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People Divulge Which Scientific Experiment They'd Want To See Results For If It Weren't Unethical

People Divulge Which Scientific Experiment They'd Want To See Results For If It Weren't Unethical
Photo by Steven Lelham on Unsplash

We're only human.

It's not healthy to deny ourselves the thought experiments or thinking trails which creep into our brains. It might feel icky in the moment to imagine something horrible happening to someone, somewhere, but don't run away from it. Explore it, work through it, because it's the only way to assess what sort of human you are. Ultimately, so long as you never act on these dark impulses and darker analyses, it's all fine.

Still, the mind will wander.


Reddit user, numbnesstolife, wanted to know what you would want to know the answer to when they asked:

"What’s a scientific experiment you’d be fascinated to see the results of, but could never be conducted due ethical concerns?"

Pushing the human body to its absolute limit is something we think we already do. However, some of these experiments prove we're not really taking anything to any limit.

Let's Start Off Strong: Drowning Humans

"Dr Curt Richter conducted an experiment with rats that essentially concluded that the presence of hope could prolong the ability to stay alive when faced with life-threatening circumstances."

"During the first part of the experiment, rats were put in a bucket of water. After about 15 minutes the rat would begin to drown. The scientist plucked the rat out of the bucket of water merely seconds before death."

"After a couple of days the scientist repeated this process. However, instead of drowning after 15 minutes of treading water, some of the rats survived for up to 2 and half days."

"The scientist concluded that the rats were able to continue swimming because they retained the HOPE of being rescued, as this is what they experienced during the first trial."

"It would be interesting to see how the concept of hope influences humans under similar circumstances."

Public_Bullfrog_382

We Want Our Athletes Like Our Video Games

"I'd like to know how how much of a human body could be replaced by cybernetics."

"I imagine we have/could make a good enough equivalent to quite a few organs but other organs I doubt could be replaced as easily"

"It would also be interesting to see the mental impact of having so much of your body replaced."

northraider123

"My brother and I have talked a lot about a special version of the Olympics where the competitors can use whatever and however many performance enhancing drugs they want just to push the absolute limits of what humans can do. We figure it probably wouldn’t pan out though, since most of the athletes would probably just push themselves to death."

NoLifeMax

Pretty Sure There's A Movie That Shows Why This Is A Bad Idea

"Raising babies in 1700's conditions, and not knowing any different until they're 18 when they're taken to the real world, and record the reaction and shock. I am so curious."

"Basically raise a small little village of people in 1700's houses, clothes, etc. In a very secluded area."

TheSolemnRaven

Take It Or Die

"Raise a child, giving them a substance like a sugar cube or salt water to ingest everyday. Tell them that without it they will die. One day just don’t give it to them or act like it doesn’t exist and you have no clue what they are talking about and see how they react."

MidgetBoi_

Are We All Just Giant Chickens?

"decapitate some one and perform an electroencephalography (EEG) on him to see if and if so how long the head lives on"

SternenVogel

Sure, yes, don't mess with the animals. Leave them out of it. They've done nothing to be brought into the silly and inappropriate affairs of humans.

But, what if...

Think Of The Flees

"See if we can persuade a group of wolves to raise a child."

ReadinII

"I remember hearing about a study where scientists tried to raise a baby chimp alongside a human baby to see if the monkey would act more like a human. They had to cut the study short because the human started acting too much like a monkey."

clcjvalk

Sure, Babies But Tell Me More About That Swole Gorilla​

  1. "Give a baby a proportioned weight vest all it’s life, increasing the weight as it gets older. When it’s 11, will it be able to jump as high as all the other kids because it’s body has adapted? If yes, when we take it off can It jump much higher?"
  2. "How strong can we get a gorilla by giving it a bench press set."

"I would not support either of these experiments for ethical reasons irl, but they would be cool."

scemscem

So Long As It's In Pasta

"Smash up all the animals in the world into a big meatball to see what happens"

Hal_Dahl

Even. Crocodiles.

"Selective breeding in weird animals, I love animals with all my heart and I really don’t like what some dogs have to go trough because of selective breeding, but if we could create a pug out of a wolf what kind of dinosaur looking animal could we create of… say, a Komodo dragon or a Secretary Bird. It’s awful but I can’t help but be curious. even crocodiles!"

StandardMinute1729

Who says these experiments have to be placed in the realm of reality?

...What WOULD Happen?

"I'm curious what happens if I isolate a person from, say, the color blue until the age of 10 and then put her in a room full of blue things."

HarmoniumSong

Again, Movies As Evidence!

"1.Creating different human species or resurrecting old ons like the Neanderthals. 2. Creating dragons for population control (mostly Yi Qi dinosaurs with fire breathing abilities) 3. A hive city based on Warhammer 40k universe for testing human perspective of society. 4. Jurassic Park lever f-cking park."

Intelligent_Map7500

Wibbly Wobbly, Timey Wimey

"I've been reading a book that talks about space and mentions time as a concept linked to space. They were saying how variable space is depending on the area you're studying, like maths, physics, or philosophy, and how its definition is directly dependent on perception. So I was wondering if that's the same with time. I mean, we've all got the same perception of time as being linear, or Iat least I suppose so."

"So what if we deprive someone entirely of the concept of time and see how they perceive it in comparison to us? I mean, time is kind of a construct organized for simplicity, but which could be the alternatives? Maybe we even find a new and better way."

iMeltedOops

Why Start So Small?

"I'd create an exact clone of me as a baby and send him to be raised somewhere else, by people who are as different from my parents as I can find, then meet up with him once he's, say, 30, and see how differently we turned out in terms of personality"

WesleyPatterson

"For actual valuable scientific data, you would need to make at least 20 clones of the same baby."

Coc0tte

Just How Far Can We Take Pregnant Ladies?

"Any experiment that checks to see if a medicine is safe for pregnant ladies to consume... Would require trials of pregnant ladies consuming the medications before we knew the medications were completely safe."

"There are precious few Pregnancy Category A medicines."

"Most medications (like acetaminophen aka tylenol) given to pregnant women are under Category B, "Animal reproduction studies have failed to demonstrate a risk to the fetus and there are no adequate and well-controlled studies in pregnant women."

lub-shh-dub

"Yup, pretty much any experiment on pregnant ladies/babies."

"Not in, like, a disturbing horror movie way, but the kind of stuff you're talking about. The effects of various medications, various levels of alcohol consumption, testing how much shellfish and coffee actually effect a fetus's wellbeing... etc."

"Basically just thoroughly testing all the stuff that doctors disagree on regarding pregnant women and babies, like whether one glass of wine every once in a while really is okay or if any alcohol consumption at all is enough to negatively effect the fetus. It'd be nice to have definitive answers to those sorts of things."

"I can't imagine any way in which doing such experiments would be anywhere close to ethical, however, so we'll probably never have those answers."

DumpstahKat

Not Able To See The Results Of The Experiments

"Isolate groups of humans, EG 100 random people in a enclosed climate, for 500 years and see what happens with cultures- do some end up industrializing? Do some never get past agriculture? And best part: is culture random, or would random people (with no culture) in a certain geographic area always have the same culture?"

lamatopian

Were There Be As Many Issues As There Are Now?

"It would be cool if we could somehow bring back different species of human that went extinct. Like Neanderthals, denisovans, etc. and see how they’d differ, if at all, from us if raised in a modern society. It’s been talked about, but likely will never happen due to ethical concerns."

jackiepoo0804

To reiterate, we would never condone any of these experiments.

What's that?

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