31 Unethical Experiments That Only a Mad Scientist Could Perform

‘Animal/human hybrids’
31 Unethical Experiments That Only a Mad Scientist Could Perform

It’s pretty important to have strong ethics even when pursuing scientific knowledge. We, in what I think most would agree is a positive move, have drawn a line at which information comes at too high a cost. Sure, we might learn something about nature versus nurture, but if we have to strap baby monkeys to boards and watch them wither away in the process? We’ll wait on that.

That doesn’t mean that there’s no intellectual curiosity at play, of course. Carrying out highly morally questionable thought experiments? Vaguely icky, maybe, but nobody’s really getting hurt. Scientists on Reddit admitted studies and experiments that they’d love to find the answers to, all the while knowing full well that actually doing them would be a one-way ticket to some sort of tribunal. 

Read on and keep in mind, this is all purely hypothetical.

BlondeStalker 6y ago Edited 6y ago I want to do a long term case study on children's Microbiome. It would start with samples of their mothers microbiome, and then when the child is first born get a sample of theirs, compare it, and continue comparing the two samples throughout breast feeding vs. bottle feeding. Also get a detailed comparison of how the microbiome changes after vaccinations, sickness, antibiotics. I would basically study every single poop this child has, their eating habits, their health conditions, any medications, vaccinations, etc. for years.
Philieselphy . 6y ago I experiment on ancient coins. Museums are generally against me doing a full compositional analysis as that would involve me dissolving the whole coin in acid. But it sure would tell us a lot more than not...
For those who are not familiar, the Placebo Effect is an unexplained phenomena where people who take medications that aren't real, but they believe are real, have an actual, measurable effect on their illness. People with depression who take sugar pills report feeling happier. People with pain who take sugar pills report a decrease to their pain etc. I've seen even crazier ones where people think they are having surgery for their bad knee...but the docs just put them under, make an incision on their knee, do nothing, sew them back up and patients report improvement to their bad knee.
femsci-nerd . 6y ago I would like to try and lengthen my telomeres and see how that affects my personal aging.
kovaluu e 6y ago I would like to clone myself. Nature VS nurture. sorry dude you can have as many kids as possible with one woman, but you cannot clone yourself Cant do it even once. Identical twins is totally fine also.
Pyrocephalus-rubinus 6y ago Experiments with social isolation intrigue me. Raise a child with no language and see what happens. No contact. Wild children give is some insights, but also a sample of the kind of trauma this can produce. Completely and undeniably unethical. Incredibly cruel. But SOOOOO intriguing!!
CleanableYetti 6y ago | want to work on genetically modifying the genes that control our active cones in our eyes. Specifically I want to try to activate a tertiary cone in the eyes of dogs so that they can see infared light just like snakes can. In simpler terms, we could make rescue dogs that have infared vision to help locate missing people or recover people in natural disasters. In even simpler terms I want to make heatseeking dogs.
Sajusmina . 6y ago I want drug Olympics, where everyone using somwthing to enhance performance. To see true limit of humans.
flyingbatbeaver 6y ago I'd want to know how long it'd take a group of children, raised to puberty would figure out sex. I'm sure they'd figure out masturbation on some level. But how long would it take for them to figure out tab A into slot B? The kids could be raised about as normal as possible, but with any mentioning of sex and reproduction completely removed. And there would be no shame or deterrent while they figure it out. Like, the caretakers wouldn't tell them we don't do that if they found out one was masturbating or that two
scottevil110 6y ago I wouldn't say mad scientist, but medical privacy laws get in the way of a LOT of incredibly useful research. Everything has to be so de-identified and confidential that it makes doing any sort of large-scale statistics nearly impossible. You have to make a ton of assumptions because you can't know many details. If I had full access to everyone's medical records, we could probably fix a whole lot of shit.
bigtcm 6y ago The typical discovery and clinical testing pipeline of a pharmaceutical looks something like this: cell culture > rodent models > other animals (primates, rabbits, etc.) > humans If at any step the drug fails the test (either for toxicity or efficiacy), the potential drug is nixed. And this process of discovery and clinical testing can take up to 10 years at the cost of billions of dollars. What happens if your model systems can't fully recapitulate the human disease phenotype? So what happens if you've got a drug that might work really well in the human, but
6y ago 1. Use the milk from orb spiders (they mix the DNA of orb spiders with goals at UWyoming) to build a better dental filling. They'd hypothetically last exponentially longer, would bond to tooth as an organic substance, and are stronger that Teflon. It would also be minimally invasive as to set the groundwork for more invasive medical applications such as knee replacements. If you fund me I know the orb goat and dental guys.
h0bbez_ . 6y ago twins have very similar dna. If raised exactly the same way without interaction with each other. would they make the same choices?
6y ago I'd never do the experiment, but it's hard to overstate how helpful it would be to have large-scale, longitudinal data on how different chemotherapeutic drugs/drug cocktails affect the evolutionary trajectory of tumors. The problem is that in order to study it, you'd need to: 1. Give a large number of people experimental or substandard care, which is highly unethical. 2. Perform serial surgeries even when they aren't medically necessary in order to collect tissue samples from the tumors, and since every surgery carries with it some risk this is also highly unethical.
puckbeaverton 6y ago Edited 6y ago I would really love to have a hunk of plutonium in the attic above my bedroom. I mean the right amount would have to be sussed out first of course. They found that some buildings in Japan had been made with irradiated steel from stock yards near the blast zones of either Hiroshima or Nagasaki and the people that lived in them had abnormally long and cancer free lives, presumably because....oh there's a scientific term for it where your body comes into some kind of homeostasis with snake venom over long enough exposure to
Dash Rendar Linelino . 6y ago MAX I'm Chemist, and the answer is anything
. 6y ago Biophysicist here - Would love to investigate CRISPR technology in vivo cancer patients, using the technology to block cleavage from occurring at a specific DNA site. | have studied this in vitro but experimenting in a live human- being could be risky waters
Lo-def 6y ago I'm not a professional scientist in this field but electrostimulation as a means of regrowing limbs sounds pretty interesting and I'd love to see the effects on humans. If I recall correctly one of the problems with this is that the wound site must be kept fresh and humans bleed out too quickly if their wounds aren't able to clot (which would interrupt the regrowth).
].6y ago Animal/human hybrids.
scarletwitchlasagna . 6y ago Transferring consciousness to a computer so we can live forever. Or reproductive cloning so everyone can have their own organs for transplantation. | mentioned this in Stem Cell class one day and I've been the weird girl since.
Gentleman_ToBed . 6y ago I'd love to study language development. E.g. Stick a bunch of babies on a remote island without outside influence and document how they learn to communicate.
NewClayburn . 6y ago I'd like to raise babies in various planned conditions such as: Without any adult human interaction Without language Indoors only With different concepts of a family unit With different concepts of gender roles And many more!
drflanigan 6y ago Stem cells Fuck morals, fuck where the cells come from, fuck religious objections Can I fix a person who had a stroke and has half their body paralyzed?
D: Tinkrr2 . 6y ago Transhumanism. I want to see a heavier push towards prosthesis and the like, | have a healthy interest in immortality.
NiceSasquatch 6y ago Serious answer I'd take about 1 billion people, lock them into a completely contained living space for their entire life, and actually science the shit out of what people eat and what their reaction is to what they eat. I would measure ever single molecule that goes in, and every single molecule that goes out. Measure their weight, their level of hunger, the level of physical activity, everything. What they breathe in, what they breathe out. Piss, poo, measure everything. We'd know exactly if broccoli is good, or if cigarettes are bad, or if you should eat
VelvetDreamers 6y ago Edited 6y ago I wouldn't be perceived as a mad scientist, just a profligate researcher. I'd be castigated and my professional reputation would be irrevocably altered but I'd like to establish the UK's first body farm so we can replicate university of Tennessee's facility to meticulously research human decomposition. Ostensibly, I'd be indulging my personal predilection for prestige as the justification for a body farm isn't compelling for some Entomologists; it's a vanity project in their opinion. Others condemn the idea as a frivolous tourist attraction.
Ddaddy Long Legss 6y ago I work mainly with snake venom, but my friend called me and told me his brother in law knows a guy that harvests scorpion venom. It is prohibitively expensive normally, but this guy insisted you didn't have to go through the normal process of acquiring it. So I am imaging a sweatshop situation with various containers of Scorpion venom. I feel like buying and possessing an old milk jug of Scorpion juice would make me seem mad to say the least.
mei9ji 6y ago Use targeted injections of virally encoded opsins (channelrhodopsin etc) and some 'simple' signal to light converters to get ESP. See into the UV or far red? sure why not. Take in wifi based data or emf data, cool let's do it. Anything you can build a detector for (if reasonably small) you could then encode in some area of your brain. Could also swap in and out the detector as needed. Going into the dark? Let's go for some IR. Going for a hike in the woods? how about some inbuilt GPS?
LostSadConfused11 6y ago Biologist here, and I want to develop an artificial system to grow a baby outside the womb. The initial tests would involve a donor uterus (likely from a pig or primate, unless we can get a healthy one from a human hysterectomy), which would be connected to an artificial blood supply. This blood supply would be circulated through the 37C incubator using a pump to mimic the heartbeat. As the embryo develops, different chemicals will be pumped into the bloodstream to maintain appropriate levels of HCG, estrogen, progesterone, oxygen, and nutrients. I would also need to develop
ravenpotter3 . 6y ago A blue dog. Just a blue dog... naturally colored blue... no not like a grey silver blue but a real nice neon teal blue
RecalcitrantJerk 6y ago I want to take DNA from infamous serial killers like Dahmer or Albert Fish or the like, clone them, then have the baby raised in a normal, supportive, loving family. I'd study the kids all through adulthood to see how much is nurture and how much is nature.

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