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# Why is Professor Dave Promoting Psychedelic Grifters?
- URL: https://ghost.psymposia.com/why-is-professor-dave-promoting-psychedelic-grifters/
- Published: 2026-05-02T20:26:12.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-29T01:01:55.000Z
- Description: Professor Dave is a well-known science communicator and prolific debunker of pseudoscience.
- Author: Mike Elliott
- Tags: Videos, #youtube, #youtube-transcript

Professor Dave is a well-known science communicator and prolific debunker of pseudoscience. Despite building his platform on combatting misinformation, he continues joining conversations that promote false claims about the FDA’s rejection of MDMA-assisted therapy — one of which he republished on his own channel. In this episode, Psymposia responds to the latest of these conversations on the Danny Jones Podcast. We encourage Professor Dave to do his homework on the psychedelic industry before aligning himself with the very pseudoscience promoters he's built his career opposing.

For more on Hamilton Morris's disinformation campaign, check out our series "Hamilton's Pharma Cope": [https://youtu.be/-yi9iQ4yNcM](https://youtu.be/-yi9iQ4yNcM?ref=ghost.psymposia.com)

## Transcript

*This transcript was generated automatically from YouTube's captions, then cleaned up by removing filler words, repeated words and background sounds. It may still contain errors.*

[\[00:00\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DRsPEchTXY&t=0s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Professor Dave, his whole brand is debunking misinformation, pseudocience, and he's been on at least two podcasts now in which pretty egregious misinformation has been spread about our organization. A bunch of people left comments saying that that was not true and I didn't look into it further. At the point where you're on multiple podcasts where this is coming up and it's becoming a larger area of science that the general public is interested in. As a science communicator, I think it's really important that you get your facts straight on some of this stuff and understand what's going on. Hey, welcome to the Psymposia podcast. I'm Russell with Psymposia and I'm here today with my colleague Normmy.

[\[00:48\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DRsPEchTXY&t=48s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Today we're discussing a recent interview that came out on the Danny Jones podcast. Danny Jones being a popular YouTuber, podcaster, 1.2 million subscribers. He recently did a podcast with Professor Dave, another very popular YouTuber. We'll get into a little bit of who he is, but the reason we're talking about this is that Professor Dave, his whole brand is debunking misinformation, pseudocience, and he's been on at least two podcasts now in which pretty egregious misinformation has been spread about our organization. Those podcasts being Hamilton Morris's podcast, which we've discussed in our Hamilton's Pharmarmacoupe series. In fact, this episode came up. There was a group that was paid to run this campaign to frighten people with the idea that MDMA psychotherapy would essentially promote an epidemic of sexual abuse by psychotherapists.

[\[01:42\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DRsPEchTXY&t=102s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And then recently on this Danny Jones podcast, they get into a whole bunch of misinformation that we're going to discuss today. I wanted to give kind of a brief explainer on who Professor Dave is because I think it's relevant to why his appearances on these podcast episodes where he's kind of allowing them to spread this misinformation is relevant. He's actually very in line with a lot of our critiques and he talks about a lot of the same people who we've had issues with in the past. These are like some examples of people he's criticized before on his own channel. So, he's got an episode here. Brett and Eric Weinstein, Brothers in Fraudulence. Those are people we've talked about. RFK Jr. is dangerously stupid. Quantum mysticism is stupid. Deepo Chopra, Spirit Medicine, Actualize.org, and the great pseudoarchchaeology debunking of Graham Hancock.

[\[02:34\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DRsPEchTXY&t=154s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Like, he's talked a lot of \[expletive\] about Graham Hancock and the sort of rivalry between Graham Hancock and Flint Dibble. As you are well aware, I enjoy debunking pseudocience and charlatans of all varieties. And one area I have yet to tackle is pseudoarchchaeology. Flint is one of the very few scientists who has pushed back against this movement, primarily in the form of a debate with Graham Hancock on Joe Rogan's show. So that's a little background on him and why what we're going to be talking about today is so frustrating in light of the rest of the content that he produces. So, for context, this Danny Jones interview that Professor Dave was on, I just want to preface with was actually mostly Professor Dave pushing back on a lot of what Danny Jones had to say.

[\[03:20\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DRsPEchTXY&t=200s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And I don't want because we're discussing Professor Dave in regards to the spread of misinformation. I don't want it to come off like I don't like his content. I think he actually is a good science communicator and does a lot of good work in debunking pseudocience and people like that. like we just went over with some of the examples of his work above and the context for what we're about to discuss in which the misinformation comes up begins with him actually pushing back on Danny Jones. So this is sort of a place where the some of this conversation begins. So we'll just jump into this little video here. If you look at history and you read history, go look at the Iraq war. Do we trust these people? Okay. Geopolitics is completely different. It's the news is selling it to us. Sure. Sure.

[\[04:06\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DRsPEchTXY&t=246s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) But that's why again I'm going to keep bringing it back to this. The consensus of the global scientific community is what you go by. When you have somebody that's contradicting that, you want to be skeptical of that person. Right? So it's it become Ivormect doesn't work against COVID. Not because Fizer said so. It's because all of the scientists all over the world say so. Right. These guys are still talking about Ivormech. Yeah. But what he's saying there, he's pushing back on Danny Jones who was like questioning vaccine narratives and questioning like big pharma and their narratives and stuff. And Danny Jones is saying like, "Do you trust the government? Like look at the Iraq war. Do you trust these big corporations?" And what Dr. Dave is saying there rightly is that no, we trust the scientific consensus. like the larger scientific population is saying that Ivormectton doesn't work the way conspiracy theorists think it does and that's actually him like pushing back.

[\[05:02\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DRsPEchTXY&t=302s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) I just wanted to show that as an example of like this is actually like a good on Dr. Dave's part. He is pushing back and he is kind of telling Danny where he thinks he's wrong from the get-go here. And then just before we cut to sort of the meat where Danny starts talking about us right after that Ivormekin comment the show quickly cuts to this which I just thought was kind of funny. It become Ivormectin doesn't work against COVID not because fizer said so it's because all of the scientists all over the world say so right there's a big difference there. Mhm. Aminita miscarriia is the third most popular micro doed psychoactive in the US with over 3 million people using it. That's more than LSD or DMT, but there's a wave of dangerous gas station fakes out there. So, who knows how many people were cheated out of the real deal.

[\[05:49\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DRsPEchTXY&t=349s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) I'm in We don't even have to finish it. It just 3 million people. 3 million people doing scary. Okay. All right. Oh my god. Are ads that difficult to come by if you have a channel that big? Like sponsors are that difficult? I just think it's funny to see him cut to an Ammonita Mascaria commercial in light of what he goes on to talk about like psychedelic pharma conspiracy theories and whatnot. So, like I said, the issue in this episode is not all of Professor Dave's content, a lot of it is pushing back against Danny, but one of the areas he doesn't push back on Danny is specifically about us. when Danny, who has had Hamilton Morris on his podcast, who has had a former writer from Psymposia, Travis Kitchens, on his podcast, both sort of discussing conspiracy theories about our organization that we broke down in great detail on our Hamilton's Pharmarmacoupe series.

[\[06:46\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DRsPEchTXY&t=406s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And Professor Dave just kind of lets him talk and essentially ends up co-signing a little bit of what he says by not pushing back or admitting that he kind of refuses to look into the situation. So I'll just play the first part of that clip here. Money's coming from every I mean, it's just it's very easy to just go money, money, money. Okay, money came from a thing. It come It's like it's the most the number one common denominator with most of this stuff. And it doesn't have to be just like financial incentives. It can also be like personal vendettas. I heard you talk with Hamilton about this and I've heard he's talked with me about this on this podcast is there's like a really famous psilocybin study or MDMA study where there was this rich family who literally paid millions of dollars to buy podcasts and propaganda to sabotage this MDMA study and like the public perception of MDMA.

[\[07:36\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DRsPEchTXY&t=456s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) It's very interesting because a bunch of people left comments saying that that was not true and I didn't look into it further. So I'm not sure. Yeah. I don't know. It's just like everything that Danny just said it doesn't exist. I almost have to go back to listen to it because it was just like one after the other of he doesn't know what he's talking about. It was like every point what was the first point he said? So he didn't know if it was psilocybin or MDMA. Can you play it again? Actually, let's listen to it again. Yeah, totally. It come. It's like it's the most the number one common denominator with most of this stuff. And it doesn't have to be just like financial incentives. It can also be like personal vendettas. I heard you talk with Hamilton about this and I've heard he's talked with me about this on this podcast is there's like a really famous psilocybin study or MDMA study where there was this rich family who literally paid millions of dollars to So there's one paid millions of dollars

[\[08:36\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DRsPEchTXY&t=516s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) What does he claim that paid millions of dollars to do what? To sabotage it with podcast. here. I'll buy podcast and propaganda to sabotage this MDMA study and like the So that's they're talking about us. They're saying that we were paid millions. Yeah. They're talking about the Sarlo Foundation and us. Yeah. Which that's not true of MDMA. It's very interesting because a bunch of people left comments saying that that was not true. He has no idea what he is talking about. Like none of that is none of that ever happened. And then you have Professor Dave here saying that you know in fact people reached out to me and left comments saying that none of this was true.

[\[09:26\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DRsPEchTXY&t=566s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And I as a famous pseudocience and misinformation debunker didn't look into it. And this is an unfortunate pattern with people who have conversations with influencers like Hamilton Morris and Danny Jones about this stuff where they will kind of just consume whatever narrative they're telling them and then when we the actual source that they're discussing reaches out to them, they won't follow up and they won't look into it. This happened with Andrew Callahan on channel 5 who hosted Hamilton. Let him spew a bunch of conspiracies and then when we reached out saying, "Hey, this isn't true. we can pretty easily debunk this information. Never heard back. Yeah, we reached out to Andrew and his team on September 29th of 2025\. We wrote, "Andrew and Channel 5 team, we're writing because your channel published an interview with Hamilton Morris making several alarming false claims about Psymposia and its members.

[\[10:20\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DRsPEchTXY&t=620s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) These claims are all easily disproven, but we never received a chance to comment on any of them. We reached out a second time in October prior to the publication of our psychedelic syndicate series. Neither email has received any kind of response. The next slide I have here is I had reached out to Professor Dave because he had been on that podcast with Hamilton saying, "Hey, we really like your work at Psymposia and we have watched your video with Hamilton, which he spews a bunch of misinformation. As someone who is a misinformation debunker famously, you might be interested in this like detailed series we put together with all the receipts about why he what he's saying is incorrect." Dave responded said, "Interesting. You should post that as a comment with a link in the comments of our my conversation with Hamilton that's uploaded on YouTube."

[\[11:07\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DRsPEchTXY&t=667s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And so I did, and that was in March. This Danny Jones podcast came out in April where he's saying, "Yeah, people actually did reach out to me and say none of that's correct." But, but I just didn't look into it. A bunch of people left comments saying that that was not true. And I didn't look into it further. I think a lot of these guys it's like they sort of revere or they look up to or they just trust Hamilton as being like a you know a really good source of knowledge without knowing how far off the deep end that he's gone and he can't be wrong you know he has to know what he's talking about he's had a show on Vice whereas like in the psychedelic research space he's increasingly like people just write Hamilton off people who I talk to I don't think they really want to say it publicly because it's known that Hamilton is so toxic, such like a toxic guy.

[\[12:02\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DRsPEchTXY&t=722s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) They don't want to get into drama with him. Yeah. I don't know. I It's like you can ask a lot of researchers in this space. They'll they don't want anything to do with him. And to me, it's like even if you had this conversation with Hamilton and sort of bought what he was putting down, the fact that you went on Danny Jones podcast and pushed back on a lot of his conspiracy theories and he happens to be pedalling the same narrative Hamilton was, like, shouldn't that sort of tip you off that maybe there's an issue with that narrative there? Yeah. And again, like, not many people really know what's even going on in the psychedelic space. I think a lot of people just kind of heard about it somewhat recently with the executive order. They have no idea. I've listened to a bunch of takes on some more mainstream podcasts. People don't know what to make of it. They don't even look deeply into it.

[\[12:49\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DRsPEchTXY&t=769s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) They think there's some kind of drug legalization, you know, associated with her. This is somehow like an end of prohibition. So, it's not surprising. And to the point of not knowing what's going on, I think this last clip you're going to love. Just based on the issues you had with the misinformation in the first clip. This is sort of the game of telephone that Danny Jones is playing when he discusses our story and the sort of controversy around the MDMA trials. There's a guy I've had on the show many times. He's a psyched he's a journalist and he really he follows all the psychedelic stuff. All the he follows like every single psychedelic study, every I mean he's very skeptical of the whole industry. He's talking about Travis Kitchens here, and he was a part of a really early psychedelic study in like the '9s, I think.

[\[13:41\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DRsPEchTXY&t=821s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And I don't think anyone, there's not too many people that are denying just by and large that psychedelics have no therapeutic application. I think the vast majority of the scientific community is on board with that's kind of true. I would say that's more or less true. I don't know about the vast majority of mainstream science, but yeah, that's generally true. The people who are like really opposed to it. Yeah, there are a handful of, you know, dedicated prohibitionist organizations, but it's somewhat supported. That's generally true. The story was with this spec on this specific case was and they threatened to sue Hamilton over that's false. That never happened. he exposed it was that there was and sorry just to add to that that never happened and as we addressed in the Hamilton's Pharmarmacoupe series Danny has been informed that never happened on his episode with Travis Kitchens.

[\[14:37\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DRsPEchTXY&t=877s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Travis specifically says no it wasn't really them being sued or anything. Did he get the season from Psymposia or Sarlos? No neither. So this is Danny after having recorded that episode any of these facts straight. I hate living in like this post-truth social media world where it's like the question that we all ask ourselves now. Are they this stupid? Or is it like you're intentionally trying to build a cult with your audience that they support you no matter what you say, what you get wrong, what you get right? You just don't care. You've just abandoned any truth seeeking behavior. threatened to sue Hamilton over this because he exposed it was that there was this study that was going on with MDMA and there was this guy who was really old.

[\[15:24\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DRsPEchTXY&t=924s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) He was a Holocaust survivor. some of the girls. Okay, so he is talking about George Sarlo here that were involved with this study somehow met him. Some of the girls I love the specifics here. Some of the girls and started giving him MDMA and he's like turned his life around. He was like in his late 90s and he was okay. So he wasn't in his late 90s. That's the first thing. His life did not get turned around. That's the second thing. It's actually the opposite of that. He was loving these girls. I'm sure they were like banging him or whatever and they were also giving him MDMA. These girls he's talking about are not multiple girls either. It was a single woman whose name was Vicky Doulai, a board member of the organization taking MDMA through clinical trials.

[\[16:10\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DRsPEchTXY&t=970s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) I don't know what he's talking about here. Yeah. So, there's a great piece by Olivia Goldhill in stat that's called the psychedelic therapist alle allegedly took millions from a Holocaust survivor highlighting worries about elder abuse. For some reason some people just don't want to read the story or don't care because it's inconvenient. I don't know. But that story outlines what happened. And he's like, "Fuck, I love this. You got how much money you guys want to sponsor your MDMA study?" And the granddaughter of this guy was like, "What the \[expletive\] He's giving these MDMA \[expletive\] my Okay, so it wasn't the granddaughter. Again, this is it's kind of embarrassing." Mhm. So she decided to take a bunch of her money to sabotage their stuff.

[\[17:01\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DRsPEchTXY&t=1021s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) So like it's not like some big cabal. It's not some big organ. It's like it it's just like kind of sad and pathetic watching people and it's like the opposite of what they're saying and they've convinced themselves of some story. This is like yet another case of watching people that live in like the unreality, you know, the upside down of what actually happened here. Here, I got to rewind that a few seconds here. Bunch of her money to sabotage their stuff. So, like it's not like some big cabal. It's not some big organization that's just trying to make profit. It's just a personal vend. The crazy part of this is like there is a cabal. There is a group of billionaires. They're not trying to sabotage MDMMA. They're actually on the other side of it. It's the SpaceX board and everyone who orbits around that.

[\[17:48\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DRsPEchTXY&t=1068s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Those are the people that are pushing this. You just saw it at the White House the other day. like that's the group that's pushing this. The people who were at the executive order sort of represent a few different clicks of what we outlined in the psychedelic syndicate. And it's just weird to see like a conspiracy theory dude like Danny like the real story here is the inversion of what he's saying, you know, but he just bought it the sort of red herring story that we were that there was this rich person that wanted to sabotage MDMA. They hired Psymposia as a mercenary to sabotage the whole process. And they believe in this. And they believe in it because partially because they laundered this story through the New York Times and Rachel Newer, but also because Hamilton has taken this like upon himself to push this narrative out there.

[\[18:35\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DRsPEchTXY&t=1115s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And Hamilton, he just doesn't know the stuff about Vicky Duly. And you can listen to him speak about that on some podcasts. I think he I think with Andrew Callahan, he didn't even know like the basic facts about Vicky Dai. I feel bad for people listening to this and think that this is like an actual thing. It also kind of amazes me that people like Danny Jones who are so concerned about like pharma narratives and being manipulated by big pharma or whatever like are completely willing to overlook the fact that Hamilton like left his journalism career behind to go work for the biggest psychedelic pharma company in the industry. That doesn't count. It doesn't count because it doesn't for some reason drug that they like because it's a drug that they like even though it's not really a drug that they like because it's like some synthetic psilocybin.

[\[19:21\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DRsPEchTXY&t=1161s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) It's going to be funny when these guys because right now it's there's sort of only three companies that'll probably make it out there right now which is Compass Thai and whatever the hell MindMed turned into. What do they Definium? Is that their name now? Yeah. And the game is for them to be acquired and like the only people who are going to likely acquire them is big pharma once they've gone, you know, they've gone through the finish line, yada. That's the objective here right now. So, I wonder if that's going to be like a hard pill to swallow for people when they see I don't know who it's going to be, but it's likely going to be some bigger at least that's the speculation right now people are talking about. So yeah, I don't know how they're going to feel when like a Johnson comes around and gobbles them up.

[\[20:07\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DRsPEchTXY&t=1207s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) It's just a personal vendetta, but like it's about money at the end of the day. Yeah. And there are frauds within, you know, within the medical establishment as well. And so you see, it's like it's just this like disappointing reality in which Professor Dave gets to go, "Yeah, I didn't look into this situation at all." and then just ends Danny Jones conspiracy rant about us by essentially co-signing and saying like, "Yeah, there's frauds all over the place. There's all these issues across the board like if you look for them." Yeah. And you know the crazy thing is like there didn't need to be any sabotage on the loose maps trials because they were so bad which the FDA ended up saying and when they released the complete response letter that like the researchers within LEO sabotaged themselves by cutting corners by the people that they were recruiting suppression of adverse events like it was a mess.

[\[21:02\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DRsPEchTXY&t=1262s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) The trials were a mess, which is why the other companies in the space like wanted to distance themselves from maps. They didn't want any of that \[expletive\] on their face. Like, it was a big, it was a known thing. The only people who didn't know it were the people who'd only follow the psychedelic industry from the outside. If you're on the inside and you're following these things on a day-to-day basis, and you're not in that bubble around maps and around Lyos, you would realize like what was actually going on there. But they did a really good job at everybody admires Doblin and they did a good job at selling it to everybody. Just speaking to Professor Dave here at the point where you're on multiple podcasts where this is coming up and it's becoming a larger area of science that the general public is interested in. As a science communicator, I think it's really important that you get your facts straight on some of this stuff and understand what's going on.

[\[21:54\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DRsPEchTXY&t=1314s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And like we showed in this video, like we've put the evidence in front of you. The complete response letter from the FDA of the trial they're talking about is available to the public. Like you can go find that online. It's not that long, easily readable to see why they actually rejected this application. The real controversy here, and there was sort of a sigh of relief when Lyos or they're now known as Brazilian when they didn't get the voucher last week from FDA. So, which would have expedited the review process with their application. Yeah. The big controversy here, the big conspiracy, the big like real \[expletive\] corrupt thing is if LICOS/resilient gets this through FDA without having to do another phase three trial.

[\[22:43\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DRsPEchTXY&t=1363s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) That's the corruption. Like that's the story. That's the corrupt pharma story right there. And these investors who are out a lot of money with kind of looose collapsing and it took the wind out of their sales of out of their other psychedelic investments. They scapegoed us and they've convinced everybody that like there wasn't this corrupt thing going on with Lyos. In conclusion, just implore people to educate yourselves on what's actually going on here and don't just buy these sort of drunken telephone narratives that are spread podcast to podcast and change every time you hear them. The information is out there. Check out our series Hamilton's Pharmarmacoupe. If you want to see the receipts for the fact that some of these narratives are completely incorrect about us, go look up the complete response letter for Lyos.

[\[23:32\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DRsPEchTXY&t=1412s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) I just gave everybody the story. Like if you're a journalist or you're a podcaster and you want to know the story, I just explained it. Rewind this and like listen again to what I just said. That's the story right now. And if you're interested in any of this stuff, check out our backlog and give us a like and subscribe. Check us out on Patreon. We've been kind of deep in this for basically the last decade. So, thanks for watching.