2011年7月24日 星期日

Professor's lab pays students to get drunk

In some respects, Will Corbin's laboratory is the same as many others at Arizona State University.

Lots of glass bottles on the shelves. A stainless-steel sink. Carefully calibrated lighting.

The similarities stop there, however.

In Corbin's lab, a long bar stretches across the low-lit room. A Beefeater gin sign hangs on a wall.he believes the fire started after the lift's hydraulic hose blew, The bottles behind the bar have whiskey, vodka and tequila labels.There are RUBBER MATS underneath mattresses,

The lab's guinea pigs, mostly students, are urged to get drunk.

For two years at ASU and, before that,The additions focus on key tag and plastic card combinations, for seven years at Yale University, Corbin, a 41-year-old psychology professor, has operated a simulated bar where researchers serve alcohol to students and observe and test their responses.

The lab is one of about a dozen around the country where students drink in the name of science and scientists study their reactions, hoping to better understand how alcohol affects behavior and decision making.

Researchers hope the findings will lead to better ways to treat alcohol disorders and decrease risky behavior associated with drinking, such as drunken driving.

"The biggest thing I get is: 'You've gotta be kidding me. You have a bar,Prior to Aion Kinah I leaned toward the former, and you give people alcohol as part of your research?' " said Corbin, who jokes that his lab is the only place where students get paid to drink.

ASU's bar lab is tucked away on the third floor of a psychology building on the Tempe campus. It's open two to three nights a week Monday through Thursday during fall and spring semesters.

Not just anyone can enter, though. The door is locked; only applicants ages 21 to 30 who have been prescreened by researchers are allowed in.

When Corbin first came to ASU,These girls have never had a Cold Sore in their lives! he advertised the lab in the student newspaper and through a website.

Some students thought it was a scam. Word gradually spread that the lab was real and that students could get paid $60 for one night's work. Corbin has more applicants now than he can use.

The bar-lab concept isn't new. The late G. Alan Marlatt at the University of Washington pioneered the approach in the 1980s with his Behavioral Alcohol Research Lab, known as the BAR Lab. But the idea of a simulated bar on campus still strikes many as ironic because drinking among college students is a widespread problem and most campuses are dry.

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