[Pseudoscience-is-malarkey (OP)]

You see, the other night I was at a bar and a girl explained to me an interesting hobby of hers: researching marijuana.

Girl: I've been researching pot myself since college on myself and I've discovered that the fact ---

Me (interrupting): A good scientist never experiments on themself!

Girl: Oh really!? Issac Newton had the apple fall on his own head! That's how he found out about gravity!! Do you not believe in gravity because he experimented on himself!!??
 
Me: I believe in gravity.

Girl: I think we can all agree that pot is god for everyone. From the young to the old everyone should be on it all the time, like vitamins.

Me: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!! "The young"!?

Girl: Yes.

Me: How young are we talking?

Girl: I would recommend starting in your early teenage years, 13.

Me: Ridiculous! We have 150% more kids in treatment for an addiction to pot than we did in 1968! I'd like to bring a panel of them here and ask them ---

Girl: I'd get 'em high!

Me: You're a jeopardy to society.

Girl: You're a Wheel of Fortune to society!

[alancalverd]

It used to be standard practice to experiment on yourself, and probably still is. You may not get usefully objective results but it's the best proof of safety in humans.

Some years ago I was offered a novel intravaginal radiation monitor for radiotherapy. I didn't like the look of the design, which involved a rather flimsy insulator separating 500 volt electrodes. Salesman insisted it was safe (it complied with EU regulations!) so I said "OK, shove it up your backside and switch it on". Never heard from him again. 

[PmbPhy]

Of course a scientist can experiment on themselves. What's to stop them? In fact there's a long history of scientists experimenting on themselves. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-experimentation_in_medicine

Self-experimentation has a long and well-documented history in medicine which continues to the present. Some of these experiments have been very valuable and shed new and often unexpected insights into different areas of medicine.

I recall that Louis Pasteur experimented on himself. See:
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/a-history-of-medicine/louis-pasteur/

See also:" http://mentalfloss.com/article/29241/10-scientists-who-experimented-themselves

By the way that girl was quite wrong about Newton: It can't be said that Isaac Newton experimented on himself. That would require a conscious action on his part. In any case it wasn't an experiment. It was an observation.

[Villi]

Much faster and cheaper to do experiments and research on yourself then convince someone else to let you do something weird/dangerous/etc. to them. But in scientific literature, I'm not sure it's allowed for the scientists/researchers to provide data from experiments done on themselves for publication. It's definitely happened though.

[JimBob]

from a philosophical point of view, a scientist MUST research on themselves. R ember the Greeks? Socrates admonishes us with these:

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.

True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.

and last but not least:

The unexamined life is not worth living.

And finally (off topic):
By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you'll become happy; if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.

[smart]

If one research on himself for too long he may be regarded as a nonconformist...

"All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

[alancalverd]

It can't be said that Isaac Newton experimented on himself.

Actually, he did. But with respect to optics, not gravitation.

[puppypower]

When one does research on themselves, they become both the scientist and the experiment. A good place to begin research on oneself is by analyzing your dreams. Dreams are a natural product of the brain, that occurs at all ages, that does not need drugs to be induced.

Another reason dreams are a good place to begin is, science can't observe dreams from the outside using standard third person science methods. Regular science can't go there with the same level of detail one can with self observation. In this case, self observation can extend that frontier by going in new places. 

If you do self observation, based on external props, the scientist aspect of the duality can change along with the experiment. For example, say I did a pain study on myself and have my teeth drilled without novocaine. This experiment would open up a new dimension of pain, that I can observe from inside, that can't be seen in as much detail from the outside. However, my pain my impact my ability to observe; distraction, making my observations less affective. This is why doctors don't normally operate on themselves. 

With dreams it is all done naturally from the inside. You do not change quickly with each experiment. However, enough dream analysis can slowly alter the scientist, by altering the calibration of his mind. The more you do it, the more dreams become less random or coincidence. One begins to observe that the unconscious mind seems to have a mind of its own, based on firmware hierarchy, that responds to induced potentials.One also begins to be more sensitive of unconscious projection; lenses of the mind, which had been make third person observation skills lose calibration.

There is no rule in the scientific method that requires a calibration of the mind, even though the human mind is the most important tool of science. If any tool is biased high or low, one can still use the tool, and get results, which may appear consistent with the rest of the method. But lack of calibration makes it all moot. What if consensus theory was off calibration, due to unconscious projection, and it has no clue or no rule for zeroing the mind tool?

As an analogy, say we had a GC gas chromatography (mind-theory) that vaporizes data samples. But this mind-theory is not calibrated; flat earth. We can still go through all the procedures of science, and other scientists can do the same thing and even get the same results. It all looks good, due to consensus, but without calibration, is it all good? Is consensus enough to compensate for the lack of calibration?

Since the collective results are objective, at one level, but also subjective at another; calibration, science will start to become a composite of science and social science, dogmatic and politics, to  express the subjective aspect of the hybrid.

Say after the results are in, some scientist don't have a good feeling about this, something is not right? You can see that that data and analysis appears consistent and you know your fellow scientists are good people who do good work. But something is unsettling, but you can't put finger on it. Maybe self observation should be taught, so science has a way to self calibrate the mind. Then we compare the self calibrations to move the collective GC.

[PmbPhy]

It can't be said that Isaac Newton experimented on himself.

Actually, he did. But with respect to optics, not gravitation.

What was this experiment that he performed on himself in optics?

[hamdani yusuf]

It can't be said that Isaac Newton experimented on himself.

Actually, he did. But with respect to optics, not gravitation.

What was this experiment that he performed on himself in optics?

http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/exhibitions/Footprints_of_the_Lion/private_scholar.html

also a youtube video.

youtu.be/W0HP0oEKOUE

[Elizabeth35]

Off course yes!