Speaker 1: I guess what will? What's that? Mango? So have you
Speaker 1: heard of this experiment from Albany Medical College where they
Speaker 1: tried to figure out whether rats like jazz or classical
Speaker 1: music more? I don't know. I haven't heard about this
Speaker 1: because it seems like a really important experiment, and actually
Speaker 1: I have to meet I am curious so so so
Speaker 1: which one do they like? More? So? The scientists played
Speaker 1: for a lease on loop for ninety minutes, and then
Speaker 1: they'd switched to Miles Davis and his song four, So
Speaker 1: they just go from Ford for at least to four.
Speaker 1: And of course they discovered that the rats like silence
Speaker 1: better than continuous music. But when they had to choose,
Speaker 1: the rats like Beethoven more than hard bop. And I
Speaker 1: guess that makes sense. If we're talking about on repeat
Speaker 1: and they're having to hear this over and over, I
Speaker 1: guess it's a little more soothing, right, Yeah, But the
Speaker 1: experiments weren't done then, so I have no idea why
Speaker 1: they did this. They injected the rats with cocaine after
Speaker 1: this for seven straight days, and once the rats had
Speaker 1: this cocaine just racing through their system, they couldn't get
Speaker 1: enough Miles. This, which also makes sense fairly. Science tells
Speaker 1: us that coked up rats really love jazz. But there's
Speaker 1: a whole world of questionable science experiments, from the weird
Speaker 1: to the funny to the seriously ill advised. And that's
Speaker 1: what today's show is all about. Let's dig in. Hey,
Speaker 1: their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will
Speaker 1: Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend
Speaker 1: Manesh Ticketer and on the other side of the soundproof glass,
Speaker 1: putting his good name on the line for the sake
Speaker 1: of science conducting. What is we assume, the first ever
Speaker 1: scientific attempt to bring a potato back to life. That's
Speaker 1: our friend and producer Tristan McNeil, a potato back to life. Mano,
Speaker 1: this is big science. I saw the potatoes, I saw
Speaker 1: the labco I had no idea what was going on there.
Speaker 1: I think that's what the defibrillator is for. And you
Speaker 1: might be wondering how you can tell the difference between
Speaker 1: a live and a dead potato. Well, those are all
Speaker 1: heavy questions, and hopefully Tristan's work will help shed some
Speaker 1: light on just a few of those. It maybe two
Speaker 1: over our heads. We'll see most of what Tristan does
Speaker 1: is anyway. I know this experiment sounds ridiculous, but honestly,
Speaker 1: everything on today's show sounds a little ridiculous. So we'll
Speaker 1: dig into some of the weirdest, most questionable science experiments
Speaker 1: in history. Now, Mango, I know, for a while as
Speaker 1: a kid you wanted to be a scientist, and I've
Speaker 1: heard you talk about some of the experiments you conducted.
Speaker 1: So did you come up with any terrible experiments along
Speaker 1: the way? So many? I mean, you know, my dad's
Speaker 1: a scientist, and he's a good one. So we test
Speaker 1: things and I tell him about inventions ideas for inventions
Speaker 1: I had, like I had an idea for a d microwave,
Speaker 1: and the whole idea was that, like you could cool
Speaker 1: down a hot bagel fast. And yeah, you tell me
Speaker 1: like why it would or would work or what I'd
Speaker 1: have to think about. But I think the biggest failure
Speaker 1: I had as a kid was in second grade and
Speaker 1: my friends and I were at the bus stop and
Speaker 1: we always wanted a day off from school, you know,
Speaker 1: especially when the weather was nice, because you want to
Speaker 1: stay home and play and whatever. So I hatched this
Speaker 1: amazing scheme, like our our friend Kristen had access to
Speaker 1: a ton of gum for some reason, and I knew
Speaker 1: that gum on the ground is sticky when you step
Speaker 1: on it. And I don't remember how we calculated this out,
Speaker 1: but there were drawings and some terrible math involved, but
Speaker 1: we figured that if we could get a big enough
Speaker 1: wad of sticky gum in the right place, the school
Speaker 1: bus tire would probably stick to it and get stuck
Speaker 1: there for the day and we wouldn't have to go
Speaker 1: to school. I really want to hear that this worked,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna guess that maybe this didn't work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course not. I mean, my calculations were off, I guess.
Speaker 1: And but the plan was like so elaborate. We we
Speaker 1: planned about it, we talked about it, We made this
Speaker 1: giant wad of gum, and then we placed it in
Speaker 1: what we thought was going to be the perfect spot,
Speaker 1: and in the school bus tire didn't even roll over,
Speaker 1: and so it's like super anti climatic and we sort
Speaker 1: of like deflatedly walked onto the school bus. But uh,
Speaker 1: now that I think about, the gum was also care free,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't really like a sticky type of gum
Speaker 1: that was your problem because care Free was it's sugarless, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I mean you go to war with the gum
Speaker 1: you have and it was not a great day for science.
Speaker 1: All right. Well, today's show is all about odds science experiments,
Speaker 1: and just because their bizarre doesn't mean we should automatically
Speaker 1: discount them. In fact, I was reading this article by
Speaker 1: Alex Boss and he wrote a great book about odds
Speaker 1: science experiments, and there's a section where Alex explains why
Speaker 1: he first got into weird projects and and why he
Speaker 1: believes they should still be thought of as worthwhile. So
Speaker 1: I just want to read a bit from this. So
Speaker 1: here's what he says. I confess I had no profound
Speaker 1: intellectual motive at first. I simply found them fascinating. They
Speaker 1: filled me with disbelief, astonishment, discussed, and best of all laughter.
Speaker 1: But with hindsight, perhaps there is a deeper message. These
Speaker 1: experiments are not the work of cranks. All were performed
Speaker 1: by honest, hard working scientists who were not prepared to
Speaker 1: accept a common sense explanation of how the world works.
Speaker 1: Sometimes such single mindedness leads to brilliant discoveries. At other
Speaker 1: times it can end up closer to madness. Unfortunately, there's
Speaker 1: no way of knowing in advance where the journey will lead. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's certainly something to keep in mind as
Speaker 1: we go along. But while it might be true that
Speaker 1: none of the people that Alex talked about were crackpots,
Speaker 1: some of the ones I want to talk about definitely
Speaker 1: worth So this includes the first guy we've gone on,
Speaker 1: the list of Renaissance era physician and alchemist named Paracelsus.
Speaker 1: Now Parasulsis is known for doing some of the earliest
Speaker 1: research in toxicology and also psychotherapy, which are I guess
Speaker 1: both weird in their own right, but without doubt his
Speaker 1: strongest claim to theme was his account of how to
Speaker 1: grow your own homunculous. To grow your own homunculous, mega
Speaker 1: can grow your own I do want to confess I'm
Speaker 1: a little rusty on my pseudoscience lingo from what you
Speaker 1: said the right. So, so, what exactly is a humunculous.
Speaker 1: It's a mythological creature. Fairly, Parasolsis believed in all sorts
Speaker 1: of those, including giants and wood nymphs. But homunculus was
Speaker 1: basically like a tiny living human the size of a
Speaker 1: doll or something, and paras els has actually claimed to
Speaker 1: have made his own, which he said was about a
Speaker 1: foot tall. Right. And you said this man was a doctor, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it was easier to get into medical school
Speaker 1: back then. Some people thought he was a medical genius.
Speaker 1: Others thought he was more of this loud mouth, drunk type.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing the truth was somewhere in between. But these
Speaker 1: are actually the instructions Paracelsus has laid out to create
Speaker 1: your own little homunculous. So here we go. Let the
Speaker 1: seed of a man by itself be putrified in a
Speaker 1: gored glass and sealed up in horse done for the
Speaker 1: space of forty days until so long as it begins
Speaker 1: to be alive, move and stir. After this time, it
Speaker 1: will be something like a man, yet transparent and without
Speaker 1: a body. Now, after this, if it be every day warily,
Speaker 1: imprudently nourished and fair with man's blood, and be kept
Speaker 1: for the space of forty weeks and a constant equal
Speaker 1: heat of horse dung, it will become a true and
Speaker 1: living infant. You know what, just hearing this, it kind
Speaker 1: of makes me want to go back and watch those
Speaker 1: old s n L skits where Steve Martin played them
Speaker 1: medieval barber because it sounds like pretty similar advice. And
Speaker 1: you know, I admire Paracelsis ingenuity, and obviously at the
Speaker 1: time they had a much different set of knowledge. But
Speaker 1: I feel like it might be smarter for the human
Speaker 1: race to stick with the you know, the old fashioned
Speaker 1: horse dung freeway to make a true and living infant.
Speaker 1: But anyway, you know, word of crazy experiments like this
Speaker 1: and these medical fallacies, they got passed around a lot
Speaker 1: during the Middle Ages and even into the Renaissance. So
Speaker 1: much so, in fact, that a physician philosopher named Sir
Speaker 1: Thomas Brown actually put together a massive list of these
Speaker 1: widely believed tall tales, and he referred to these as
Speaker 1: vulgar errors. So Brown would go around testing all these
Speaker 1: absurd claims in order to disprove them once and for all. So,
Speaker 1: for example, one weird idea that it's spread in the
Speaker 1: sixteen hundreds was that you could make an accurate weather
Speaker 1: vane just by hanging a dead kingfisher bird from a string.
Speaker 1: It's as simple as that. I love arts and crafts projects.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing that didn't end wilda well. Apparently he found
Speaker 1: himself a dead kingfisher one day, and he hung it
Speaker 1: up from a beam outside, and much to his dismay,
Speaker 1: the bird just sort of dangled and seemed to sway
Speaker 1: at random, you know, as you'd expect from a corpse
Speaker 1: of a dead bird. But you know, being this man
Speaker 1: of science, Brown knew he couldn't definitively disprove this claim
Speaker 1: with just a single dead kingfisher, So he got another one,
Speaker 1: strung it up next to the first, and watched his
Speaker 1: both birds spun aimlessly in different directions. So with that,
Speaker 1: with that degree of science, Mango Brown was able to
Speaker 1: say conclusively that dead kingfishers are a poor way to
Speaker 1: determine win direction. So forget trying. This is just not
Speaker 1: gonna work. I do like that it took uh, just
Speaker 1: two dead birds to put a stop to this idea,
Speaker 1: but it you know, no one else had thought of this,
Speaker 1: and I feel sorry for like whatever poor salesman at
Speaker 1: the market had stocked up on baskets of kingfishers, and
Speaker 1: I guess like Brown just ruined his entire business model.
Speaker 1: That's there and other interesting cat I came across was
Speaker 1: this guy named Johann Conrad Dipple, and he was this
Speaker 1: German scientist in the late sixteen hundreds who had actually
Speaker 1: been born in the real Castle Frankenstein, which is kind
Speaker 1: of amazing, And of course he had a lot of ideas.
Speaker 1: Probably his least bizarre achievement was that he developed one
Speaker 1: of the world's first synthetic pigments, in fact, the first.
Speaker 1: It's a die called Prussian Blue that's still in use today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've heard of Prussian Blue. But I think you said
Speaker 1: least bizarre achievements. So what was his most bizarre achievement? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I did because I wanted to talk about Dipple's oil.
Speaker 1: It was supposed to be kind of a life extending potion,
Speaker 1: but was in reality just this like terrible, disgusting slurry
Speaker 1: made from a mix of random animal bones and hides.
Speaker 1: It's too bad. I'm curious that Did he sell a
Speaker 1: lot of dipples oil? I'm at and it must have
Speaker 1: been a big hit with the local villagers there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you'd think so, but not so much. In fact, Dipple
Speaker 1: was eventually run out of town because of all these
Speaker 1: rumors that started circulating about what he was really doing
Speaker 1: in his lab. Like one of the rumors claimed that
Speaker 1: Dipple was a grave robber and that he'd once tried
Speaker 1: to move a soul from one corpse to another using
Speaker 1: just a funnel, a hose and a bit of lubricants.
Speaker 1: You need the lubricant to get it through. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we can both agree that's a bit of
Speaker 1: the suspect signs there. I mean, I guess so I
Speaker 1: could see where they were going with that. But but
Speaker 1: I do see what you mean about him being a
Speaker 1: mad scientist, all right, But if you don't mind, I
Speaker 1: kind of want to transition away from the total crackpots
Speaker 1: and start talking about some of the scientists who are
Speaker 1: maybe I don't know, just a little misguided instead. And thankfully,
Speaker 1: I think I have the perfect person to help us
Speaker 1: make that leap, because he really does tow this line
Speaker 1: between those two types. And his name was Stubborn's Firth.
Speaker 1: Isn't that a great name. It just seems like somebody
Speaker 1: that would tow those lines. All Stubbens. But in the
Speaker 1: early nineteenth century he was training to be a doctor
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia, and so during this time Stubbins began studying
Speaker 1: the effects of yellow fever, and that was, of course
Speaker 1: a disease that had laid waste to the area's population
Speaker 1: just a few years before this and he had noticed
Speaker 1: that the fever hardest hit in the summer months, and
Speaker 1: then it would disappear almost entirely by wintertime. And so
Speaker 1: this led him to the conclusion that all these widely
Speaker 1: held opinions about yellow fever being contagious were completely false.
Speaker 1: So to him, it seemed much more likely that yellow
Speaker 1: fever was brought on by excessive heat and food and noise,
Speaker 1: and all of these things were much more abundant in
Speaker 1: the summer than they were in the winter. I like
Speaker 1: the idea of just a lot of noise causing yellow fever.
Speaker 1: It does sound like this guy's heart was in the
Speaker 1: right place, Like I know, this doesn't feel like a
Speaker 1: sound theory about what goes on from here. Well, this
Speaker 1: is where Stubborns needed proof on this. So so the
Speaker 1: doctor in training began a series of self experiments to
Speaker 1: show that no matter how often he was exposed to
Speaker 1: yellow fever, he would never catch it. And, not being
Speaker 1: the kind of guy to do anything halfway, Stubborns decided
Speaker 1: that his best chance to ensure he was properly exposed
Speaker 1: to the disease was to use This was the quote
Speaker 1: from this notebook, Fresh Black Vomit from yellow fever patients.
Speaker 1: So this is already disgusting and I'm pretty grossed out,
Speaker 1: but I do have to ask, like, what do you
Speaker 1: mean by he used it? He used to how well
Speaker 1: in all sorts of ways, and this actually gets even
Speaker 1: more disgusting. But here the way. So first he tried
Speaker 1: to make small cuts on his arms, and then he
Speaker 1: would pour some of this vomit into his wounds. Next
Speaker 1: he DAPs some of the mess directly into his eyes.
Speaker 1: Then he heated some in a skillet and inhaled the fumes.
Speaker 1: And then lastly, as if those things weren't gross enough,
Speaker 1: he just went for it. And I'm not joking. I
Speaker 1: think you saw this coming. He just chugged some of
Speaker 1: the stuff, which makes me feel sick just hearing this.
Speaker 1: But I mean, Stubbns never got sick, which, of course,
Speaker 1: and I don't know how he would know that he
Speaker 1: didn't get sick, because I can't imagine doing any of
Speaker 1: these things and not vomiting yourself. He took this all
Speaker 1: as proof for his theory, so I don't understand how
Speaker 1: any of that's possible. Like I thought yellow fever was contagious,
Speaker 1: so it definitely has I mean it's highly contagious. But
Speaker 1: as we know, the disease needs to come into direct
Speaker 1: contact with the blood stream in order to cause that infection.
Speaker 1: And that's likely why Stubborns observed so many more cases
Speaker 1: of yellow fever in the summer. There were just more
Speaker 1: mosquitoes around to spread the disease. So I get that,
Speaker 1: But why didn't Stubborns get sick when he was cutting
Speaker 1: himself in you know, like exposing that stuff to his cuts,
Speaker 1: And I mean that that had to get in his
Speaker 1: blood stream right, Well, normally, yes, but as it turned
Speaker 1: out in this case, most of the patients whose samples
Speaker 1: he used were in the late stages of yellow fever,
Speaker 1: and by that point they were actually no longer contagious.
Speaker 1: Though of course, you know Stubborns didn't know this. Well.
Speaker 1: I mean, i'd say we're firmly in the realm of
Speaker 1: misguided experiments after that one. So I'm actually gonna keep
Speaker 1: the ball rolling with what I hope will be something
Speaker 1: of a palate cleanser. And this is this crazy study
Speaker 1: I found out about mating instincts of turkeys. I like
Speaker 1: how you're calling mating instincts of turkeys a a palate cleanser.
Speaker 1: But but tell me more here. Yeah, it's a turkey
Speaker 1: and moose bush. So wild turkeys are notoriously difficult to hunt,
Speaker 1: which is why human hunters often resort to these lifelike
Speaker 1: decoy models of female turkeys. They use these to lure
Speaker 1: the bigger male birds to them, and the males don't
Speaker 1: seem to mind or even notice the difference. For the
Speaker 1: most part. They're actually perfectly content to mate with these
Speaker 1: phony birds. And that behavior is actually what caught the
Speaker 1: attention of these two researchers at the University of Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, so we're back in Pennsylvania again. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a hotbed of science. But anyway, these guys that you
Speaker 1: pen start wondering what was the minimal stimulus for exciting
Speaker 1: a turkey, and so to figure that out, they decided
Speaker 1: to gradually remove parts from a decoy turkey until the
Speaker 1: male inevitably lost interests. So first they removed the tail
Speaker 1: and the tail feathers, and then the feet and lastly
Speaker 1: the wings. But despite all of these missing appendages, the
Speaker 1: males were still eager to mate with the decoy. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess they just loved the personality and eventually the
Speaker 1: researchers were down to just ahead on a stick. And
Speaker 1: the strangest far is that the mail try keys were
Speaker 1: still interested. Yeah, that's pretty crazy. I have to admit
Speaker 1: I feel slightly scandalized and more than a little concerned
Speaker 1: about what the good people of Pennsylvania are doing with
Speaker 1: their time. All in the name of science, I guess.
Speaker 1: But alright, well, since you open the seal on weird
Speaker 1: animal studies, there's one I've been dying to tell you about. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: But first let's take a quick break. You're listening to
Speaker 1: part time Genius and we're talking about some of the
Speaker 1: strangest experiments in the history of science. Now for better
Speaker 1: Whereas many of the weirdest projects do tend to involve
Speaker 1: animal test subjects, but rather than focusing on the more
Speaker 1: upsetting ones where animals come to harm, instead, I want
Speaker 1: to tell you the story of a young boy and
Speaker 1: his adopted chimpanzee sister. And yes, I said it is
Speaker 1: adopted sister. Now, probably the most troubling aspect of this
Speaker 1: one is that the boy's father decided to carry out
Speaker 1: his experiment using his own son. But don't worry before
Speaker 1: I tell you about this the boy makes it through unharmed,
Speaker 1: or at least more or less unharmed. Anyway. The father's
Speaker 1: name was Winthrop Kellogg, and he was a psychologist who
Speaker 1: wondered what would happen if an animal was raised by
Speaker 1: humans as a human. This was in the early nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: so if you think about the time, then this is
Speaker 1: when you know the Tarzan books were all the rage,
Speaker 1: and there are also several real life accounts of feral
Speaker 1: children who had been raised by animals, And so Kellogg
Speaker 1: was inspired by these stories and he wanted to test
Speaker 1: the opposite case, like, if an animal was raised as
Speaker 1: a human, would it eventually act like a human too?
Speaker 1: Oh so it's like a bizarro jungle book or like
Speaker 1: the reverse of Amogli situation. Yeah. So so that in
Speaker 1: Kellogg brought home a seven month old female chimpanzee named Gua,
Speaker 1: and he and his wife, who must have been this
Speaker 1: extremely patient woman, started raising the chimp alongside their ten
Speaker 1: month old son Donald. And the Kelloggs treated their two
Speaker 1: kids exactly the same. Donald and Gua were allowed to
Speaker 1: play together, they ate together. They also took part in
Speaker 1: regular tests to track their development. For example, there was
Speaker 1: this one cookie test where the Kelloggs hung a cookie
Speaker 1: from a string in the middle of the room and
Speaker 1: then they timed how long it took the boy and
Speaker 1: the chimp to reach it. Okay, so I mean he
Speaker 1: was pitting a chimp against a baby, so the chip
Speaker 1: mop the floor with him, not surprising, it was no contest.
Speaker 1: In fact, Gan typically outperformed Donald on just about all
Speaker 1: the tests they took, except some of the ones that
Speaker 1: involved language acquisition. So I know this is supposed to
Speaker 1: be like a non upsetting study, but constantly losing to
Speaker 1: a chimp couldn't have been good for a kid's self esteem, right,
Speaker 1: Probably not, But you know, one downside did become clear
Speaker 1: about nine months into the experiment, and and that was
Speaker 1: that baby Donald's own language skills were not as far
Speaker 1: along as they should have been. And looking back on this,
Speaker 1: that's probably not such a big surprise. But while he
Speaker 1: sometimes did better than Gua on their language based test,
Speaker 1: it really wasn't by much, and so it started to
Speaker 1: look like, rather than Donald having a humanizing effect on Gua,
Speaker 1: he was actually starting to adapt some to her way instead.
Speaker 1: And the deciding moment came one day when Donald let
Speaker 1: his parents know how hungry he was by imitating the
Speaker 1: barking sounds that Gua was making whenever she wanted. So
Speaker 1: when the Kellogg's heard the food bark coming from their
Speaker 1: human son, they decided then it was time to pull
Speaker 1: the plug on the experiment. But I like that it
Speaker 1: took that much to get them to realize maybe it
Speaker 1: wasn't a great idea. Yeah, it seems like a smart move.
Speaker 1: But strangely enough, the Kelloggs weren't the only scientists parents
Speaker 1: to use their own kids as test subjects. So I
Speaker 1: was reading about this other psychologist from the ninet thirties
Speaker 1: named Clarence Luba, and he used his own kids to
Speaker 1: determine if people learned to laugh when tickled or if
Speaker 1: it's an innate response. I mean, this sounds more pleasant
Speaker 1: than being pitted against the chimp. But I mean, if
Speaker 1: you're going to use your own kids as test subjects,
Speaker 1: at least don't be creepy about it, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess it depends on your definition of creepy.
Speaker 1: Because Luba decided that he shouldn't laugh or show a
Speaker 1: happy expression while he was tickling his kids because that
Speaker 1: might ruin the experiment. So you know, the the idea
Speaker 1: is that they might mimic his behavior or use it
Speaker 1: to infer the proper response is to laugh when tickled.
Speaker 1: So just to prevent that, Luba actually banned all unauthorized
Speaker 1: tickling in his household and he institute these clinical daily
Speaker 1: tickling sessions instead. And during these designated tickling times, uh,
Speaker 1: Luba would hide his facial expressions behind a mask and
Speaker 1: then joylessly tickle his son. Oh, I take it back, man,
Speaker 1: this is the creepiest thing I've ever heard tickling sessions.
Speaker 1: And that's just I don't know, maga, It's just like
Speaker 1: deeply unnerving. Yeah. And Luba even took this measured approach
Speaker 1: to how he tickled his son, like first he started
Speaker 1: with a light tickle and then he would like tickle
Speaker 1: more enthusiastically, and he always did the same order like
Speaker 1: he um. I think he started under the pits and
Speaker 1: then went to the ribs and then chin, neck, knees, feet,
Speaker 1: and uh. He kept this up for a full seven months,
Speaker 1: and then after that he repeated the experiment for another
Speaker 1: seven months with his daughter when she was born. This
Speaker 1: is just I don't want to hear about this one
Speaker 1: anymore because I I guess I am curious though, So
Speaker 1: what were Louba's results? Well, in both cases, as you
Speaker 1: might guess, he found that his kids spontaneously laughed when tickled,
Speaker 1: even though they had never been shown that behavior before.
Speaker 1: So it would seem that laughing when tickled really is
Speaker 1: an innate response, and it only took weirding out a
Speaker 1: couple of his own toddlers to figure that out. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess it's worth it in the name of science,
Speaker 1: except not at all. That is so creepy. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: since we're getting into this kind of psychological territory, I
Speaker 1: have to mention a series of studies carried out by
Speaker 1: Dr You and Cameron, and these were in the nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties and sixties. Cameron was convinced that the brain could
Speaker 1: be reprogrammed by imposing new thought patterns on it, and
Speaker 1: his hope was that the method could be used to
Speaker 1: help patients with schizophrenia achieve them more clear and maybe
Speaker 1: positive way of thinking. So the way it was supposed
Speaker 1: to work was that the patients would wear a pair
Speaker 1: of headphones and then they would listen to these audio
Speaker 1: messages that were played over and over, sometimes for days
Speaker 1: or or even weeks at a time. And this was
Speaker 1: something Cameron called psychic driving, because the idea was that
Speaker 1: repeated messages would be driven gradually into the patient's psyche.
Speaker 1: And the press gave the method a different name, though
Speaker 1: they actually called it beneficial brainwashing, which I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess sounds like good branding at least. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a bit of an oxymoron of a name. But
Speaker 1: it didn't deter Cameron, so for over a decade he
Speaker 1: tested his method on hundreds of unwitting patients, many of
Speaker 1: whom didn't even have schizophrenia. In fact, even people with
Speaker 1: minor ailments would sometimes check into the clinic where Cameron worked,
Speaker 1: and before they knew it, they were drugged, strapped to
Speaker 1: a bed, and forced to listen to loop recordings of
Speaker 1: these aspirational messages. I mean, it's actually crazy to think
Speaker 1: about some of these things. Yeah, it's terrifying. So what
Speaker 1: kind of messages were they made to listen to? Well,
Speaker 1: they were mostly your typical positive reinforcement kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, like they would say things like people like
Speaker 1: you and need you, and and you have confidence in yourself.
Speaker 1: It sounds a little bit Stewart small exactly well. But
Speaker 1: one time, though, Cameron put his patients into a drug
Speaker 1: induced sleep and then made them listen to the message
Speaker 1: that said, when you see a piece of paper, you
Speaker 1: want to pick it up. That's all that's said. Then,
Speaker 1: once all the patients had woken up, Cameron drove them
Speaker 1: one by one to a gymnasium where a single piece
Speaker 1: of paper was waiting for them on the floor of
Speaker 1: the gym, and, according to report Cameron later wrote about
Speaker 1: the experiment, most of the patients, without any prompting, spontaneously
Speaker 1: walked over and picked up the paper. Such a dum ex. Man,
Speaker 1: it feels like like you should test it with, like
Speaker 1: putting a piece of paper and a puppy in a box, right, right, right,
Speaker 1: that's a good one. You should be a scientist. Well,
Speaker 1: I basically am. But it doesn't sound like Cameron also
Speaker 1: had like the full consent of this aations. I mean,
Speaker 1: did his operations get shut down quickly like once people
Speaker 1: caught onto what was happening. Well you would think so,
Speaker 1: but actually when the CIA found out what Cameron had
Speaker 1: been up to, it actually started funding his experiments in secret,
Speaker 1: and this move ultimately backfired. Though there was a group
Speaker 1: of Cameron's former patients that decided to sue the CIA
Speaker 1: actually for supporting his work. I see. I eventually settled
Speaker 1: the matter out of court, and Cameron was forced to
Speaker 1: conceive that his brainwashing experiments, as as he called it,
Speaker 1: had been what did he say, said, a ten year
Speaker 1: trip down the wrong road. I guess that's one way
Speaker 1: to put it. Yeah, I guess it's putting it lightly.
Speaker 1: But cameron story actually reminds me of another psychologist who
Speaker 1: tried to change the thought patterns with weird repeated messages
Speaker 1: and it didn't go as planned as you might have guessed.
Speaker 1: And I'll tell you about that in a minute, but
Speaker 1: first we gotta take another quick break. Okay, mano, let's
Speaker 1: hear it. What's the strange subliminal science project that you
Speaker 1: wanted to tell us about? Sure, so, I'm actually gonna
Speaker 1: set the mood for this one. So the years nineteen
Speaker 1: for you two. You're sleep in a cabin at a
Speaker 1: summer camp in upstate New York. On all sides of
Speaker 1: you or other teenage boys also sleeping, and just a
Speaker 1: few feet away there's a man standing alone in the darkness.
Speaker 1: He speaks out loud to his unconscious audience. Again and again,
Speaker 1: he mechanically recites the same one phrase, my fingernails taste
Speaker 1: terribly bitter. My fingernails taste terribly bitter. Oh man, go,
Speaker 1: I gotta stop at these you found these weird experiments?
Speaker 1: Are you sure this is a science story and not
Speaker 1: just a horror story? You're creeping me out today? I
Speaker 1: know from from what I can tell you really was
Speaker 1: in the name of the science. Uh. This guy's name
Speaker 1: was um Dr Lawrence Lession, and that night in the
Speaker 1: cabin he was actually conducting the sleep learning experiment. So
Speaker 1: all of the boys have actually been diagnosed with c
Speaker 1: like nail biting, and the hope was that they could
Speaker 1: be cured by you know, these nocturnal messaging. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think about this. So you said this
Speaker 1: was in the forties, and so I'm trying to think
Speaker 1: of how he would have delivered these messages. So, so
Speaker 1: did Lesson have to like creep over them and repeat
Speaker 1: this phrase, you know, all night long to them? That
Speaker 1: just seems so weird. I mean, it's not like he
Speaker 1: could have used a phonograph or something like that, right, Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean it adds to the story but Lesson actually
Speaker 1: did start the study using a recorded message and he
Speaker 1: played it like three hundred times a night for the kids.
Speaker 1: But he had to take the task over himself when
Speaker 1: his phonograph broke, and it actually broke down five weeks
Speaker 1: into his experiment. Five weeks? How long was this study
Speaker 1: is supposed to last? The whole summer? Apparently, like can
Speaker 1: you actually imagine these boys coming back to school and
Speaker 1: the first day and and uh and they have to
Speaker 1: answer these questions for the classmates about how they spent
Speaker 1: their summers and and you know, other kids would be like, oh,
Speaker 1: I went to Hawaii, or you know, I went to
Speaker 1: my grandparents and they're like, I spent eight weeks in
Speaker 1: a cabin with some weirdo telling me how bad my
Speaker 1: fingernails taste. Oh my gosh, So so I do have
Speaker 1: to know. I mean, that sounds terrible, But was the
Speaker 1: experiment of success like that the kids stopped biting their
Speaker 1: nails kind of? I mean, at the end of the summer,
Speaker 1: Lession determined that the boys had been cured, which made
Speaker 1: it seem like his sleep learning techniques had some real merit,
Speaker 1: But unfortunately other researchers looked into it. And they tested
Speaker 1: his method. And you know, one study in nineteen six
Speaker 1: track participants brain activity to make sure they were totally
Speaker 1: asleep before playing this anti nail biting message, and in
Speaker 1: that case, like the unconscious messaging didn't have any effect
Speaker 1: at all. So the whole idea was that, you know,
Speaker 1: those had probably kicked the habit because they were still
Speaker 1: someone awake during those readings. Yeah, yeah, but I guess
Speaker 1: beneficial brainwashing really does work. That's uh, that's interesting and weird.
Speaker 1: Do you know one kind of weird experiment we haven't
Speaker 1: talked much about today are the government funded kind of experiments.
Speaker 1: And you know, we did cover some of these back
Speaker 1: in our episode on Bizarre government investments, but I can't
Speaker 1: across another one this week, and it's just too good
Speaker 1: not to share. And it's called Bird's eye bomb, and
Speaker 1: it was developed during World War two by the famous
Speaker 1: psychologist and behavior's named BF Skinner. Now, the idea here
Speaker 1: amounted to what was basically a pigeon guided missile. And
Speaker 1: when you know what, the inspiration came to Skinner one
Speaker 1: day when he was watching a nearby flock of pigeons.
Speaker 1: As he later wrote of this sense and and he says, suddenly,
Speaker 1: I saw them as devices with excellent vision and extraordinary maneuverability.
Speaker 1: Could they not guide a missile? So? I mean, who
Speaker 1: hasn't seen a flock of pigeons and thought that? I
Speaker 1: had a little confused that, Like, how exactly is this
Speaker 1: supposed to work? All right? Well, Skinner trained the pigeons
Speaker 1: to peck carefully at chosen images, like an enemy battleship,
Speaker 1: for example. And you know, once the birds had committed
Speaker 1: these targets to memory, Skinner would put them in these
Speaker 1: custom made missile nose cones. And so the makeshift cockpit
Speaker 1: included a little plastic screen and they used mirrors for this,
Speaker 1: and then there would be an image of the missile's
Speaker 1: flight path that could be projected onto it. So by
Speaker 1: pecking at the screen, the pigeons were able to alter
Speaker 1: the coordinates, and basically by doing this, they would steer
Speaker 1: it toward a specific target. I mean, that's that's both
Speaker 1: ingenious and insane. And you know, this idea of like
Speaker 1: kama kaze pigeons sounds so ridiculous, But I mean, is
Speaker 1: there any way it could really work? So? Surprisingly, yes,
Speaker 1: I mean, preliminary tests proved the pigeons were top notch pilots,
Speaker 1: and plenty of scientists endorsed the project in light of
Speaker 1: those early results, but in the end, the military just
Speaker 1: couldn't stomach the thought of funding such a silly sounding project.
Speaker 1: So the cut Skinner's funding completely in October of four.
Speaker 1: And it's just a shame because Top Gun could have
Speaker 1: been a totally different movie if you think about it.
Speaker 1: I know, the animated Disney movie Top Gun would have
Speaker 1: been Okay. So you know you sneaked in another animal
Speaker 1: based study, and so I need to do the same
Speaker 1: and tell you about this fateful experiment that sent the
Speaker 1: first humble Tarte grade to space. All Right, I feel
Speaker 1: like I've seen tartar grades in the news or reported
Speaker 1: on a lot in recent years. But remind me of
Speaker 1: what that is because it rings a bell as an animal,
Speaker 1: but it also just sounds like something that might be
Speaker 1: from like Doctor Who or something. Yeah. So, Tarte grades
Speaker 1: are these microscopic, eight legged potato looking things. They look
Speaker 1: like little monster potatoes. Sometimes they were called water bears
Speaker 1: or moss piglets, and you can actually find them in
Speaker 1: just about every habitat on Earth. You can find them
Speaker 1: on like mountaintops, rainforests. The bottom lags even even in Antarctica,
Speaker 1: which is pretty incredible. But you know, speaking of doctor who,
Speaker 1: because you mentioned it, the team behind the study must
Speaker 1: have been fans, because they actually named their experiment tarte
Speaker 1: grades in space or tartis. Actually I just pulled up
Speaker 1: a picture and they do look both cute and freaky,
Speaker 1: and it's crazy that they're only like a millimeter big.
Speaker 1: But so he said, we shot these things into space
Speaker 1: for some reason. Yeah, a team of European researchers wanted
Speaker 1: to test just how resilient these tartar grades really they are,
Speaker 1: because you can probably tell from that list of habitats
Speaker 1: that you know, they're hardy creatures and they can survive
Speaker 1: temperatures as low as negative three d twenty eight degrees
Speaker 1: fahrenheit or as high as three hundred degrees fahrenheit. They
Speaker 1: can also stand up to pressures as powerful as six
Speaker 1: thousand times that of the Earth's atmosphere, and they can
Speaker 1: even survive doses of radiation that are thousands of times
Speaker 1: stronger than it would take to kill humans. So clearly
Speaker 1: they're super tough creatures, and it actually turns out there
Speaker 1: so tough they can even survive exposure to the vacuum
Speaker 1: of outer space. Wow. So so researchers just flew a
Speaker 1: bunch of these what you what do you call them?
Speaker 1: I like the name of moss picklets. I think that
Speaker 1: was my favorite. So they flew these things into space
Speaker 1: and just like chuck them out the airlock or what Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the the approach was a little more nuanced
Speaker 1: than that. So first they dehydrated the targets and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, that makes them enter this state of hibernation
Speaker 1: where all their metabolic activity drops to about point one
Speaker 1: percent of normal levels. And then once they're in this
Speaker 1: protective state, researchers exposed one group of water bears to
Speaker 1: the vacuum space and another to both the vacuum space
Speaker 1: and this immense radiation from the Sun. And after full
Speaker 1: ten days of this, right ten days, the targe grains
Speaker 1: were brought back to Earth and rehydrated, and amazingly, sixty
Speaker 1: percent of the targe grades exposed only to outer space survived,
Speaker 1: and even among the ones who were also exposed to
Speaker 1: solar radiation, a handful were successfully revived. And the craziest part,
Speaker 1: some of these even went on to produce healthy offspring.
Speaker 1: So those things are pretty much unstoppable. But you know,
Speaker 1: I actually have my own weird space experiment to share,
Speaker 1: and I happen to think it blows yours away. Man,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to get heads up on this. And this.
Speaker 1: This comes from when a two man crew took the
Speaker 1: Gemini three on a several trips around the Earth's orbit,
Speaker 1: and one of the astronauts on that mission, John Young,
Speaker 1: was apparently not a fan of the kind of the
Speaker 1: standard food from a tube that NASA was typically providing them,
Speaker 1: because once the pair reached orbit, Young revealed that he
Speaker 1: had smuggled aboard contraband corned beef sandwich into his back pocket.
Speaker 1: I mean, I love the story. I know this story,
Speaker 1: but I'm not really sure you can call it an experiment.
Speaker 1: I mean it sounds more like a great anecdote about
Speaker 1: a hungry astronaut. I don't know, man, go actually, let
Speaker 1: let me help me read this transcript. I've got this
Speaker 1: for you. I want you to help me out here
Speaker 1: and you'll see what I mean by this. So I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be John Young, and you're going to be gust Grissome,
Speaker 1: the co pilot. Are you ready to do this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've got the script here, go go for it. It's
Speaker 1: your line first. What is it a corn beef sandwich?
Speaker 1: Where did that come from? I brought it with me.
Speaker 1: Let's see how it tastes, smells, doesn't it. That's it.
Speaker 1: That's the whole The whole incident lasted like thirty seconds,
Speaker 1: including the script. I know, but it was worth it
Speaker 1: because you know, there was thirty seconds, and that included
Speaker 1: the time it took the nibble the sandwich before Young
Speaker 1: tucked it back into his flight suit. But see, they
Speaker 1: wanted to see what it tasted like. That's the experiment.
Speaker 1: Does a corn beef sandwich taste and smell the same
Speaker 1: in space ace as it does on Earth? And Young
Speaker 1: suffered for his science too. After the mission. He was
Speaker 1: sternly chastised by his superiors at NASA, though I guess
Speaker 1: they didn't come down on too hard because he was
Speaker 1: still permitted to land on the Moon as part of
Speaker 1: the Apollo sixteen mission. Well, I am glad that an
Speaker 1: illicit sandwich incident didn't cost him his career. Well all right, well,
Speaker 1: I can tell from the smoke coming out of Tristan's
Speaker 1: potato that we're running short on time. I do have
Speaker 1: a few more weird experiments I wanted to cover, though, well,
Speaker 1: thankfully that's exactly what the facts board. Why don't we
Speaker 1: start with an experiment by the Swedish playwright August Strenberg.
Speaker 1: Strendberg wasn't a scientist, but he certainly had some ideas,
Speaker 1: and one of those was his belief that plants had
Speaker 1: nervous systems and for some reason botanist had just overlooked it. Anyway,
Speaker 1: he was determined to show everyone that plants could feel things.
Speaker 1: So during his walks around town, he would take out
Speaker 1: some morphine and you know, away we all carry morphine,
Speaker 1: I guess in our back pocket, so that he inject
Speaker 1: whatever he saw to see how it would react. And
Speaker 1: one day he was arrested for injecting an apple with
Speaker 1: the drug. But when he explained he was just trying
Speaker 1: to get the apple high in the name of science,
Speaker 1: the officer figured he was just a sweet lunatic and
Speaker 1: not someone trying to go around poisoning the city and
Speaker 1: let him go. So, you know, I've always heard that
Speaker 1: thing about how a soul weighs twenty one grahams, which
Speaker 1: is odd, like, why does it have to be in
Speaker 1: the metric system we live in America. That the about it, right,
Speaker 1: It should be like three forts of announced. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I was curious where the idea came from, and apparently
Speaker 1: it goes back to to this Massachusetts doctors, this guy
Speaker 1: named Duncan McDougal, and so this actually comes from Discover magazine.
Speaker 1: But to figure it out, McDougall made this bed fitted
Speaker 1: with scales, and then he convinced a bunch of terminally
Speaker 1: ill patients and this is pretty crazy, that they should
Speaker 1: make it their literal deathbed. And then he was actually
Speaker 1: pretty meticulous about it. So this is from the magazine quote.
Speaker 1: He recorded not only each patient's exact time of death,
Speaker 1: but also his or her total time on the bed,
Speaker 1: as well as any changes in weight that occurred around
Speaker 1: the moment of expiration. He even factored losses of bodily
Speaker 1: fluids like sweat and urine and gases like oxygen and
Speaker 1: nitrogen into his calculations. Of course, you know the conclusion
Speaker 1: right like after the soul escaped the body, the people
Speaker 1: weighed twenty one grams less. Okay, I've got one about
Speaker 1: a guy named Hitting Brand and he really wanted to
Speaker 1: get wealthy, and he believed he had a Scrooge McDuck
Speaker 1: wade to kind of get there, and that was through
Speaker 1: p Now in sixteen sixty nine, the German olcomist apparently
Speaker 1: had stalked about fifteen hundred gallons worth of urine in
Speaker 1: his basement. That is just so weird, but growth he
Speaker 1: was convinced he could spin it into goal. Of course
Speaker 1: he couldn't, but his experiments did lead to one interesting discovery.
Speaker 1: After boiling one sample, he noticed a bit of unusual
Speaker 1: glowing liquid, which is how he ended up discovering phosphorus.
Speaker 1: Oh that's amazing. So you'll be happy to know that
Speaker 1: I didn't just look up turkeys are attracted to I
Speaker 1: also looked into chicken preferences and according to one study,
Speaker 1: chickens don't like ugly people. And basically the scientist Dr
Speaker 1: Stephano Garlanda at the Zoology Institution of Stockholm University, he
Speaker 1: was trying trying to understand whether physical attraction is inherited
Speaker 1: due to jeans or learned. So he tested it the
Speaker 1: way any of us would. He took some I guess
Speaker 1: libidinous chickens, and these birds were just hot to trot
Speaker 1: or what, Yeah, they were definitely uh quote excited and
Speaker 1: and uh He showed them photos of people to see
Speaker 1: which ones they wanted to meet with and which ones
Speaker 1: they had pecked. So here Landa took photos of thirty
Speaker 1: five males and females and these are humans, and they
Speaker 1: mashed them into these digital picks of these very average
Speaker 1: looking people and male birds mostly pecked photos of women.
Speaker 1: Hen's mostly pecked photos of men. And then Geir Landa
Speaker 1: gave them this other task. Right, He created another set
Speaker 1: of more faces, and this time he asked college students
Speaker 1: to rate the faces on attractiveness. So percent of the
Speaker 1: time the chickens actually pecked the more attractive face. Oh wow,
Speaker 1: that's pretty interesting. Or well, here's a story I learned
Speaker 1: from Cracked, and it asked the important question what happens
Speaker 1: when you get leeches drunk? You know, we've all wondered this.
Speaker 1: The idea is that you can actually improve the rate
Speaker 1: that leeches suck blood if you can just get them
Speaker 1: a little bit loose beforehand. So researchers from Norway dipped
Speaker 1: a bunch of leeches in guinness and also smeared some
Speaker 1: in garlic and others in sour cream. Such a weird experiment,
Speaker 1: and I'm guessing it wasn't just the leeches drinking during
Speaker 1: this experiment, So what happened, Well, the drunk leeches are
Speaker 1: not good at sucking blood. I don't know why this
Speaker 1: would come as a surprise to anybody. They just kind
Speaker 1: of wiggled and couldn't focus. They fell off the arms,
Speaker 1: which is just I wish I had a video of
Speaker 1: this experiment because it just sounds so weird. The sour
Speaker 1: cream leeches fared better with slightly better sucking abilities, and
Speaker 1: the garlic coated leeches, like any good vampire, garlic was
Speaker 1: their kryptonite. They actually died. That's pretty amazing, and I'm
Speaker 1: actually glad we started with rats on cocaine and ended
Speaker 1: with leeches on a bender because science is great and
Speaker 1: drunken science might even be better. But I'm gonna give
Speaker 1: you today's uh today's trophy. Well, thank you, it's an honor. Now.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's so many great experiments. There were many
Speaker 1: we couldn't include that we had looked into, but we'd
Speaker 1: love to hear from you if there are ones that
Speaker 1: you guys want us to hear about. Feel free to
Speaker 1: email us part Time Genius at how stuff Works dot com.
Speaker 1: You can also call us on our seven fact hot
Speaker 1: line that's one eight four four pt genius or has
Speaker 1: always hit us up on Facebook or Twitter. But thanks
Speaker 1: so much for listening. Thanks again for listening. Part Time
Speaker 1: Genius is a production of How Stuff Works and wouldn't
Speaker 1: be possible without several brilliant people who do the important
Speaker 1: things we couldn't even begin to understand. Tristan McNeil does
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Speaker 1: support from the Research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown
Speaker 1: and Lucas Adams and Eves Jeff Cook gets the show
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