“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”
– Arthur Schopenhauer

There’s a Nobel Prize waiting for the first (highly esteemed) scientist (or team of scientists) who substantiate dopamine addiction’s existence. In addition to impeccable credentials, the researcher(s) will have to overcome two formidable hurdles.

The first will be to find the honesty, courage, and willingness to own up to personal dopamine-related addictions.

The second will require enough fortitude to deal with the backlash, disapproval, and ridicule leveled from all sides. Corporations, governments, and religions controlled by addicts hooked on power will do everything they can to squash information that threatens their power, fortunes, status, and dopamine flow. The media will vilify the researcher(s) and the research with inflammatory headlines. Safety addicts will rely on junk science to reassure one another the claims are junk science.

The worst assaults will come from peers who’ll attack with the fierceness of junkies protecting a heroin stash. After all, few professions require more degrees, titles, peer approval, acceptance, and recognition. Scientists addicted to the dopamine-induced expectations of being society’s elite arbiters of significant breakthroughs are unlikely to admit they’re actually members of a private club that’s subconsciously protecting dopamine addiction from being exposed.

The quagmire raises a few questions.

1) Will dopamine-induced cravings for recognition (and a possible Nobel Prize) prove stronger than dopamine-induced fears of dismissal, rejection and ridicule?

2) What country’s scientists are the most likely to reach for the gold? Will they live under a repressive dictatorship where academic freedom is suppressed, in a democracy that pays lip service to intellectual freedom, a socialist state where independent thinking is encouraged, or work for a corporation funding dopamine research to seduce and addict customers to products?

3) Will the breakthrough come from a woman, a man, women, men, or a combination?

4) Once the genie is out of the bottle, how will the different factions, groups, and types of dopamine addicts react?

5) How long will it take for the initial proclamations about dopamine addiction to go from being ridiculed, to violently opposed, to accepted as self-evident?