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Ten Strangely Cruel Science Experiments
aalobode writes "The Times of London has a current story based on the review of a book by Alex Boase, Elephants on Acid and Other Bizarre Experiments. There they list the top science experiments — including the one from which the book gets its name — that were conducted by otherwise sane humans who tragically or otherwise ignored the effect of their research on the subjects themselves. Nowadays, most institutions have a review board for research on human subjects which would flag most proposals that could lead to harm for the subjects, but not so in the past. 'Another 1960s experiment, in which ten soldiers on a training flight were told by the pilot that the aircraft was disabled, and about to ditch in the ocean. They were then required to fill in insurance forms before the crash -- ostensibly so the Army was not financially liable for any deaths or injuries. They were actually unwitting participants in an experiment: the plane was not crippled at all. It revealed that fear of imminent death indeed causes soldiers to make more mistakes than usual when filling in forms.'"
Nothing beats the lolocaust. Mengele FTW!
Submissions from kdawson and Zonk. Oh the irony on the last one.
Fortunately the Geneva Convention made Slashdot fire JonKatz using the Junis fiasco as a reason.
Leave it to the government to make you fill out a form before you die.
I'm surprised none of them pulled out a pistol and shot the guy making the request.
I wonder if this will be part of Hillary's health care program.
Vista as among the cruelest experiments wrought on unsuspecting test subjects?
Monstar L
fear of imminent death indeed causes soldiers to make more mistakes than usual
Yes, mistakenly shitting one's pants instead of standard-operating-procedure use of latrine.
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
they made this massive social experiemt about how a poor population, which has a 1000 year long history of ethnic conflict, reacts when you take over their country by military force.
Until today researchers have found no clear answer as to why the population neglects the truth, that it actually has been fried,äh freed.
High-school chemestry, on a geek-pr0n scale:
20,000 lbs of metallic Sodium being dropped in a lake.
Oh yeah baby, you roll those barrels in there!
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
I would think that the soldiers made the mistakes willingly to avoid to let the "army not financially liable for any deaths or injuries.". Why the would like to save the Army (instead of their families) if they think tell are going to die?
Maybe because they are brainwashed?
From what little army personnel I've known, they've all been pretty brainwashed in the-Army-is-always-right manner.
My friend, who is almost as near-sighted as I am, was placed in sharpshooters.
He told the recruiting officer it must have been a mistake, only to hear the answer: "The Army makes no mistakes."
He then showed him his eye prescription, only to hear: "That must have been a mistake."
Ignore this signature. By order.
I don't see the experiment concerning running a human through giant laboratory mazes with potentially deadly pitfalls. Armed only with pogo shoes and a trans-dimensional gun, the person is forced to dodge machine gun fire, suffer taunting quips from the AI running the experiments, and even commit fratricide. I will say that the carrot at the end of the stick, the Portal Song, does make the reward outweigh the risk.
I built a news site for software developers and other geeks, which every 12 seconds flashes a message saying "Blow-up dolls are fun!" The goal is to see if I can substantially increase the sales of blow-up dolls world wide through subliminal advertising.
So far it's been quite a success. The cruel part is that dependency on blow-up dolls seems to dramatically decrease the subject's aptitude when dealing with the (living) opposite sex, but hey, all science exacts a price.
Ignore that.
"In 1947-1949 a group of mental patients in Sweden were used as subjects in a full-scale experiment designed to bring about tooth decay. They were fed copious amounts of candy, and many of them had their teeth completely ruined"
An experiment now being repeated in most developed countries...