Phineas Flinn and Dexter are not the only ones that come up with crazy scientific experiments. Some real-life scientists equally tried their hands on pretty ridiculous and often dangerous experiments. While some were quite ambitious, others were just downright ridiculous. These experiments might actually sound like they are from a sci-fi film or some weird twisted unrealistic assumption. However, these were real life scientific experiments carried out by grown humans.
Eight of the craziest scientific experiments ever conducted
1. Truko the elephant
Warren Thomas thought it was a good idea to study the behaviour of elephants, so he injected an elephant called Truko with 297 milligrams of LSD. You already know this would end up being one of the most outrageous experiments. That amount of LSD was 3,000 times more than what any human should take. He carried out the experiments at a zoo in Oklahoma, the USA in 1962. He did the experiment to determine what would trigger temporary madness in elephants. The situation, called ‘musth’, leaves male elephants in an overtly aggressive state. Thomas ended up leading poor Truko to his death. No surprise there.
2. Two-headed dog
An American physiologist, Charles Claude Guthrie, and French physician Alexis Carrel won a Nobel Prize in Physiology for Medicine in 1912. However, Guthrie was denied the prize because he thought it was a good idea to do a head transplant on one dog onto another. His experiment did not end in total failure as he was able to keep the other head artificially alive during the transplant. But it was an absolutely pointless experiment that watered down all the significant contributions he had made in the field of medicine.
3. Human cyborg
This British scientist who also happens to be the Deputy Vice-Chancellor at Coventry University UK at the time was renowned for his robotics researches. Kevin Warwick headed an advanced cyborg research project that made the first cyborg in history. They implanted electrodes and chips into his body. As crazy as the experiment was, it worked! This gave him the ability to directly interface with the internet and control a robotic arm remotely.
4. Nail-biting therapy
A researcher for Virginia USA, Lawrence LeShan, conducted a test to see if subliminal messages could break bad habits. The research focused on nail-biting. He stood in a house where some boys were sleeping and repeated “my nails taste terribly bitter,” to see if it would stop the boys’ chronic nail-biting habit. The experiment, which seemed pointless, actually got a 40% pass because about the same percentage of the boys broke the habit. But there were lots of questions around this experiment, as expected.
5. Raise the dead
Yes! Someone tried it. A brilliant child prodigy, who graduated with honours at the age of 18 from the University of California, Robert E. Cornish, thought he could bring the dead back to life. He attempted to bring dead animals back to life in 1930 using a group of foxes. He placed them on a see-saw to get their blood flowing. Cornish continued rocking them as he injected them with epinephrine and anticoagulants. The ones that briefly came back to life suffered blindness and brain damage. They died again just a few moments after, and the experiment never made any progress with humans.
6. Weight of the soul
An early 20th-century American doctor, Duncan “Om” MacDougall, theorised that the soul had weight. Dr MacDougall believed he could measure the mass lost by a human body when the soul leaves a dead person. He concluded his experiment by saying that the soul had a weight of 21 grams. This was after he took six patients through the experiment process. The research never really got any attention for obvious reasons.
7. Heart stabbing
German surgical trainee Werner Theodor Otto Forssmann, in 1929, performing this bizarre experiment on himself. He put himself under local anaesthesia and made a hole under his own arm. He then pushed a catheter up into the hole and shoved it into his heart. Forssmann performed the crazy experiment in an X-ray room with two feet cable. His employers found out and fired him promptly afterwards. He was later awarded a Nobel Prize in 1956 for developing a procedure that allowed for cardiac catheterisation.
8. Frankenstein
Rumours surrounding this scientist say that he spent his days studying anatomy and alchemy. Also, he was rumouredly able to move the soul of one corpse to another using a hose, lubricant and funnel. Johann Conrad Dippel was born in the castle Frankenstein in 1673. Rumour has it that he was the inspiration behind Mary Shelly’s book, Frankenstein.