I have a problem with this perspective. Speaking from experience, I found LSD to give a very unique and singularly compelling experience, but IMO it doesn't bring the kind of transformative insights that this article implies. For example, look at the list of accomplishments that the dosed scientists produced:

a mathematical theorem for NOR gate circuits

Sounds like a typical feat.

a conceptual model of a photon

Useful, accurate or original? Not an amazing feat on its own.

a linear electron accelerator beam-steering device

Sounds like a typical feat.

a new design for the vibratory microtome

Sounds like a typical feat.

a technical improvement of the magnetic tape recorder

Sounds like a typical feat.

blueprints for a private residency and an arts-and-crafts shopping plaza

Blueprints for a house and a shopping plaza...

a space probe experiment designed to measure solar properties.

Sounds like a typical feat, but a very vague one.

This kind of stuff also bothers me:

Though scientists are more typically seen as killers of myth, not its creators, Einstein and many of his more visionary contemporaries sound as trippy as any of yesterday’s mystics. They say that the time-space continuum warps like the surface of a trampoline. They say that we are stardust. That there is no “in the beginning.” That things are not things at all, but relations. That the observer tweaks the observed, at least on a sub-atomic level, just by observing.

This is pulling trippy-sounding parts out of scientific findings that are based in experiment and observation. It takes a creative mind to create some brilliant hypotheses, but this paragraph indicates endearment, not understanding. This is artistic license.

Finally, this drives me nuts:

Under the right circumstances, these psychic dérives are far less dangerous than, say, a lunar landing, and may ultimately prove as rewarding, if not more so.

No. Going to the moon is infinitely more interesting and rewarding.

I am all for allowing people to take psychoactive drugs, but I think it's dishonest to put it on such a pedestal. I'm sure that if alcohol was such a forbidden fruit, endless arguments about its transformative powers could be made.