Source: Daily Mail
22nd July 2011
As far as jobs to pay your way through college go, this has to be one of the best. Students at Arizona State and Yale universities are paid $60 a night to get drunk – all in the name of research.
Professor Will Corbin, 41, has been conducting research into drinking habits and the effect of being drunk for the last nine years in his purpose built stainless steel bar.
After seven years working at Yale, Prof. Corbin moved to ASU and advertised his unusual lab in the school magazine and on-line.
Speaking to azcentral.com, Prof. Corbin said: ‘The biggest thing I get is, ‘You’ve gotta be kidding me. You have a bar, and you give people alcohol as part of your research.’
The bar-lab at ASU is situated on the third floor of the psychology building.
Open two to three nights a week during fall and spring semesters, students are carefully screened and selected to partake in the alcohol related research.
Students were initially reluctant to partake in the research thinking the too-good-to-be-true offer was a scam.
But now Prof. Corbin says he has more than enough applicants for the job.
On a typical night students arrive at the lab by 5 pm.
Checked at the door for ID, the guinea pigs are then led into the dimly lit bar complete with music, cocktail mixers and research assistants as bar tenders.
The assistants try to make the atmosphere as authentic as possible, chatting about work and studies.
Over half an hour each student is served three drinks and after the last drop is drained researchers wait a further 15 minutes to ensure all the alcohol has entered the subjects blood stream.
A breathalyser then measures their blood alcohol content, before they are subject to a series of tests.
Subjects are put through a series of mental and physical exams to determine how alcohol changes memory, perception of events and risk behaviour in young people.
They are then let out at around 9 pm after their blood alcohol levels have returned to normal. The lab is one of around a dozen in the U.S.Researchers hope the findings will lead to better ways to treat alcohol disorders and decrease risky behaviour associated with drinking, such as drunken driving.