. Which, when you think about it, is actually quite worrying.

Personally I couldn't do that at any price. But my advice (which is pretty prosaic compared to everything else on offer above) would be to do a bit of web research and see if you can find the views of people who have done it before...

it's run by psych. students at the university (which makes me feel better than a nasty copmpany) and it's only open to other uni students. It's all been approved by the university board of ethics and safety and everything.
It's commonly administered and stuff, so it's already in use. I emailed asking what the drug was, so i can read up before i go on down. I might not even be accepted.

I chickened out in the end. Too scary!

luckily i have a great job now, working in an office for one day a week, moving bits of paper around.