Human Subjects
Topics from the archives of the Mad Science Museum related to research involving human subjects. Arranged in descending chronological order.
Electrified Sheep
& Elephants on Acid
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48 Hours With Plants (September 2011)
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 The Benefits of Reading to Dogs. (2010) This is weird in a feel-good kind of way. Researchers from the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University took a group of 18 second-grade students and split them into two groups. The first group had to read aloud to a dog for a few minutes every week during their 2010 summer vacation. The second group had to read aloud to a human. The result: those who read to dogs saw improvements both in their reading ability and in their positive attitude toward reading. However, those who had to read to humans saw declines in both. Also, a third of the kids dropped out of the read-to-a-human group. But no one dropped out of the dog group. So obviously dogs are intellectually stimulating companions. The unanswered question here is: what about reading to cats? Links: tufts.edu, sciencedaily.com.
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Smelling Amniotic Fluid (1995)
In a 1995 study led by Julie Mennella of the Monell Chemical Senses Center, a panel of adults was presented with two clear substances to smell. The substances were presented to them in plastic squeeze bottles, at room temperature. The panelists were asked to state which of the substances smelled more strongly of garlic. What the panelists didn't know is that the substances they were sniffing was amniotic fluid.
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 Sam Legg, a participant in the experiment |
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The Lice-Infested Underwear Experiment (July-October, 1942)
During World War II, millions of men served their country by fighting in the army. Hundreds of thousands of others worked in hospitals or factories. And thirty-two men did their part by wearing lice-infested underwear. They were volunteers in an experiment designed by Dr. William A. Davis and Charles M. Wheeler. |
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In the summer of 1942 Professor Lawrence Leshan stood in the darkness of a cabin in an upstate New York camp where a row of young boys lay sleeping. He spoke aloud, repeating a single phrase over and over, "My fingernails taste terribly bitter. My fingernails taste terribly bitter." |
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Like many people during the great depression, thirty-year-old William Bird of Jacksonville, Vermont had fallen on hard times. He was out of work, heavily in debt, and facing eviction. He feared he would soon be unable to feed and clothe his wife and three children. So Bird came up with a plan. He would sell himself to science.
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The scene: London, 1935. A man in his mid-twenties sits in a comfortable chair in the middle of a hospital room. His eyes are tightly closed. His arms lie on the armrests. Several fingers of his right hand are enclosed in glass devices resembling test tubes, connected by plastic tubing to a machine. An older man wearing a white lab coat creeps up behind him, careful not to make any noise. The older man walks around in front of the sitting man, looks closely at him to determine that his eyes are shut, then reaches down between the other man's legs, grabs, and roughly squeezes the testicles. The younger man gasps.
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Academia has a reputation for harboring radicals and communist sympathizers. This was no less true 75 years ago than it is today. In fact, back in the mid-1930s some families were concerned about whether they should send their young daughters off to college, for fear they would come home commies. In 1934, psychologist Stephen M. Corey set out to determine whether such fears were justified.
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The Ape and the Child (1931)
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