Graafstra singled out people whose biohacking focuses on nootropics, various “smart drugs” that are meant to enhance memory and cognition, as prime offenders. “There will be a huge forum flurry about ‘I tried this nootropics,’ and you ask, ‘How did you try it? Blind? Double blind?’ Forget it. They’ll say, ‘I didn’t do any tests, but I didn’t feel smarter. The next day I doubled the dose. Then I halved it.’ What the fuck are you doing? Shut up.”

Licina, who based his night-vision eyedrops on earlier research that came out of universities, and who has worked in a variety of biotechnology labs, shares this frustration. “People like to talk about biotech as being the next computer revolution. Computers are inert, they only do what they’re told to do, you can unplug a computer and it doesn’t run amok. Biology doesn’t work like that — you can’t plug and play a liver. And that’s really what people want to do,” he said. For all the money in the world, if a biohacker can’t design and experiment, then there’s no chance the work will move along.