So apparently scientists finally got around to doing some of their sciencey experiments on the brains of a large group of people who’ve probably spent the past 15 years listening to nothing but Prodigy’s “Fat of the Land” album (which is to say, heavy users of MDMA —  the drug commonly known as ecstasy).

They found that ecstasy isn’t nearly as bad for the brain as previously thought.

The study was led by a Harvard Medical School professor and funded by the Natiional Institute on Drug Abuse. Its findings were reported in last week’s issue of Addiction, because I know you’re probably a regular subscriber to that. According to the study’s lead researcher, past studies had been affected by studying subjects who liked ALL drugs not just ecstasy, which skewed the results:

The resulting experiment whittled down 1,500 potential participants to 52 selected users, whose cognitive abilities matched those of a group of 59 non-users. “We even took hair samples of participants to test whether they were telling the truth about their drug and alcohol habits,” said Halpern. “Essentially we compared one group of people who danced and raved and took ecstasy with a similar group of individuals who danced and raved but who did not take ecstasy. When we did that, we found that there was no difference in their cognitive abilities.”

So on one hand, we have a new wide-scale study showing that ecstasy doesn’t turn your brain into delicious Jell-O Pudding Pops.

On the other hand…..