scientist experiment gone wrong

10 Outrageous Experiments Conducted on Humans

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Prisoners, the disabled, the physically and mentally sick, the poor -- these are all groups once considered fair game to use as subjects in your research experiments. And if you didn't want to get permission, you didn't have to, and many doctors and researchers conducted their experiments on people who were unwilling to participate or who were unknowingly participating.

Forty years ago the U.S. Congress changed the rules; informed consent is now required for any government-funded medical study involving human subjects. But before 1974 the ethics involved in using humans in research experiments was a little, let's say, loose. And the exploitation and abuse of human subjects was often alarming. We begin our list with one of the most famous instances of exploitation, a study that eventually helped change the public view about the lack of consent in the name of scientific advancements.

Tuskegee Syphilis Study
The Nazi Medical Experiments
Watson's 'Little Albert' Experiment
The Monster Study of 1939
Stateville Penitentiary Malaria Study
The Aversion Project in South Africa
Milgram Shock Experiments
CIA Mind-Control Experiments (Project MK-Ultra)
The Human Vivisections of Herophilus

10: Tuskegee Syphilis Study

Syphilis was a major public health problem in the 1920s, and in 1928 the Julius Rosenwald Fund, a charity organization, launched a public healthcare project for blacks in the American rural south. Sounds good, right? It was, until the Great Depression rocked the U.S. in 1929 and the project lost its funding. Changes were made to the program; instead of treating health problems in underserved areas, in 1932 poor black men living in Macon County, Alabama, were instead enrolled in a program to treat what they were told was their "bad blood" (a term that, at the time, was used in reference to everything from anemia to fatigue to syphilis). They were given free medical care, as well as food and other amenities such as burial insurance, for participating in the study. But they didn't know it was all a sham. The men in the study weren't told that they were recruited for the program because they were actually suffering from the sexually transmitted disease syphilis, nor were they told they were taking part in a government experiment studying untreated syphilis, the "Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male." That's right: untreated.

Despite thinking they were receiving medical care, subjects were never actually properly treated for the disease. This went on even after penicillin hit the scene and became the go-to treatment for the infection in 1945, and after Rapid Treatment Centers were established in 1947. Despite concerns raised about the ethics of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study as early as 1936, the study didn't actually end until 1972 after the media reported on the multi-decade experiment and there was subsequent public outrage.

9: The Nazi Medical Experiments

During WWII, the Nazis performed medical experiments on adults and children imprisoned in the Dachau, Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen concentration camps. The accounts of abuse, mutilation, starvation, and torture reads like a grisly compilation of all nine circles of hell. Prisoners in these death camps were subjected to heinous crimes under the guise of military advancement, medical and pharmaceutical advancement, and racial and population advancement.

Jews were subjected to experiments intended to benefit the military, including hypothermia studies where prisoners were immersed in ice water in an effort to ascertain how long a downed pilot could survive in similar conditions. Some victims were only allowed sea water, a study of how long pilots could survive at sea; these subjects, not surprisingly, died of dehydration. Victims were also exposed to high altitude in decompression chambers -- often followed with brain dissection on the living -- to study high-altitude sickness and how pilots would be affected by atmospheric pressure changes.

Effectively treating war injuries was also a concern for the Nazis, and pharmaceutical testing went on in these camps. Sulfanilamide was tested as a new treatment for war wounds. Victims were inflicted with wounds that were then intentionally infected. Infections and poisonings were also studied on human subjects. Tuberculosis (TB) was injected into prisoners in an effort to better understand how to immunize against the infection. Experiments with poison, to determine how fast subjects would die, were also on the agenda.

The Nazis also performed genetic and racially-motivated sterilizations, artificial inseminations, and also conducted experiments on twins and people of short stature.

8: Watson's 'Little Albert' Experiment

In 1920 John Watson, along with graduate student Rosalie Rayner, conducted an emotional-conditioning experiment on a nine-month-old baby -- whom they nicknamed "Albert B" -- at Johns Hopkins University in an effort to prove their theory that we're all born as blank slates that can be shaped. The child's mother, a wet nurse who worked at the hospital, was paid one dollar for allowing her son to take part.

The "Little Albert" experiment went like this: Researchers first introduced the baby to a small, furry white rat, of which he initially had no fear . (According to reports, he didn't really show much interest at all). Then they re-introduced him to the rat while a loud sound rang out. Over and over, "Albert" was exposed to the rat and startling noises until he became frightened any time he saw any small, furry animal (rats, for sure, but also dogs and monkeys) regardless of noise.

Who exactly "Albert" was remained unknown until 2010, when his identity was revealed to be Douglas Merritte. Merritte, it turns out, wasn't a healthy subject: He showed signs of behavioral and neurological impairment, never learned to talk or walk, and only lived to age six, dying from hydrocephalus (water on the brain). He also suffered from a bacterial meningitis infection he may have acquired accidentally during treatments for his hydrocephalus, or, as some theorize, may have been -- horrifyingly -- intentionally infected as part of another experiment.

In the end, Merritte was never deconditioned, and because he died at such a young age no one knows if he continued to fear small furry things post-experiment.

7: The Monster Study of 1939

Today we understand that stuttering has many possible causes. It may run in some families, an inherited genetic quirk of the language center of the brain. It may also occur because of a brain injury, including stroke or other trauma. Some young children stutter when they're learning to talk, but outgrow the problem. In some rare instances, it may be a side effect of emotional trauma. But you know what it's not caused by? Criticism.

In 1939 Mary Tudor, a graduate student at the University of Iowa, and her faculty advisor, speech expert Wendell Johnson, set out to prove stuttering could be taught through negative reinforcement -- that it's learned behavior. Over four months, 22 orphaned children were told they would be receiving speech therapy, but in reality they became subjects in a stuttering experiment; only about half were actually stutterers, and none received speech therapy.

During the experiment the children were split into four groups:

Half of the stutterers were given negative feedback.
The other half of stutterers were given positive feedback.
Half of the non-stuttering group were all told they were beginning to stutterer and were criticized.
The other half of non-stutterers were praised.

The only significant impact the experiment had was on that third group; these kids, despite never actually developing a stutter, began to change their behavior, exhibiting low self-esteem and adopting the self-conscious behaviors associated with stutterers. And those who did stutter didn't cease doing so regardless of the feedback they received.

6: Stateville Penitentiary Malaria Study

It's estimated that between 60 to 65 percent of American soldiers stationed in the South Pacific during WWII suffered from a malarial infection at some point during their service. For some units the infection proved to be more deadly than the enemy forces were, so finding an effective treatment was a high priority [source: Army Heritage Center Foundation]. Safe anti-malarial drugs were seen as essential to winning the war.

Beginning in 1944 and spanning over the course of two years, more than 400 prisoners at the Stateville Penitentiary in Illinois were subjects in an experiment aimed at finding an effective drug against malaria . Prisoners taking part in the experiment were infected with malaria, and then treated with experimental anti-malarial treatments. The experiment didn't have a hidden agenda, and its unethical methodology didn't seem to bother the American public, who were united in winning WWII and eager to bring the troops home — safe and healthy. The intent of the experiments wasn't hidden from the subjects, who were at the time praised for their patriotism and in many instances given shorter prison sentences in return for their participation.

5: The Aversion Project in South Africa

If you were living during the apartheid era in South Africa, you lived under state-regulated racial segregation. If that itself wasn't difficult enough, the state also controlled your sexuality.

The South African government upheld strict anti-homosexual laws. If you were gay you were considered a deviant — and your homosexuality was also considered a disease that could be treated. Even after homosexuality ceased to be considered a mental illness and aversion therapy as a way to cure it debunked, psychiatrists and Army medical professionals in the South African Defense Force (SADF) continued to believe the outdated theories and treatments. In particular, aversion therapy techniques were used on prisoners and on South Africans who were forced to join the military under the conscription laws of the time.

At Ward 22 at 1 Military hospital in Voortrekkerhoogte, Pretoria, between 1969 and 1987 attempts were made to "cure" perceived deviants. Homosexuals, gay men and lesbians were drugged and subjected to electroconvulsive behavior therapy while shown aversion stimuli (same-sex erotic photos), followed by erotic photos of the opposite sex after the electric shock. When the technique didn't work (and it absolutely didn't), victims were then treated with hormone therapy, which in some cases included chemical castration. In addition, an estimated 900 men and women also underwent gender reassignment surgery when subsequent efforts to "reorient" them failed — most without consent, and some left unfinished [source: Kaplan ].

4: Milgram Shock Experiments

Ghostbuster Peter Venkman, who is seen in the fictional film conducting ESP/electro-shock experiments on college students, was likely inspired by social psychologist Stanley Milgram's famous series of shock experiments conducted in the early 1960s. During Milgram's experiments "teachers" — Americans recruited for a Yale study they thought was about memory and learning — were told to read lists of words to "learners" (actors, although the teachers didn't know that). Each person in the teacher role was instructed to press a lever that would deliver a shock to their "learner" every time he made a mistake on word-matching quizzes. Teachers believed the voltage of shocks increased with each mistake, and ranged from 15 to 450 possible volts; roughly two-thirds of teachers shocked learners to the highest voltage , continuing to deliver jolts at the instruction of the experimenter.

In reality, this wasn't an experiment about memory and learning; rather, it was about how obedient we are to authority. No shocks were actually given.

Today, Milgram's shock experiments continue to be controversial; while they're criticized for their lack of realism, others point to the results as important to how humans behave when under duress. In 2010 the results of Milgram's study were repeated — with about 70 percent of teachers obediently administering what they believed to be the highest voltage shocks to their learners.

3: CIA Mind-Control Experiments (Project MK-Ultra)

If you're familiar with "Men Who Stare at Goats" or "The Manchurian Candidate" then you know: There was a period in the CIA's history when they performed covert mind-control experiments. If you thought it was fiction, it wasn't.

During the Cold War the CIA started researching ways they could turn Americans into CIA-controlled "superagents," people who could carry out assassinations and who wouldn't be affected by enemy interrogations. Under what was known as the MK-ULTRA project, CIA researchers experimented on unsuspecting American (and Canadian) citizens by slipping them psychedelic drugs, including LSD , PCP and barbiturates, as well as additional — and additionally illegal — methods such as hypnosis, and, possibly, chemical, biological, and radiological agents. Universities participated, mostly as a delivery system, also without their knowledge. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs estimates 7,000 soldiers were also involved in the research, without their consent.

The project endured for more than 20 years, during which the agency spent about $20 million. There was one death tied to the project, although more were suspected; tin 1973 the CIA destroyed what records were kept.

2: Unit 731

Using biological warfare was banned by the Geneva Protocol in 1925, but Japan rejected the ban. If germ warfare was effective enough to be banned, it must work, military leaders believed. Unit 731 , a secret unit in a secret facility — publicly known as the Epidemic Prevention and Water Supply Unit — was established in Japanese-controlled Manchuria, where by the mid-1930s Japan began experimenting with pathogenic and chemical warfare and testing on human subjects. There, military physicians and officers intentionally exposed victims to infectious diseases including anthrax , bubonic plague, cholera, syphilis, typhus and other pathogens, in an effort to understand how they affected the body and how they could be used in bombs and attacks in WWII.

In addition to working with pathogens, Unit 731 conducted experiments on people, including — but certainly not limited to — dissections and vivisections on living humans, all without anesthesia (the experimenters believed using it would skew the results of the research).

Many of the subjects were Chinese civilians and prisoners of war, but also included Russian and American victims among others — basically, anyone who wasn't Japanese was a potential subject. Today it's estimated that about 100,000 people were victims within the facility, but when you include the germ warfare field experiments (such as reports of Japanese planes dropping plague-infected fleas over Chinese villages and poisoning wells with cholera) the death toll climbs to estimates closer to 250,000, maybe more.

Believe it or not, after WWII the U.S. granted immunity to those involved in these war crimes committed at Unit 731 as part of an information exchange agreement — and until the 1980s, the Japanese government refused to admit any of this even happened.

1: The Human Vivisections of Herophilus

Ancient physician Herophilus is considered the father of anatomy. And while he made significant discoveries during his practice, it's how he learned about internal workings of the human body that lands him on this list.

Herophilus practiced medicine in Alexandria, Egypt, and during the reign of the first two Ptolemaio Pharoahs was allowed, at least for about 30 to 40 years, to dissect human bodies, which he did, publicly, along with contemporary Greek physician and anatomist Erasistratus. Under Ptolemy I and Ptolemy II, criminals could be sentenced to dissection and vivisection as punishment, and it's said the father of anatomy not only dissected the dead but also performed vivisection on an estimated 600 living prisoners [source: Elhadi ].

Herophilus made great strides in the study of human anatomy — especially the brain , eyes, liver, circulatory system, nervous system and reproductive system, during a time in history when dissecting human cadavers was considered an act of desecration of the body (there were no autopsies conducted on the dead, although mummification was popular in Egypt at the time). And, like today, performing vivisection on living bodies was considered butchery.

Frequently Asked Questions

How have these experiments influenced current ethical standards in research, what protections are in place today to prevent similar unethical research on humans, lots more information, author's note.

There is no denying that involving living, breathing humans in medical studies have produced some invaluable results, but there's that one medical saying most of us know, even if we're not in a medical field: first do no harm (or, if you're fancy, primum non nocere).

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More than 160 students, teachers nationwide hurt in science experiments gone wrong

by JOCE STERMAN, ALEX BRAUER and ANDREA NEJMAN, Sinclair Broadcast Group

A demonstration conducted by the ATF shows the phenomenon known as flame jetting as it could happen in a classroom science experiment gone wrong (Photo: Alex Brauer)

WASHINGTON (SBG) — As many students return to in-person learning, experts are warning about a danger they could face in the classroom: not COVID-19 , but a phenomenon known as flame jetting. It's already injured dozens of students and teachers across the nation in classroom science experiments gone terribly wrong.

Spotlight on America got a firsthand look at the phenomenon known as flame jetting from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives , going behind the scenes at the agency's Fire Research Laboratory in Maryland. As trained and equipped representatives from the ATF demonstrated, the phenomenon can turn a flammable liquid inside a container into a flame thrower, creating a wall of fire that shoots forward with an intense force, torching anything in its path.

According to Jonathan Butta with the ATF, it can happen when alcohols, especially methanol, are used in demonstrations involving an open flame. While the idea is to liven up classroom experiments and give a real-life application to a chemical concept, the results can be tragic. Butta explained, "It essentially turns a typical flammable liquid container into a flamethrower."

"We actually see the flame front propagate up the stream of flammable liquid into that container and expand those vapors and shoot those liquid droplets out with it," said Jonathan Butta with the ATF.

Dozens of students across the country have actually seen flame jetting in action, with tragic consequences. W.T. Woodson High School in Virginia is just one example.

In 2015, a demonstration known as the "Rainbow Experiment" designed to show how burning different salts results in different colors, went wrong at the school. Experts say flame jetting occurred during the experiment, with the tragic outcome detailed in stunning photos . The incident left a classroom at Woodson High School charred and five students injured, including two who had to be airlifted to the hospital with serious burns. Just weeks after the incident, Nick Dache exclusively told our affiliate WJLA , "I think the whole thing was just a freak accident."

Dache actually stepped in to assist one of the students who was burned during the incident. As the young woman ran out of the classroom still on fire, Dache explained he chased her down and used his hands to scuff out the flames on her shirt.

"It almost looked like a blanket. Someone else described it as a fireball," student Nick Dache said of the aftermath of the Rainbow Experiment gone wrong in 2015. "I don't think that's completely accurate because that seems more violent. It got very widespread but it didn't seem super concentrated."

A similar flame jetting incident happened in Ohio in 2006, when student Calais Weber Biery was burned over 40 percent of her body during an experiment in her school's chemistry lab. She's featured in a 2013 Youtube video produced by the U.S. Chemical Safety Board called "After the Rainbow." The video, the organization said, was created in an effort to help prevent classroom accidents in chemistry labs.

"I remember thinking, 'I'm on fire, oh my gosh, I'm on fire,'" student Calais Weber Biery recalled in a Youtube video about the dangers of the Rainbow Experiment. "It's tragic and it shouldn't happen."

Spotlight on America has learned those two incidents are far from isolated. A 2018 study published in the Journal of Chemical Education , an arm of the American Chemical Society , found 164 children and teachers have been injured in classroom demonstrations using flammable solvents since 1988. Additionally, we discovered at least three additional incidents last year alone. Experiments where students and teachers have been injured have happened in the following states:

North Carolina
Pennsylvania

The real number of classroom accidents could actually be much higher because Spotlight on America has learned there's no requirement to report accidents to the US Chemical Safety Board , which along with the ACS, has done tremendous outreach, trying to improve experiment safety. In 2015, Kristen Kulinowski, a former member of the USCSB, talked with our affiliate WJLA about the number of accidents in classroom labs, calling them a significant problem. She said, "All of these incidents could have been prevented."

Courts in at least four states including Georgia, Florida, New York and Ohio have agreed, handing over millions in cases filed by students injured in fiery classroom experiments. In one of those cases , nearly $60 million was awarded to a high school student in New York who was badly burned and left with permanent scarring on much of his body as a result of an experiment gone wrong. The award was appealed but just this summer a judge upheld the jury's decision.

For years, some safety advocates have called for banning experiments involving flammable solvents and open flames altogether, while others have lobbied for mandating specific safety protocols to protect students in the classroom. For its part, the ACS has dedicated an entire section of its website to provide resources for educators on how to safely conduct demonstrations and experiments in the classroom. Their efforts even include showing teachers a safe, alternative way to conduct the Rainbow Experiment without putting students at risk.

9 evil medical experiments

Many evil medical experiments have been conducted in the name of science, here are nine of the most horrific.

An SS operating theatre used for evil medical experiments

Separating triplets

Nazi medical experiments, japan's unit 731, the "monster study", the burke and hare murders, surgical experiments on slaves, guatemala syphilis study, the tuskegee study, additional resources:, related links:, bibliography:.

Throughout history a number of evil experiments have been carried out in the name of science. We all know the stereotype of the mad scientist, often a villain in popular culture. Yet in real-life, while science often saves lives, sometimes scientists commit horrific crimes in order to achieve results.

Some are ethical mistakes, lapses of judgement made by people convinced they're doing the right thing. Other times, they're pure evil. Here are nine of the worst experiments on human subjects in history.

Robert Shafran, David Kellman and Eddy Galland sit for a photo at a home in Howard Beach in Queens, New York, on Sept. 28, 1980, after the triplets had been reunited.

In the 1960s and 1970s , clinical psychologists led by Peter Neubauer ran a secret experiment in which they separated twins and triplets from each other and adopted them out as singlets. The experiment, said to have been partly funded by the National Institute of Mental Health , came to light when three identical triplet brothers accidentally found each other in 1980. They had no idea they had siblings.

David Kellman, one of the triplets, felt anger towards the experiment: ''We were robbed of 20 years together,'' said Kellman in the Orlando Sentinel article. His brother, Edward Galland died by suicide in 1995 at his home in Maplewood, New Jersey, according to the LA Times .

The child psychiatrists who headed up the study — Peter Neubauer and Viola Bernard — showed no remorse, according to news reports, going as far as saying they thought they were doing something good for the kids, separating them so they could develop their individual personalities, said Bernard, according to Quillette . As for what Neubauer learned from his secret "evil" experiment, that's anyone's guess, as the results of the controversial study are being stored in an archive at Yale University, and they can't be unsealed until 2066, NPR reported in 2007 . Neubauer published some of his findings in a 1996 book, Nature's Thumbprint: The New Genetics of Personality , primarily concerning his son. According to Psychology today, as of 2021, some of Dr Viola Bernard's papers have become viewable at Columbia University .

Director Tim Wardle chronicled the lives of the triplets in the film " Three Identical Strangers ," which debuted at Sundance 2018.

The entrance to the Auschwitz concentration camp

Perhaps the most infamous evil experiments of all time were those carried out by Josef Mengele, an SS physician at Auschwitz during the Holocaust . Mengele combed the incoming trains for twins upon which to experiment, hoping to prove his theories of the racial supremacy of Aryans. Many died in the process. He also collected the eyes of his dead "patients," according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum .

The Nazis used prisoners to test treatments for infectious diseases and chemical warfare. Others were forced into freezing temperatures and low-pressure chambers for aviation experiments, according to the Jewish Virtual Library . Countless prisoners were subjected to experimental sterilization procedures. One woman, Ruth Elias, had her breasts tied off with string so SS doctors could see how long it took her baby to starve, according to an oral history collected by the Holocaust Museum . She eventually injected the child with a lethal dose of morphine to keep it from suffering longer.

Some of the doctors responsible for these atrocities were later tried as war criminals, but Mengele escaped to South America. He died in Brazil in 1979, of a heart attack, his final years spent lonely and depressed according to The Guardian .

Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, the Japanese Imperial Army conducted biological warfare and medical testing on civilians, mostly in China . Led by General Shiro Ishii, the lead physician at UNIT 731, the death toll of these brutal experiments is unknown, but as many as 200,000 may have died, estimates Historian Sheldon H Harris according to a 1995 New York Times report .

Numerous diseases were studied in order to determine their potential use in warfare. Among them were plague, anthrax , dysentery, typhoid, paratyphoid and cholera, according to a paper by Dr Robert K D Peterson for Montana University . Numerous atrocities were committed including infecting wells with cholera and typhoid and spreading plague-ridden fleas across Chinese cities.

According to Peterson the fleas were dropped in clay bombs, which were dropped at a height of 200-300 meters and showed no trace. Prisoners were marched in freezing weather and then experimented on to determine the best treatment for frostbite.

Former members of the unit have told media outlets that prisoners were dosed with poison gas, put in pressure chambers until their eyes popped out, and even dissected while alive and conscious. After the war, the U.S. government helped keep the experiments secret as part of a plan to make Japan a cold-war ally, according to the Times report.

It was not until the late 1990's that Japan first acknowledged the existence of the unit and not until 2018 that the names of thousands of members of the Unit were disclosed, according to The Guardian .

In 1939, speech pathologists at the University of Iowa set out to prove their theory that stuttering was a learned behavior caused by a child's anxiety about speaking. Unfortunately, the way they chose to go about this was to try to induce stuttering in orphans by telling them they were doomed to start stuttering in the future.

The researchers sat down with children at the Ohio Soldiers and Sailors Orphans' Home and told them they were showing signs of stuttering and shouldn't speak unless they could be sure that they would speak right. The experiment didn't induce stuttering, but it did make formerly normal children anxious, withdrawn and silent.

Future Iowa pathology students dubbed the study, "the Monster Study," according to a 2003 New York Times article on the research. Three surviving children and the estates of three others eventually sued Iowa and the university. In 2007, Iowa settled for a total of $925,000.

The anatomist Dr Robert Knox, who Burke and Hare supplied the bodies of their victims to

Until the 1830s, the only legally available bodies for dissection by anatomists were those of executed murderers. Executed murderers being a relative rarity, many anatomists took to buying bodies from grave robbers — or doing the robbing themselves. “Body snatching as a ‘professional’ occupation didn’t really start to take shape until the end of the 18th century” Suzie Lennox, the author of Bodysnatchers: Digging Up the Untold Stories of Britain's Resurrection Men told All About History in an interview “up till then the students and anatomists would have carried out their own raids in graveyards, acquiring cadavers as and when they could”.

Edinburgh boarding house owner William Hare and his friend William Burke found a way to deliver fresh corpses to Edinbrugh's anatomy tables without ever actually stealing a body. From 1827 to 1828, the two men smothered more than a dozen lodgers at the boarding house and sold their bodies to anatomist Robert Knox, according to Mary Roach's " Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers " (W.W. Norton & Company, 2003). Knox apparently didn't notice (or didn't care) that the bodies his newest suppliers were bringing him were suspiciously fresh, Roach wrote.

Burke was later hanged for his crimes, and the case spurred the British government to loosen the restrictions on dissection. "The scandal led to the Anatomy Act of 1832 which made greater numbers of cadavers legally available to schools" Maclolm McCallum, the curator of the Edinburgh Anatomical Museum told All About History in an interview. "If you died in an asylum or hospital, and had no relatives or means to cover your funeral costs, your body would go to the schools for dissection. Crucially, the institutions which were providing the cadavers only supplied them to anatomy schools that were associated with teaching hospitals".

James Marion Sims, the 'father of gynecology', whose experiments on slaves continue to cause controversy

The father of modern gynecology, J. Marion Sims, gained much of his fame by doing experimental surgeries (sometimes several per person) on slave women, according to The Atlantic . Sims remains a controversial figure to this day, because the condition he was treating in the women, vesico-vaginal fistula, caused terrible suffering. Women with fistulas, a tear between the vagina and bladder, were incontinent and were often rejected by society.

Sims performed the surgeries without anesthesia , in part because anesthesia had only recently been discovered, and in part because Sims believed the operations were "not painful enough to justify the trouble," as he said in alecture according to NPR .

Arguments still rage as to whether Sims' patients would have consented to the surgeries had they been entirely free to choose. Nonetheless, wrote University of Alabama social work professor Durrenda Ojanuga in the Journal of Medical Ethics in 1993 , Sims "manipulated the social institution of slavery to perform human experimentations, which by any standard is unacceptable." In 2018, a statue of Sims was removed in response to the ongoing controversy, according to The Guardian .

Many people erroneously believe that the government deliberately infected the Tuskegee participants with syphilis, which was not the case. But the work of professor Susan Reverby recently exposed a time when the U.S. Public Health Service researchers did just that, according to Wellesley College . Between 1946 and 1948, Reverby found, the U.S. and Guatemalan governments co-sponsored a study involving the deliberate infection of 1,500 Guatemalan men, women and children with syphilis according to The Guardian .

The study was intended to test chemicals to prevent the spread of the disease. According to Michael A. Rodriguez in a 2013 paper; "The experiments were not conducted in a sterile clinical setting in which bacteria that cause STDs were administered in the form of a pin prick vaccination or a pill taken orally. The researchers systematically and repeatedly violated profoundly vulnerable individuals, some in the saddest and most despairing states, and grievously aggravated their suffering" Those who got syphilis were given penicillin as a treatment, Reverby found, but the records she uncovered indicate no follow-up or informed consent by the participants. On Oct. 1, 2010, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius issued a joint statement apologizing for the experiments , according to The Guardian .

The most famous lapse in medical ethics in the United States lasted for 40 years. In 1932, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Public Health Service launched a study on the health effects of untreated syphilis in black men.

The researchers tracked the progression of the disease in 399 black men in Alabama and also studied 201 healthy men , telling them they were being treated for "bad blood." In fact, the men never got adequate treatment, even in 1947 when penicillin became the drug of choice to treat syphilis. It wasn't until a 1972 newspaper article exposed the study to the public eye that officials shut it down, according to the official Tuskegee site.

The Stanford Prison Experiment

Phillip Zimbardo whose controversial Stanford Prison experiment continues to generate interest

In 1971, Philip Zimbardo , now professor emeritus of psychology at Stanford University , set out to test the "nature of human nature," to answer questions such as "What happens when you put good people in evil situations?" How he went about answering his human nature questions was and is thought by many to have been less than ethical. He set up a prison and paid college students to play guards and prisoners, who inevitably seemed to transform into abusive guards and hysterical prisoners. The two-week experiment was shut down after just six days because things turned chaotic fast. "In only a few days, our guards became sadistic and our prisoners became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress," Zimbardo stated, according to Times Higher Education . The guards, pretty much from the get-go, treated the prisoners awfully, humiliating them by stripping them naked and spraying their bodies with delousing chemicals and generally harassing and intimidating them, according to the Stanford Prison Experiment site

Turns out, according to a report on Medium , a news publication, in June 2018, the guards didn't become aggressive on their own — Zimbardo encouraged the abusive behavior — and some of the prisoners faked their emotional breakdowns. For instance, Douglas Korpi, a volunteer prisoner said that he faked a meltdown to get released early so he could study for an exam.

Even so, the Stanford Prison Experiment has been the basis of psychologists' and even historians' understanding of how even healthy people can become so evil when placed in certain situations, according to the American Psychological Association .

For more concerning the atrocities committed during the Holocaust, check out the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum . The New York Times original 1995 report on the events that occured at Manchu 731 is available here . Those interested in the Stanford Prison Experiment should check out the experiments website .

The Holocaust: Facts and Remembrance
The Top 10 Mad Scientists
Amy Kaufman: " The surreal, sad story behind the acclaimed new doc ‘Three Identical Strangers " Los Angeles Times, July 1 2018
Nancy L Segal: " Shame and Silence: The LWS Twin Studies Revisited " Quillette, 26th Sep 2021
Holocaust Encyclopedia: Josef Mengele
Dachau: High Altitude Experiments, Jewish Virtual Library
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Gretchen Reynolds: " The Stuttering Doctor's 'Monster Study ", New York Times, March 16th 2003
Mary Roach's " Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers " (W.W. Norton & Company, 2003)
Sarah Zhang: " The Surgeon Who Experimented on Slaves ", The Atlantic, April 18th 2018
Camila Domonoske: " Father Of Gynecology,' Who Experimented On Slaves, No Longer On Pedestal In NYC " NPR, April 17th 2018
Durrenda Ojanuga: " The Medical Ethics of the 'Father of Gynaecology', Dr J Marion Sims ' Journal of Medical Ethics, 1993
Nadja Sayej: " J Marion Sims: controversial statue taken down but debate still rages ", The Guardian, Sat 21st April 2018
Rory Caroll, " Guatemala victims of US syphilis study still haunted by the 'devil's experiment ", The Guardian, 8th June 2011
Michael A Rodriguez, National Library of Medicine
Chris McGreal: " US says sorry for 'outrageous and abhorrent' Guatemalan syphilis tests ", The Guardian, 1st October 2010
Matthew Reisz, " Re-engaging with the Stanford Prison Experiment ". Times Higher Education, Sep 26th 2018

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Stephanie Pappas is a contributing writer for Live Science, covering topics ranging from geoscience to archaeology to the human brain and behavior. She was previously a senior writer for Live Science but is now a freelancer based in Denver, Colorado, and regularly contributes to Scientific American and The Monitor, the monthly magazine of the American Psychological Association. Stephanie received a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of South Carolina and a graduate certificate in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

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Science News

Here are the top 10 times scientific imagination failed.

Sometimes scientists dismiss an idea if they can’t think of a way to test it

By Tom Siegfried

Contributing Correspondent

March 31, 2022 at 11:00 am

apparatus of the Daya Bay experiment, with shiny orbs attached to long walls

Scientists once doubted that neutrinos could ever be observed. Today, detectors around the world (including at the Daya Bay experiment in China, shown) pick up signals of these ghostly particles.

Roy Kaltschmidt, LBNL/U.S. Department of Energy/Flickr

9. Composition of stars

Mach’s views were similar to those of Auguste Comte, a French philosopher who originated the idea of positivism, which denies reality to anything other than objects of sensory experience. Comte’s philosophy led (and in some cases still leads) many scientists astray. His greatest failure of imagination was an example he offered for what science could never know: the chemical composition of the stars.

Unable to imagine anybody affording a ticket on some entrepreneur’s space rocket, Comte argued in 1835 that the identity of the stars’ components would forever remain beyond human knowledge . We could study their size, shapes and movements, he said, “whereas we would never know how to study by any means their chemical composition, or their mineralogical structure,” or for that matter, their temperature, which “will necessarily always be concealed from us.”

Within a few decades, though, a newfangled technology called spectroscopy enabled astronomers to analyze the colors of light emitted by stars. And since each chemical element emits (or absorbs) precise colors (or frequencies) of light, each set of colors is like a chemical fingerprint, an infallible indicator for an element’s identity. Using a spectroscope to observe starlight therefore can reveal the chemistry of the stars, exactly what Comte thought impossible.

8. Canals on Mars

Sometimes imagination fails because of its overabundance rather than absence. In the case of the never-ending drama over the possibility of life on Mars, that planet’s famous canals turned out to be figments of overactive scientific imagination.

First “observed” in the late 19th century, the Martian canals showed up as streaks on the planet’s surface, described as canali by Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli. Canali is, however, Italian for channels, not canals. So in this case something was gained (rather than lost) in translation — the idea that Mars was inhabited. “Canals are dug,” remarked British astronomer Norman Lockyer in 1901 , “ ergo there were diggers.” Soon astronomers imagined an elaborate system of canals transporting water from Martian poles to thirsty metropolitan areas and agricultural centers. (Some observers even imagined seeing canals on Venus and Mercury.)

Giovanni Schiaparelli's 19th-century map of channels on Mars

With more constrained imaginations, aided by better telescopes and translations, belief in the Martian canals eventually faded. It was merely the Martian winds blowing dust (bright) and sand (dark) around the surface in ways that occasionally made bright and dark streaks line up in a deceptive manner — to eyes attached to overly imaginative brains.

7. Nuclear fission

In 1934, Italian physicist Enrico Fermi bombarded uranium (atomic number 92) and other elements with neutrons, the particle discovered just two years earlier by James Chadwick. Fermi found that among the products was an unidentifiable new element. He thought he had created element 93 , heavier than uranium. He could not imagine any other explanation. In 1938 Fermi was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for demonstrating “the existence of new radioactive elements produced by neutron irradiation.”

It turned out, however, that Fermi had unwittingly demonstrated nuclear fission. His bombardment products were actually lighter, previously known elements — fragments split from the heavy uranium nucleus. Of course, the scientists later credited with discovering fission , Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann, didn’t understand their results either. Hahn’s former collaborator Lise Meitner was the one who explained what they’d done. Another woman, chemist Ida Noddack, had imagined the possibility of fission to explain Fermi’s results, but for some reason nobody listened to her.

6. Detecting neutrinos

In the 1920s, most physicists had convinced themselves that nature was built from just two basic particles : positively charged protons and negatively charged electrons. Some had, however, imagined the possibility of a particle with no electric charge. One specific proposal for such a particle came in 1930 from Austrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli. He suggested that a no-charge particle could explain a suspicious loss of energy observed in beta-particle radioactivity. Pauli’s idea was worked out mathematically by Fermi, who named the neutral particle the neutrino. Fermi’s math was then examined by physicists Hans Bethe and Rudolf Peierls, who deduced that the neutrino would zip through matter so easily that there was no imaginable way of detecting its existence (short of building a tank of liquid hydrogen 6 million billion miles wide). “There is no practically possible way of observing the neutrino,” Bethe and Peierls concluded .

But they had failed to imagine the possibility of finding a source of huge numbers of high-energy neutrinos, so that a few could be captured even if almost all escaped. No such source was known until nuclear fission reactors were invented. In the 1950s, Frederick Reines and Clyde Cowan used reactors to definitely establish the neutrino’s existence . Reines later said he sought a way to detect the neutrino precisely because everybody had told him it wasn’t possible to detect the neutrino.

5. Nuclear energy

Ernest Rutherford, one of the 20th century’s greatest experimental physicists, was not exactly unimaginative. He imagined the existence of the neutron a dozen years before it was discovered, and he figured out that a weird experiment conducted by his assistants had revealed that atoms contained a dense central nucleus. It was clear that the atomic nucleus packed an enormous quantity of energy, but Rutherford could imagine no way to extract that energy for practical purposes. In 1933, at a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, he noted that although the nucleus contained a lot of energy, it would also require energy to release it. Anyone saying we can exploit atomic energy “is talking moonshine,” Rutherford declared . To be fair, Rutherford qualified the moonshine remark by saying “with our present knowledge,” so in a way he perhaps was anticipating the discovery of nuclear fission a few years later. (And some historians have suggested that Rutherford did imagine the powerful release of nuclear energy, but thought it was a bad idea and wanted to discourage people from attempting it.)

Calder Hall, the first full-scale commercial power plant

4. Age of the Earth

Rutherford’s reputation for imagination was bolstered by his inference that radioactive matter deep underground could solve the mystery of the age of the Earth. In the mid-19th century, William Thomson (later known as Lord Kelvin) calculated the Earth’s age to be something a little more than 100 million years, and possibly much less. Geologists insisted that the Earth must be much older — perhaps billions of years — to account for the planet’s geological features.

Kelvin calculated his estimate assuming the Earth was born as a molten rocky mass that then cooled to its present temperature. But following the discovery of radioactivity at the end of the 19th century, Rutherford pointed out that it provided a new source of heat in the Earth’s interior. While giving a talk (in Kelvin’s presence), Rutherford suggested that Kelvin had basically prophesized a new source of planetary heat.

While Kelvin’s neglect of radioactivity is the standard story, a more thorough analysis shows that adding that heat to his math would not have changed his estimate very much. Rather, Kelvin’s mistake was assuming the interior to be rigid. John Perry (one of Kelvin’s former assistants) showed in 1895 that the flow of heat deep within the Earth’s interior would alter Kelvin’s calculations considerably — enough to allow the Earth to be billions of years old. It turned out that the Earth’s mantle is fluid on long time scales, which not only explains the age of the Earth, but also plate tectonics.

3. Charge-parity violation

Before the mid-1950s, nobody imagined that the laws of physics gave a hoot about handedness. The same laws should govern matter in action when viewed straight-on or in a mirror, just as the rules of baseball applied equally to Ted Williams and Willie Mays, not to mention Mickey Mantle. But in 1956 physicists Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang suggested that perfect right-left symmetry (or “parity”) might be violated by the weak nuclear force, and experiments soon confirmed their suspicion .

Restoring sanity to nature, many physicists thought, required antimatter. If you just switched left with right (mirror image), some subatomic processes exhibited a preferred handedness. But if you also replaced matter with antimatter (switching electric charge), left-right balance would be restored. In other words, reversing both charge (C) and parity (P) left nature’s behavior unchanged, a principle known as CP symmetry. CP symmetry had to be perfectly exact; otherwise nature’s laws would change if you went backward (instead of forward) in time, and nobody could imagine that.

In the early 1960s, James Cronin and Val Fitch tested CP symmetry’s perfection by studying subatomic particles called kaons and their antimatter counterparts. Kaons and antikaons both have zero charge but are not identical, because they are made from different quarks. Thanks to the quirky rules of quantum mechanics, kaons can turn into antikaons and vice versa. If CP symmetry is exact, each should turn into the other equally often. But Cronin and Fitch found that antikaons turn into kaons more often than the other way around. And that implied that nature’s laws allowed a preferred direction of time. “People didn’t want to believe it,” Cronin said in a 1999 interview. Most physicists do believe it today, but the implications of CP violation for the nature of time and other cosmic questions remain mysterious.

2. Behaviorism versus the brain

In the early 20th century, the dogma of behaviorism, initiated by John Watson and championed a little later by B.F. Skinner, ensnared psychologists in a paradigm that literally excised imagination from science. The brain — site of all imagination — is a “black box,” the behaviorists insisted. Rules of human psychology (mostly inferred from experiments with rats and pigeons) could be scientifically established only by observing behavior. It was scientifically meaningless to inquire into the inner workings of the brain that directed such behavior, as those workings were in principle inaccessible to human observation. In other words, activity inside the brain was deemed scientifically irrelevant because it could not be observed. “When what a person does [is] attributed to what is going on inside him,” Skinner proclaimed , “investigation is brought to an end.”

Skinner’s behaviorist BS brainwashed a generation or two of followers into thinking the brain was beyond study. But fortunately for neuroscience, some physicists foresaw methods for observing neural activity in the brain without splitting the skull open, exhibiting imagination that the behaviorists lacked. In the 1970s Michel Ter-Pogossian , Michael Phelps and colleagues developed PET (positron emission tomography) scanning technology, which uses radioactive tracers to monitor brain activity . PET scanning is now complemented by magnetic resonance imaging, based on ideas developed in the 1930s and 1940s by physicists I.I. Rabi, Edward Purcell and Felix Bloch .

1. Gravitational waves

Nowadays astrophysicists are all agog about gravitational waves, which can reveal all sorts of secrets about what goes on in the distant universe. All hail Einstein, whose theory of gravity — general relativity — explains the waves’ existence. But Einstein was not the first to propose the idea. In the 19th century, James Clerk Maxwell devised the math explaining electromagnetic waves, and speculated that gravity might similarly induce waves in a gravitational field. He couldn’t figure out how, though. Later other scientists, including Oliver Heaviside and Henri Poincaré, speculated about gravity waves. So the possibility of their existence certainly had been imagined.

But many physicists doubted that the waves existed, or if they did, could not imagine any way of proving it. Shortly before Einstein completed his general relativity theory, German physicist Gustav Mie declared that “the gravitational radiation emitted … by any oscillating mass particle is so extraordinarily weak that it is unthinkable ever to detect it by any means whatsoever.” Even Einstein had no idea how to detect gravitational waves, although he worked out the math describing them in a 1918 paper. In 1936 he decided that general relativity did not predict gravitational waves at all. But the paper rejecting them was simply wrong.

illustration of two black holes about to collide

As it turned out, of course, gravitational waves are real and can be detected. At first they were verified indirectly, by the diminishing distance between mutually orbiting pulsars . And more recently they were directly detected by huge experiments relying on lasers . Nobody had been able to imagine detecting gravitational waves a century ago because nobody had imagined the existence of pulsars or lasers.

All these failures show how prejudice can sometimes dull the imagination. But they also show how an imagination failure can inspire the quest for a new success. And that’s why science, so often detoured by dogma, still manages somehow, on long enough time scales, to provide technological wonders and cosmic insights beyond philosophers’ and poets’ wildest imagination.

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14 Experiments Gone Wrong

Franz Reichelt is now remembered as the "flying tailor."

In 1971, 24 men were enlisted in the Stanford Prison Experiment . Led by Philip Zimbardo of Stanford University, the experiment was supposed to measure the effect of role-playing and social expectations over a two-week period in the basement of a school building. The participants were assigned the roles of either prisoners or guards, while others were held back as alternates. However, the events that took place over the next few days traumatized some prisoners so much they had to be removed from the experiment altogether. When an outsider witnessed some of the disturbing events taking place, they quickly sounded the alarm, which brought an abrupt end to the study after just six days. Many researchers don't believe this study could ever be replicated because it doesn't reach modern research ethics standards, and some psychologists doubt the Prison Experiment's core findings.

But science isn't responsible for all failed experiments; marketing has played a major role as well. The Cleveland Indians, for example, tried out a promotion to increase fan attendance by offering unlimited beer for 10 cents a cup in 1974, which certainly made for an eventful game against the Texas Rangers. What began with some drunken fans running onto the field and exposing themselves quickly escalated to fireworks being launched at the Texas Rangers’s dugout. Eventually, a riot broke out and some players were injured after having rocks hurled at them.

In this episode of The List Show, we're looking into the history of experiments gone wrong, from Franz Reichelt's failed parachute to a baby being raised alongside a chimp. You can watch the full episode below.

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7 Creepiest Science Experiments of All Time That Will Give You Nightmares

Scientists often run into doing crazy things in the quest of discovering something important. but some of these experiments aren’t just worthless but are unbelievably creepy..

Kashyap Vyas

7 Creepiest Science Experiments of All Time That Will Give You Nightmares

Experiments in the Revival of Organisms

Techfilm Studio/Wikimedia Commons

Science is a beautiful gift to humanity. It can tell us what is true over mere assumptions by validating the theories with practical experiments. The scientific experiments have often led to important discoveries that eventually helped the mankind to live a better life. Sometimes though, scientists in their quest for knowledge end up conducting experiments that are not only unethical but equally disturbing. The world has witnessed many of such spine-chilling and weird experiments that went badly wrong and even cost lives.

Here’s a list of 7 creepiest science experiments conducted ever that’ll surely give you nightmares:

You might have heard about the inhumane experiments done by Nazis during World War II. But they were not alone.

The Imperial Japanese Army’s Unit 731 carried out atrocities in the name of scientific experiments, some details of which are still left to be uncovered. It was until 1984 that Japan acknowledged about conducting cruel experiments on humans to prepare for germ warfare. Setup in 1938, the objective of Unit 731 was to develop biological weapons and was supported by Japanese universities and medical schools that supplied doctors and research staff to carry out such vile experiments. The unit used thousands of Chinese prisoners and Asian civilians as guinea pigs to develop killer diseases. The experiments included infecting wartime prisoners with cholera, anthrax, plague and other pathogens. Horrific still, some of the experiments involved vivisection without anesthesia and pressure chambers to identify how much a human can take before bursting. What’s creepier is that post-war American administration provided safe passage to some of those involved with Unit 731 in exchange of findings of their experiments.

Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment

The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male is infamous because of the tragedy it caused to people suffering from the disease in the name of free treatment. Between 1932 and 1972, 600 men were originally enrolled for the project, consisting of 399 with latent Syphilis and 201 as control group. Monitored by Doctors of U.S. Public Health Service, these men were given only placebos such as aspirin and mineral supplements, rather than treating with penicillin which was the recommended treatment at that time. The purpose of the study was to understand the effect and spread of the disease on human body. Because of the unethical considerations by scientists, 28 participants perished from Syphilis , 100 died because of related complications and more than 40 spouses were diagnosed with the disease, passing Syphilis to 19 children at birth. President Clinton is 1997 issued his apology to the survivors and families of the victims of the study, stating “The United States government did something that was wrong—deeply, profoundly, morally wrong… It is not only in remembering that shameful past that we can make amends and repair our nation, but it is in remembering that past that we can build a better present and a better future.”

Two Headed Dogs

Vladimir Demikhov was a successful surgeon and his studies have helped medical science to advance especially in the field of organ transplant and coronary surgery. Demikhov was the first person to perform a successful coronary artery bypass operation on a warm-blooded creature. But, behind his successful operations, there are few of his experiments that can make you feel uncomfortable. His famous two-headed dog experiment is one of them. He stitched the head, shoulders and front legs of a puppy onto the neck of a German shepherd. Although the surgery was a success as both dogs could move around independent of each other, they didn’t survive very long due to tissue rejection. Demikhov created 20 such two-headed dogs, but the highest one survived only for a month. While the experiment may sound cruel, it indeed helped in pioneering organ transplants in humans.

Testicle Transplants

In one of the most disturbing experiments, Leo Stanley, the physician in charge at San Quentin Prison in California surgically transplanted the testicles of executed criminals into living inmates. Stanley felt that males who committed crimes share a common characteristic – low testosterone levels and raising it would reduce the crime rates. More than 600 inmates became the victim of Stanley’s crazy theory, and when there was a shortage of human testicles, he went on to inject liquefied animal testicles into the prisoners. Stanley claimed that the experiment was a success by citing a Caucasian prisoner who felt “energetic” after transplanting the testicle from an executed African-American convict.

The Stanford Prison Experiment

In 1971, a group of researchers at Stanford University conducted an experiment to investigate the causes of conflict between prisoners and guards. 24 students were assigned the roles of prisoners and guards randomly and were put into a prison-like environment. Meant to last for two weeks, the study was abruptly ended after only six days, as it became difficult to control and maintain order. Despite being told not to use any form of violence, one in every three guards showed their tendency to abuse. Surprisingly, many of the prisoners accepted the abuses and led two of them to suffer emotional trauma. The study showed that how power of situations can influence individual’s behavior.

Zombie Dogs

Known as Experiments in the Revival of Organisms , Russian scientists Dr. Sergei Brukhoneko and Boris Levinskovsky released a video of dog heads that were kept alive by an artificial blood circulation system. Using a special heart-lung apparatus called the autojektor, the scientists showed dog heads responding to sound by wiggling their ears, blinking eyes and even licking their mouths. The experiment was repeated again by American scientists in 2005 by flushing all the blood from the dog and replacing it with oxygen and sugar-filled saline. After three hours, a blood transfusion and an electric shock the dogs were back from dead.

MKUltra is one of the most famous projects conducted by CIA to develop mind-control techniques that can be used against enemies during war. Lasted for more than a decade from 1950 to 1970, the project’s main goal was to remain ahead in the mind-control technology. But the scope widened eventually resulting into illegal drug testing on thousands of Americans. Using drugs like LSD and other chemicals along with other forms of psychological torture, the agency tried to alter brain functions and manipulate mental states of the people. The documentation related to the project was ordered to be destroyed completely, but in 1977 the Freedom of Information Act released more than 20,000 pages on the program.

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A science experiment gone wrong at a Tennessee elementary school sent 18 students and a teacher to the hospital on Friday, officials said.

The third-graders at Vena Stuart Elementary in Gallatin were conducting science experiments with an outside presenter and several said they began feeling sick after an experiment with dry ice, news outlets reported, citing a statement from Sumner County Schools.

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Several children became nauseous and school administrators called emergency responders, who transported the students and teacher as a precaution, Sumner County Schools' Director Scott Langford said in a video posted to social media.

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Montreal hair salon caters to women with face or head coverings

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'She led it the whole way': 18-year-old B.C. woman leads hikers to safety in Jasper National Park

As fire threatened people in Jasper National Park, Colleen Knull sprung into action.

'There's mom and dad's house': New video appears to show destruction of Jasper neighbourhood

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Sask. Second World War veteran, 103, receives France's highest national order

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Former First Nations chief voices Disney's first Ojibwe language Star Wars movie

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'I absolutely felt threatened': Former VPD exec speaks out alleging workplace toxicity and complicity

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West Vancouver mayor on deadline to enact new housing bylaws: 'The gun is to our head'

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New poll shows BC Conservatives closing gap with NDP as BC United loses another MLA

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'Do not approach him:' Police say Hamilton man facing 11-year prison sentence is at-large

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2 youths charged after several people hit with gel bullets in Vaughan

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Alberta Day of Caring: Recycle empty bottles and cans to help Jasper wildfire evacuees

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Bees, wasps to blame for wading pool closure

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Remains believed to be missing man found in wooded area: Manitoba RCMP

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Rally for better bike safety blocks Winnipeg intersection

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Sask. currently dealing with over 80 wildfires, none threatening communities, SPSA says

As the devastating wildfire in Jasper National Park continues to burn, Saskatchewan is currently batting more than 80 active wildfires of its own. However, none are currently encroaching on any communities, the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency said on Tuesday.

Former Sask. MLA Lyle Stewart dead at 73

Former Saskatchewan Party MLA and provincial cabinet minister Lyle Stewart has died following a lengthy battle with cancer.

'It was a shock': Fire claims historic hotel and café in Radville, Sask.

A long standing fixture in Radville, Sask. was destroyed by a fire in the early hours of Monday morning.

Death of neighbourhood deer sparks anger among Waterloo residents

Waterloo residents are frustrated over the death of a wild deer that had been living in their neighbourhood, after repeated requests to help the animal were ignored.

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Free little library destroyed in Kitchener

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Pierre Poilievre spouts 'uneducated' opinions on safe consumption sites: Prairie Harm Reduction

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Potentially toxic algae discovered in Saskatoon pond

The City of Saskatoon has issued a warning to residents about the presence of toxic cyanobacteria in Briarwood Pond.

Northern Ontario

BREAKING | Sudbury police investigating death at Bell Park

Sudbury police say they are investigating a death at Bell Park and are asking the public to avoid it.

Serious crash closes road at busy downtown Sudbury intersection

Police are asking people to avoid the Lloyd Street area after a serious crash at a busy downtown Sudbury intersection Wednesday morning.

Back to work at IMT Defence in Ingersoll

Workers voted to ratify a new four-year collective agreement that eliminates the two-tier wage system, they said discriminated against new hires and existing workers with limited seniority.

Cyclist killed after being struck by transport truck

One person has died after a crash Monday night in Lambton County. Around 10:05 p.m., crews responded to the area of London Line and Telfer road for the crash involving a transport truck and a cyclist.

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Just after 12 p.m. on Tuesday, emergency crews rushed to the scene in Thames Centre after a transport carrying a full load of propane, collided with an SUV.

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Couchiching Beach in Orillia has a swim advisory in place.

Wasaga Beach calls for tent ban on beach

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Rehabilitation centre for wildlife nears completion

The National Wildlife Centre in Caledon Ont., has been helping sick and injured wildlife for 10 years and will soon offer its first permanent wildlife field hospital.

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Here’s when you can expect a settlement payment from Loblaw for admitting to bread price fixing

A Windsor law firm has been working on the case since it first came to light nearly a decade ago.

Vancouver Island

Wildfire burning near Sooke, B.C., now being held

A wildfire burning west of Victoria is no longer considered out of control, according to an update from the B.C. Wildfire Service Tuesday.

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Lawyer for Coutts accused says client 'bit of a wing nut,' but not murder conspirator

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After a harrowing rescue in the cold Atlantic, a fisherman wanted two things: A new guitar, and Nickelback tickets

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Authorities reveal why a Sydney school science experiment went horribly wrong

The "black worm" science experiment likely got out of control due to gusty winds. Photo / VisioNil/ Nine

First responders have revealed the likely reason a science experiment at a Sydney school ended in an explosion and led to a 10-year-old girl being flown to hospital with severe burns.

Eight ambulances and two helicopters, one with a specialist medical team on board, rushed to the incident at Manly West Public School in Balgowlah at about 1pm on Monday.

11 children around the age of 10 and one adult were impacted by the “Hazmat incident”, reportedly caused by a science experiment gone wrong.

Wellbeing support was offered to students. Photo / NCA NewsWire / Dylan Coker

It’s understood the incident occurred during a “black worm” experiment, which involves using an accelerant to set baking soda and sugar alight.

New South Wales Ambulance said Monday’s high winds were partially to blame for the Year 5 class’ experiment going wrong.

“We received multiple triple-zero calls reporting that a number of children had sustained burns during a science experiment, which was being conducted outside,” NSW Ambulance Acting Superintendent Phil Templeman said.

Police and Safe Work NSW staff near an empty bottle of flammable liquid at the scene. Photo / NCA NewsWire / Dylan Coker

“Today’s high winds have impacted the experiment and blown some of the materials around.”

The most seriously injured child, a young girl, suffered multiple burns to her body and was flown to The Children’s Hospital at Westmead in a stable condition after receiving treatment from CareFlight’s specialist doctor and a NSW Ambulance critical care paramedic.

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The Best Horror Movies About Evil Experiments

Horror movies about evil experiments often vary in subject matter from crazy science experiments gone wrong to movies with experiments that go exactly as planned. Sometimes, the experiment is on a human subject, as seen in The Fly or The Human Centipede . Other times, scary movies can be about social experiments, like in the The Belko Experiment . Military and medical experiments can also be the source of a scourge in some of these films. The plot of the film is simple- coworkers in an office are pitted against each other in a kill or be killed situation.

Sometimes the experiments themselves are not as evil as the result. Morgan is about a scientifically created "human" that loses its mind and begins to kill the scientists that helped create her. Other good scary movies about experiments gone wrong include Re-Animator , Scanners , and From Beyond .

The purpose of this list is to rank the best evil experiment horror movies, so vote up your favorites below, and add to the list if you think the scariest human experiment movie isn't already here.

In a twisted tale of scientific ambition gone horribly awry, a brilliant scientist's quest for teleportation results in a nightmarish experiment that fuses his DNA with that of a common housefly. As the scientist begins his gruesome transformation into a grotesque human-fly hybrid, he must grapple with the ramifications of his newfound powers and the potential for irreversible disaster. With its truly gory visuals and chilling premise, this horror classic will leave you questioning the limits of scientific progress.

Released : 1986
Directed by : David Cronenberg

Frankenstein

In this iconic tale of science gone wrong, a brilliant but mad scientist stitches together a patchwork of human body parts in a desperate attempt to create life. When his monstrous creation comes to life, it becomes a vengeful force beyond his control, leaving chaos and death in its wake. A chilling examination of man's hubris and the perils of playing God, this Gothic horror masterpiece serves as a cautionary reminder of the consequences of pushing the boundaries of science too far.

Released : 1931
Directed by : James Whale

A group of ambitious medical students embark on a dangerous game when they begin conducting clandestine experiments with near-death experiences, hoping to catch a forbidden glimpse of the great beyond. But as they push the limits of life and death further and further, the group finds themselves haunted by the vengeful spirits their experiments have awakened. A boundary-pushing examination of death and the supernatural, this chilling horror film taps into our deepest fears of the unknown.

Released : 1990
Directed by : Joel Schumacher

A top-secret government project aimed at creating the perfect human-alien hybrid takes a terrifying turn when the end result escapes confinement and embarks on a deadly hunt for the perfect mate. With humanity hanging in the balance, a crack team of specialists is assembled to track down and destroy the creature before it can reproduce. For fans of sci-fi horror, this intense thriller weaves a tale of genetic manipulation and extraterrestrial terror that will have you on the edge of your seat.

Released : 1995
Directed by : Roger Donaldson

A group of strangers awakens to find themselves trapped inside a maze-like structure filled with deadly traps designed by a sadistic mastermind. As they struggle to navigate the treacherous labyrinth and decipher its cryptic clues, the group's desperation intensifies, sending them spiraling into paranoia and violence. With its nail-biting suspense and claustrophobic atmosphere, this cult horror film offers a twisted exploration of human experimentation and psychological torment.

Released : 1997
Directed by : Vincenzo Natali

Re-Animator

In a sinister twist on the classic Frankenstein story, an ambitious medical student uncovers a secret serum that can reanimate the dead – but at an unspeakable cost. As the boundaries between life and death are blurred, he finds himself drawn into a grisly series of experiments that unleash unimaginable horrors. With its stomach-churning gore and darkly comedic undertones, this cult horror film explores the depths of depravity to which humans will sink in pursuit of their twisted ambitions.

Released : 1985
Directed by : Stuart Gordon

Breaking made history in Paris. We'll probably never see it at Olympics again.

PARIS — Victor Montalvo became the first Olympic bronze medalist in the history of men's breaking Saturday night.

He knows he might also be the last.

The breaking competition at the 2024 Paris Olympics was years in the making and over in about 30 hours, bringing a brief flash of excitement and intrigue right at the end of the Games. And for breakers like Montalvo, who competes as B-boy Victor, it definitely felt different than other competitions − a bit more intense, and just more special. It felt like the sort of moment that, realistically, the Summer Olympics might never see again.

"It's just a win for all of us," Victor said. "I'm just super happy for breaking and hip-hop culture. We represented, and everyone loved it."

In a sport that borders on art, where friendships and personal beef serve as the backdrop to every battle, Victor said it felt Saturday night like all 16 men in the competition were working together.

There were Olympic medals at stake, and bragging rights, and maybe even endorsement deals and future financial opportunities. But it was telling that, at the end of the gold medal battle, B-boy Phil Wizard of Canada and B-boy Dany Dann of France put their arms around one another and walked toward the crowd with smiles on their faces.

Phil Wizard, whose legal name is Philip Kim, was soon introduced as the man who won gold. And Dany Dann, aka Danis Civil, took silver. But for both, it was mostly just about being there.

"For us, as of now, this is the one and only," Phil Wizard said. "So to be a part of history is truly incredible."

The International Olympic Committee added breaking, more commonly known as breakdancing, to the sports program in Paris because president Thomas Bach and his colleagues thought it would attract the younger, social-media savvy viewers that they were seeking. It also fit in with local organizers' broader goal of a more "urban" Olympic Games.

But even from the start, breaking was viewed as more of a novelty than a new sport with staying power.

A sport is usually not considered a "core" part of the Olympic program until it is part of at least three consecutive Games, which breaking will not be. Organizers for the next Summer Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028 had the ability to propose new sports they wanted to include in their Games and opted for flag football, cricket, lacrosse and squash over breaking − despite the dance's deep history in the United States, specifically the Bronx.

The breakers who competed Saturday night were well aware of this. It is unlikely that the sport is brought back to the Olympic stage, either at the 2032 Brisbane Games or beyond.

"I feel like we did our job," Victor said. "Everyone loved it. The crowd was going crazy. It's OK. We're not in 2028, but honestly, I (am) the first ever bronze medalist for breaking. So, that's an amazing thing to say."

Victor was first introduced to breaking by his father Victor Sr. and uncle Hector Bermudez , both of whom are former B-boys. When Victor Sr. told his son that he used to break, and Victor Jr. didn't believe him, the elder Victor got out his old gear, moved some furniture around in the living room and started doing headspins and windmills. Eight years later, Victor Jr. started breaking competitively.

As he moved up the ranks, from breaking at local cyphers to Red Bull's annual BC One event, Victor emerged as one of the best in the world at his craft, even winning two of the past three world championships. But the 30-year-old from Kissimmee, Florida, didn't seriously consider the possibility that breaking would be an Olympic sport until it actually was one. Everything he's experienced in Paris − the crowd at Place de la Concorde, the podium ceremony, the medal − was unexpected, which is maybe why he didn't seem the least bit fazed by not winning gold.

"I didn't get the gold, but I got the bronze," Victor said. "And we all represented hip-hop culture. Every competitor that was in there represented hip-hop and breaking.

"Hopefully a younger generation, more of the younger generation, starts dancing and gets into breaking. Because it’s amazing: You don’t need much for it, you know? You need a dance floor, self-expression and that’s about it."

On the stage Saturday night, there was plenty of bombast and braggadocio throughout the battles, which consisted of either two or three rounds and were critiqued by a panel of nine judges. But in the little moments after each battle, all of that melted away.

Phil Wizard went out of his way to talk about how, despite his new Olympic gold medal, he doesn't consider himself to be the best in the world.

“I can lose next week at another competition to anybody out there," Phil Wizard said. "It’s honestly just a big game of rock, paper, scissors – especially at this level."

Now, though, the 27-year-old from Vancouver will go down in history − just like Dany Dann and Victor and everyone who participated in the competition, or witnessed it, or even watched it on TV. It might not happen again.

"You will not forget this day!" one of the weekend's emcees, Max Oliveira, reminded the crowd Friday night during the women's competition. "Breaking at the Olympics, it's just incredible!"

As the gold-medal bout neared, Oliveira ratcheted up the excitement even further, proclaiming into the microphone that he never wanted the day to end. "Ever!" he said. "We want it to be infinite!"

But alas, it did end. And Olympic breaking is probably not far behind. No matter the television ratings or social-media reviews, the sport will probably be one-and-done at the Summer Games. But at least it made a splash.

Contributing: Chris Bumbaca

Contact Tom Schad at [email protected] or on social media @Tom_Schad .

IMAGES

sad scientist with a failed experiment after the explosion in the lab
15 Science Experiments That Went Horribly Wrong
Science Experiment Gone Wrong, with Beakers and Test Tubes Strewn
SCIENCE EXPERIMENTS! *GONE WRONG*
How to Learn from a Failed Experiment
Scientist Gets Magnets Stuck Up Nose After Coronavirus Experiment Gone

COMMENTS

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4: Milgram Shock Experiments. A portrait of Stanley Milgram. Ghostbuster Peter Venkman, who is seen in the fictional film conducting ESP/electro-shock experiments on college students, was likely inspired by social psychologist Stanley Milgram's famous series of shock experiments conducted in the early 1960s.
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More than 160 students, teachers nationwide hurt in science experiments gone wrong. WASHINGTON (SBG) — As many students return to in-person learning, experts are warning about a danger they ...
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A science experiment gone wrong has sent two Georgia high school students to the hospital, school officials say. The incident happened on Thursday Dec. 7 at Marietta High School in Marietta, about ...
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The Burke and Hare murders. Surgical experiments on slaves. Guatemala syphilis study. The Tuskegee study. Guatemala syphilis study. Additional Resources: Related Links: Bibliography: Throughout ...
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8. Canals on Mars. Sometimes imagination fails because of its overabundance rather than absence. In the case of the never-ending drama over the possibility of life on Mars, that planet's famous ...
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14 Experiments Gone Wrong. By Kristen Richard | May 20, 2020. ... and some psychologists doubt the Prison Experiment's core findings. But science isn't responsible for all failed experiments ...
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From David Cronenberg's movie The Fly to the Marvel Comic, The Incredible Hulk, the world of fiction is full of science experiments going wrong. But experime...
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These horrific science experiments will shock and disturb you! For this list, we'll be looking at experiments that caused large amounts of harm, went too far...
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7 Easy Science Experiments Gone Terribly Wrong. Here are some funny examples of experiments that went very wrong. Published: Nov 02, 2019 06:53 AM EST
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MKUltra. MKUltra is one of the most famous projects conducted by CIA to develop mind-control techniques that can be used against enemies during war. Lasted for more than a decade from 1950 to 1970 ...
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VIDEO. : Investigations continue into science experiment gone wrong. Posted Tue 22 Nov 2022 at 12:15pm. Watch. 1m 40s. Investigations are continuing into a school science experiment on Sydney's ...
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A science experiment gone wrong at a Tennessee elementary school sent 18 students and a teacher to the hospital on Friday, officials said. The third-graders at Vena Stuart Elementary in Gallatin ...
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First responders have revealed the likely reason a science experiment at a Sydney school ended in an explosion and led to a 10-year-old girl being flown to hospital with severe burns. Eight ...
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The CIA has been implicated in a number of illegal mind-control experiments that went horribly wrong for the subjects. During the Cold War, the spy agency experimented with torture in the form of ...
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At least 11 students at a primary school in the Australian city of Sydney have been injured after a classroom science experiment went wrong. Reports say at least two students were taken via ...
10 Science Experiments Gone HORRIBLY WRONG
10 Science Experiments Gone HORRIBLY WRONG. These horrific science experiments will shock and disturb you! For this list, we'll be looking at experiments that caused large amounts of harm, went too far or are just plain bizarre. Our countdown includes Guatemala Syphilis Experiments, MKUltra, The Monster Study, and more!
Top 10 Science Experiments That Went Horribly Wrong
Top 10 Science Experiments That Went Horribly Wrong. These experiments on this list are definitely horrible and you should never do at home. Watch what the...
The 20+ Best Horror Movies About Experiments Gone Wrong
The Fly. Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis, John Getz. 190 votes. Released: 1986. Directed by: David Cronenberg. In a twisted tale of scientific ambition gone horribly awry, a brilliant scientist's quest for teleportation results in a nightmarish experiment that fuses his DNA with that of a common housefly.
Breaking at the Summer Olympics is something we may never see again
Phil Wizard, whose legal name is Philip Kim, was soon introduced as the man who won gold. And Dany Dann, aka Danis Civil, took silver. But for both, it was mostly just about being there.
Worst Science Experiments Gone Wrong
Biographics: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClnDI2sdehVm1zm_LmUHsjQGeographics: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHKRfxkMTqiiv4pF99qGKIwWarographics: https...

10 Outrageous Experiments Conducted on Humans

10: Tuskegee Syphilis Study

9: The Nazi Medical Experiments

8: Watson's 'Little Albert' Experiment

7: The Monster Study of 1939

6: Stateville Penitentiary Malaria Study

5: The Aversion Project in South Africa

4: Milgram Shock Experiments

3: CIA Mind-Control Experiments (Project MK-Ultra)

2: Unit 731

1: The Human Vivisections of Herophilus

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BREAKING | Sport court dismisses Canada's appeal in women's soccer case

Man linked to four murders in Kirkland Lake, Ont., is dead, police say

Want to move out of Canada? Experts explain everything you need to know

Colombian President Petro calls on Venezuela's Maduro to release detailed vote counts from election

Starbucks sales tumble as customers reject high-priced coffee

Vermont man evacuates neighbours during flooding, weeks after witnessing a driver get swept away

Families seek answers after inmates' bodies returned without internal organs

Economy grew 0.2% in May, StatCan estimates 2.2% annualized growth in Q2

'Severely hypothermic' sailor rescued after spending hours adrift off B.C. coast

Murder-conspiracy trial tied to Coutts, Alta., COVID-19 blockade set to go to jury

Edmonton man sentenced to 5 years in prison in terrorism case in United Kingdom

Convicted B.C. killer loses bid to have guitar in his prison cell

Canadian civil liberties group fighting 'abuse' of notwithstanding clause in Sask. pronoun law

Two strikes on militant leaders risk inflaming a Middle East on edge

About 8 in 10 Democrats are satisfied with Harris in stark shift after Biden drops out: AP-NORC poll

U.K. leader accuses far right of hijacking a town's grief after killing of 3 children sparks violence