When most people think about Science they think about space or laser beams and other awesome things but then there are times when you must ask yourself “Why did that scientist try to perform that crazy experiment?!” Science fiction fans usually enjoy jaw dropping and strange experiments but sometimes it gets to be too much.
Check out these 10 Weird Scientific Experiments
10. The Nail Biting Therapy
I don’t bite my nails but I know plenty of people who do. Researcher Lawrence LeShan from Virginia, tried to encourage people to break their bad habits and one of them was nail biting. He gathered a group of boys together and got them to repeat the phrase “My Nails Taste Terribly Bitter’ and they had to say it over and over to see if he could get them to stop biting their nails. It only worked with around 40% of the boys. Some people questioned as to if the boys could have been sleeping when he was doing the experiment with them.
9. Robert E. Cornish wanted to raise the dead
Robert E. Cornish was from the University of Berkeley California and he graduated at just 18 years of age with honors. In the 1930s he thought he could raise the dead and bring them back to life. He tried on several dead animals to bring them back. He did this with gathering some fox terriers together in a group, put them on see saws to see if it could get their blood to flow then tried to inject them with anticoagulants and epinephrine. Some of them stirred back to life momentarily but suffered brain damaged and blindness then died again. He could never bring a human back to life successfully.
8. Dr. Duncan “Om” MacDougall believed the soul had weight
In the early 20th century, Dr. Duncan “Om” MacDougall thought that the soul had some weight too it. He felt that he could measure the souls weight once the soul had departed from the human. He tried to provide a few experiments and show that the soul had at least 21 grams of weight to it. He took 6 patients that were in the process of actually dying then weight each of them. His research never really took off.
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7. Dr. Robin Warren and Dr. Barry Marshall drank bacteria
In 2005, Dr Robin Warren and Dr. Barry Marshall felt that the bacteria known as H.pylori could be isolated. This bacteria is one of the main causes for stomach ulcers. However, in order to prove that H.pylori caused stomach ulcers both Dr. Robin Warren and Dr. Barry Marshall drank some of the bacteria gathered from other people who had suffered ulcers. Almost immediately they both had gastritis along with vomiting, nausea, halitosis and achlorhydria. In 2005, they were given the Nobel Prize for their scientific discoveries.
6. The Ape Experiment Conducted by Psychologist Kellogg
Psychologist Winthrop Kellogg was extremely interested to see what would happen if apes were treated like humans and if they would become more human that way. In 1931, in order to figure this out he talked it over with his wife and brought home Gua, a chimpanzee and treated Gua the same way as they did Donald, their 10 month old son. Both of them played and did everything together. One test they did was they gave both of them a cookie that was suspended on a long string. Gua ended up performing better for the test but Donald on the other hand, was better in language. Later they saw their nine month old acting like Gua when he wanted food and decided their experiments were done. A year and a half later, Gua died of fever and sickness.
5. Dr. Ewen Cameron tried to brainwash people to cure them of schizophrenia
Dr. Ewen Cameron believed that schizophrenia people could be cured if they were reprogrammed and redesigned to think in a different way, in other words, if they were brainwashed. He wanted them to start thinking healthy and develop new patterns. He had patients listen to headphones and hear audio messages that looped many times to help with the brainwashing because it helped to drive them to a psyche stage. People who had menopause or other anxiety he tried to do the same thing too them and had to listen to messages for days on end. To test his technique, he had patients who were drugged into a deep sleep listen to a message “Whenever you see some paper on the floor, you want to pick that paper up”. Later on he reported that many of them did pick up paper that was on the floor. After the CIA learned what he was doing, they thought he was channeling money but couldn’t confirm it but said his techniques failed. Later on some patients sued the CIA and supported Cameron’s work.
4. The Laughter Experiment by Professor Clarence Leuba
In 1933, Professor Clarence Leuba, wanted to learn more about laughter and if it was a response that happened naturally or if it was possibly a behavior that was learned from others. He decided to experiment on his son and told people not to laugh when he tickled his son. He also told people to put on a mask and hide reactions when he was tickling him. Later on, his son would still shriek with a lot of laughter when he tickled him even when they did not display emotion around him and his sister was the same way. He decided that laughter is the ultimate reaction to whomever is being tickled at the time and not a learned behavior but something that happens naturally.
3. Ian Oswald, Sleep Researcher – Can people sleep through anything?
In 1960, Ian Oswald, Psychiatrist and sleep researcher wanted to see if people could sleep regardless of what was happening around them. In 1960, he decided to tape the eyes of people who volunteered and placed around them some flashing lights. They were also exposed to loud music and electric shocks. All of the volunteers fell asleep regardless and just within 12 minutes. He felt that people can sleep when there is rhythm that’s repetitive and regular because the stimulus helps them to doze off.
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2. The Two Headed Dog Experiment from Vladimir Demikhov
Back in the year 1954, Demikhov managed to shock the world when he unveiled a two headed dog that was surgically created in a lab. Over the years he managed to create around 20 dogs that had two heads but the dogs never lived long. He claimed that the dogs he was working on were just a series he was continuing with his surgical techniques but he wanted to try and learn how he could do the same with human hearts and lung transplants. Dr. Christian Baarnard was able to beat him in this in 1967, however Demikhov still gets a lot of credit for it.
1. The Universal Facial Experiment by Carney Landis
In 1924, The psychologist, Carney Landis felt that he could discover a universal set of facial expressions from volunteers that didn’t mind doing a lot of crazy tests. He would draw the faces of the volunteer with burnt corks and track them with movements. He had them to smell things such as ammonia then he had them listen to jazz music and many other things to see if they had similar expressions to each other when doing them. Each of them were asked to decapitate rats as their final test and that all resulted in a variety of photos that were interesting but all different, so he could not work out his universal facial experiment.
