During the last centuries, many scientists have not hesitated to carry out experiments which, nowadays, would be unacceptable from the point of view of the ethics. Some even outright defied morality. That said, that doesn't necessarily mean that researchers haven't yet come up with questionable experiment ideas. On Reddit, some have shared some of them.
"(Serious) Reddit scientists, what would you desperately like to experiment, but would make you look like a mad scientist?"
“I want to take the DNA of infamous serial killers like Dahmer, Albert Fish or others, clone them, and then have the babies raised in normal, supportive families and loving” , writes one of the “redditors”. “I would study the children until adulthood to see if it is a question of nurture or nature” . The famous "nature versus nurture" debate.
“I'm a doctor and I'd like to see how far the placebo effect really goes” , writes another redditor.
For those who are not familiar with the placebo effect, it is a therapeutic process with no specific or specific efficacy, but which manages to act on the patient through psychological and physiological mechanisms.
“Pain sufferers who take sugar pills report decrease in pain” , for example, writes the researcher. The latter has even seen some of them recover from a knee injury following a fake surgery. “Doctors just put them under anesthesia, make an incision on their knee, do nothing, stitch them up, and patients report improvement in their pain” , he writes.
“So part of me would just love to explore this sh*t all the way. Could we treat chronic diseases like arthritis, lupus and bipolar disorder with only placebos? What about viral diseases? Can you imagine an HIV viral load going down while the affected person eats Skittles, thinking it's a new wonder drug?"
“Obviously this is just a fantasy. You would have to take two groups of HIV-positive people, give one a real drug and the other Skittles. This is profoundly unethical” , agrees the researcher.
“Experiences of social isolation intrigue me” , can we read in another post. “Raise a child without language and see what happens. No contact. The Feral Children give some glimpses of the kind of trauma this can produce. Completely and undeniably unethical. Incredibly cruel. But so intriguing!!"
“I would like to know how long it would take for a group of children, raised through puberty, to understand gender” , writes yet another redditor. “I’m sure they would understand masturbation on some level. But how long would it take them to figure out "tab A in slot B"?"
“Children could be raised as normally as possible, but without any mention of sex and reproduction. And there would be no shame or deterrence while they find out. For example, guards wouldn't tell them "we don't do that" if they found out one of them was masturbating or two consenting teenagers were touching" , continues the researcher.
“I'm just curious about how instinctive sex is. We learn from so many different sources these days, that we don't need to figure it out for ourselves. We have the Internet, friends/peers, maybe parents, books, television, etc. How would it be if we didn't teach/explain it? How long would it take them to figure it out on their own?"
For more ideas like this, feel free to head over to the original post. Some comments to these ideas are also very interesting!
