36 Unusual Experiments You Won’t Believe Were Actually Conducted By Researchers

Astronaut David Scott dropped a hammer and a feather on the moon, repeating Galileo's gravity experiment. Within the accuracy of the simultaneous release, the objects were observed to undergo the same acceleration and strike the lunar surface simultaneously, which was a result predicted by well-established theory.

27. In 1950, 'One of the largest human experiments in history' was conducted on unsuspecting residents of San Francisco by the US military in a germ-warfare simulation and Nuremberg Code violation that utilized the Bay Area's iconic fog to help spread two kinds of bacteria over the city.

28. The Body Mass Index (BMI) was created for a social statistics experiment and was never intended to be an indicator of health.

29. In an experiment, every one of 54 undergraduates in winemaking and tasting thought they were tasting a red wine while it was actually a dyed white wine. Furthermore, when comparing identical wine of different prices, experts raved about the expensive wine while panning the cheap wine.

30. In an experiment conducted (on a guillotined man) by Dr. Gabriel Beaurieux in 1905, he quite reliably proved (to his satisfaction) that a severed head (that of the convicted murderer, Henri Languille) remains conscious and alert for some time after being separated from a body.

Judit Polgar is a female chess player who defeated Kasparov, Karpov, and Spassky. She was part of an experiment by her father to prove (chess) genius is made, not born.

32. In World War 2 conscientious objectors took part in an experiment in which they were starved for 6 months to decide how to treat victims of mass starvation in Europe.

33. 18th-century French chemist Antoine Lavoisier, as a final experiment told his colleagues that he would try to blink as long as possible after being beheaded. Some sources say he continued to blink for 30 seconds.

34. Quaker Oates and MIT conducted an experiment in Fernald School on unsuspecting, mentally retarded children. They tricked them into eating radioactive cereal by telling them they were in a "science club."

35. An experiment was conducted in a hospital where the sign at a hand-washing station was changed from “Hand hygiene prevents you from catching diseases” to “Hand hygiene prevents patients from catching diseases” resulting in a 45% increase in the use of soap or hand sanitizer.

A linguist (dâÄôArmond Speers) in Minnesota spoke only Klingon to his son for the first three years of his life, as an experiment in language acquisition.