Top 10 Wackiest Experiments of all Time

[Queasy]

Link

When Warren Thomas, the director of Lincoln Park Zoo in Oklahoma City, approached Tusko the elephant with a syringe full of LSD in 1962, he thought that he was about to make a major contribution to science.

Within a few moments of being injected, Tusko began trumpeting furiously, before keeling over as if he had been shot. An hour later, he was dead. ?It appears that the elephant is highly sensitive to the effects of LSD,? Thomas and his colleagues concluded.

Some 35 years after his demise, Tusko?s role in the history of science has been recognised with first place in a list of the ten wackiest experiments of all time, compiled for New Scientist magazine.

He has also inspired the list?s author, Alex Boase, to assemble many more strange studies in a newly-published book, Elephants on Acid and Other Bizarre Experiments.

?I started collecting examples of bizarre experiments years ago while in graduate school studying the history of science,? Mr Boase said. ?I confess I had no profound intellectual motive; I simply found them fascinating.

?They filled me with disbelief, astonishment, disgust and ? best of all ? laughter. With hindsight, perhaps there is a deeper message. These experiments are not the work of cranks. All were performed by honest, hardworking scientists who were not prepared to accept common-sense explanations of how the world works.

?Sometimes such single-mindedness leads to brilliant discoveries. At other times it can end up closer to madness. Unfortunately, there?s no way of knowing in advance where the journey will lead.?

click through for the rest.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Cowboys on acid are like Egyptian cartoons.

C-V-B live

 

[effowe]

They didn't include MK-Ultra, the infamous CIA mind control experiments.

 

[mattocs]

haha. I mean, sure, and elephant is huge...but an syringe full? I'm a big fellow and I can trip pretty hard with like three or four blotters. A syringe has to be like thousands times more than that.

 

[Queasy]

Originally posted by: mattocs
haha. I mean, sure, and elephant is huge...but an syringe full? I'm a big fellow and I can trip pretty hard with like three or four blotters. A syringe has to be like thousands times more than that.

Gotta love the excuse:

The scientists claimed in their defence that they had not expected this to happen ? two of them had taken plenty of acid themselves, they said.

 

[Canai]

some of those are pretty funny. Turkeys. Haha.

 

[ondarkness]

I love reading them, but damn I feel gross afterwards......