For Science!: Difference between revisions

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* Alfred Nobel originally invented dynamite so that it would be safer to handle and for construction purposes such as blowing out tunnels and clearing debris. Soon however people started figuring out how to use it as a weapon. He also turned the Bofors company from mainly producing iron to making cannons and chemicals for firing them. Nobel created the Nobel Prizes when he was falsely reported as dead and his obituary described him as a reprehensible murderer-by-proxy.

** To contemporary pacifist Baroness Bertha von Suttner, Nobel had this to say: "Perhaps my factories will put an end to war even sooner than your congresses. On the day when two army corps may mutually annihilate each other in a second, probably all civilized nations will recoil with horror and disband their troops."

* When JFK was asked why America was going to the Moon, he answered "~~Why~~ not".

* When [[John F. Kennedy|JFK]] was asked why America was going to the Moon, he answered "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."

{{quote|"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."}}

* [[wikipedia:Wernher von Braun|Wernher von Braun]], the scientist who worked on JFK's Apollo project had in the past made the V2 missile for the Nazis. Why? For Rocketry!

{{quote|"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?/ [[Somebody Else's Problem|That's not my department]]." says [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v{{=}}QEJ9HrZq7Ro Wernher von Braun.]

"Wernherr von Braun: The man who aimed for the stars and hit London instead." }}

"Wernherr von Braun: The man who aimed for the stars and hit London instead."}}

** In his own words (on the subject of [[Stupid Jetpack Hitler|the V-2]]):

{{quote|"The rocket worked perfectly except for landing on the wrong planet." }}

{{quote|"The rocket worked perfectly except for landing on the wrong planet."}}

* One of the most horrifying examples in real life of this is Josef Mengele, the infamous Nazi scientist who performed "experiments" at Auschwitz, and had a particular fascination with twins and other "abnormals", who he researched in order to find scientific proof of racial inferiority. He was known to perform amputations and major surgeries without anesthesia, and once sewed two twins together to make artificial Siamese twins. Said one prisoner of him, "Nobody ever questioned him -- why did this one die? Why did that one perish? The patients did not count. He professed to do what he did in the name of science, [[For the Evulz|but it was a madness on his part]]. He didn't run a laboratory, he ran a butcher's shop."

** More frightening is that Mengele was, by comparison, a ''lightweight'' famous not so much for being the worst of the worst, but for evading capture. Some of the Nazi medical corps make Mengele look like [[Doctor Snuggles]] by comparison. Like one doctor with what can only be called an unhealthy fixation on the female reproductive tract. Let's just say it often involved injections of caustic substances like gasoline and leave it at that.

** Nah, Mengele was definitely one of the worst. The guy even performed sex changes on children under five, without using any anesthesia.

** Then again, he and his [[Reality Is Unrealistic|Jewish]] assistance made major breakthroughs in the research of a disease named noma. This disease, which involves [[Body Horror|hideous facial gangrene]], does not exist in the developed Western world anymore, but it still does in [[Darkest Africa|Africa]]. Ah well, at least someone helped them out with ~~it—as~~ we all know, [[Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism|beggars can’t be choosers]].

** Then again, he and his [[Reality Is Unrealistic|Jewish]] assistance made major breakthroughs in the research of a disease named noma. This disease, which involves [[Body Horror|hideous facial gangrene]], does not exist in the developed Western world anymore, but it still does in [[Darkest Africa|Africa]]. Ah well, at least someone helped them out with it — as we all know, [[Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism|beggars can’t be choosers]].

* Japan's [[wikipedia:Unit 731|Unit 731]] did even worse experiments on the Chinese. They injected prisoners with inoculations of disease and cut them open (while still alive, and without anesthesia) to study their effects, froze them in low-temperature chambers to see how long they would live, injected air into their arteries to determine the time until the onset of embolism, and injected horse urine into their kidneys, just for starters.

** The head doctor of Unit 731, General Shiro Ishii, was a monster extraordinaire. He was known for having sex with the female prisoners and impregnating them, and when these women later ended up on the operating table, he would cut open their stomachs and use his own babies for the experiments. [[Karma Houdini|This creature received a full pardon in exchange for handing over his research data to the Allies.]]

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*** If the ancient Greeks would have built a Scanning electron microscope to prove that there are atoms, they wouldn't later have used the microscope itself, but all the wonderful things that chemistry, and a couple of the things that physics gave us.

** A lot of theoretical research tend to suit this trope, at least at first. When one asks why special relativity was useful in 1905, or Democritus' concept of atomism in classical Greece, one finds that the greatest practical results came decades or even centuries later. A particular meta-example would be Bacon, whose most noted practical accomplishment was [[wikipedia:History of scientific method#Roger Bacon|how to create practical accomplishments in research]]. Or [[Shadow Hearts|immortality]].

* ''There is no such thing as good knowledge or bad knowledge. There is only knowledge. Morality is when you decide'' '''''not''''' ''to use it.'' -- ''anonymous''

* ''There is no such thing as good knowledge or bad knowledge. There is only knowledge. Morality is when you decide '''not''' to use it.'' -- ''anonymous''

* ''[[Cracked.com]]'''s list of [http://www.cracked.com/article_16787_7-kickass-sci-fi-cancer-cures.html 7 Kickass Sci-Fi Cancer Cures] ''starts'' with drilling holes in a man's head and firing fiber-optic anti-tumor lasers into his brain. While he's ''conscious''.

** All brain surgery that is any way feasible to do so is done while the patient is conscious. That's the best way to make sure that nothing goes wrong—no-one knows it better than the patient himself. Once you get past the fleshy bits on the outside of the skull, there <s> isn't</s> '''''aren't''''' any nerve receptors and therefore nothing that registers pain within the brain.

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** [[Frickin' Laser Beams|Weapons, of course]]!

* The [[wikipedia:Kola Superdeep Borehole|Kola Superdeep Borehole]], northern Russia. The Soviet government wanted to know what was beneath the surface of the Earth. So they dug a really ''big'' hole...

* Carl Sagan harshly criticized Edward Teller for his relentless push to develop the hydrogen bomb. While nuclear fission bombs, such as the ones dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are certainly nothing to be taken lightly, the whole "destroy all life on Earth N times over" model of the modern nuclear arsenal would not have been possible without the hydrogen bomb.

* [[Carl Sagan]] harshly criticized Edward Teller for his relentless push to develop the hydrogen bomb. While nuclear fission bombs, such as the ones dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are certainly nothing to be taken lightly, the whole "destroy all life on Earth N times over" model of the modern nuclear arsenal would not have been possible without the hydrogen bomb.

* Nerve.com has a [http://www.nerve.com/regulars/ididitforscience/ I did it for Science] regular section. Somewhat [[NSFW]], of course.

* Having sex in a MRI scanner, [http://www.newscientist.com/articlevideo/dn17662/34860226001-human-sex-from-the-inside-out.html for science!]

** Though it may seem like this trope due to the low-brow nature of much sexual humor, it actually was educational in many regards for anatomical studies, particularly in regards to sexual anatomy. Finding out how some anatomical feature works helps solve problems of said features not working.

* The International Space Station, mostly ''"for world co-operation!"'' with a bit of ''"for science!"'' on the side.

** Pretty much all "for world co-operation!". It's far easier and cheaper to use unmanned space craft for science in space, except for studying the effects of the space environment on humans.

** Pretty much all "for world co-operation!". It's far easier and cheaper to use unmanned space craft for science in space, except for studying the effects of the space environment on humans - which is of course the important part: if we ever hope to colonize Mars, we have to know what happens to people during the trip there.

* Parodied by many message board users, who will request various pictures of scantily-clad women "for homework" or "for research".

* [http://www.dangerouslaboratories.org/radscout.html The experiment/s listed here.] Article title? [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|The Radioactive Boy Scout.]] Note that the Disclaimer similarly shares a For SCIENCE! worldview (emphasis optional):

{{quote|"If enough people try these dangerous experiments, the government will try to outlaw '''''any sort of legitimate private experiments with radioactivity or possession of any radioactive minerals or materials''''' (thus '''''spoiling all of our fun''''')."}}

** Frankly, most private experiments with radioactivity probably count under this trope by definition, as even the mildest radioactive materials of the sort you can find in a high school science lab are an extreme health hazard if improperly stored or handled. Experimenting on such materials with whatever equipment you can find on eBay or improvise from the junk in your garage is likely to [[Go Horribly Wrong]].

* The [[wikipedia:Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male|Tuskegee Study]], a study in the early to mid 1900s was one of the longest studies in history, and one of the direct causes for African Americans distrusting doctors. The scientists hired a black doctor to convince poor, mostly illiterate, men with syphilis to participate in the study, promising the volunteers free medical care, a free ride into town (most didn't own cars, so they had to walk to get groceries and stuff), and a free burial when they eventually died (at an old age. ~~The~~ study didn't set out to kill them.). Instead, the men were lied to consistently, for example, told that a spinal tap was a special treatment for the disease, and that the disease was "bad blood" in their system. The doctors withheld treatment, even once penicillin was discovered as a viable treatment. The worst part? Hundreds suffered while the whole point of the study was to prove that black men suffered from syphilis the same way as white men—it set to prove that everyone was equal.

* The [[wikipedia:Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male|Tuskegee Study]], a study in the early to mid 1900s was one of the longest studies in history, and one of the direct causes for African Americans distrusting doctors. The scientists hired a black doctor to convince poor, mostly illiterate, men with syphilis to participate in the study, promising the volunteers free medical care, a free ride into town (most didn't own cars, so they had to walk to get groceries and stuff), and a free burial when they eventually died (at an old age; the study didn't set out to kill them). Instead, the men were lied to consistently, for example, told that a spinal tap was a special treatment for the disease, and that the disease was "bad blood" in their system. The doctors withheld treatment, even once penicillin was discovered as a viable treatment. The worst part? Hundreds suffered while the whole point of the study was to prove that black men suffered from syphilis the same way as white men—it set to prove that everyone was equal.

** In fairness, the Study took place before any sort of comprehensive or universal bioethics policy or regulatory board existed in the United States, making it somewhat [[Fair for Its Day]] (although obviously YMMV on that). And it wasn't a plot to exterminate the black race, despite what some more radical civil rights leaders have claimed.

** In fairness, the Study took place before any sort of comprehensive or universal bioethics policy or regulatory board existed in the United States, making it somewhat [[Fair for Its Day]] (although obviously [[YMMV]] on that). And it wasn't a plot to exterminate the black race, despite what some more radical civil rights leaders have claimed.

** And the US [[wikipedia:Syphilis experiments in Guatemala|repeated the whole thing]] with Guatemalans in 1946-48.

** See also Dr Lee Stanley of San Quentin Prison, who did wacky things like implanting animal testicles into human inmates, or taking testicles from corpses and trying to implant them in living humans, or just regular forced castrations..what a guy.

** See also Dr Lee Stanley of San Quentin Prison, who did wacky things like implanting animal testicles into human inmates, or taking testicles from corpses and trying to implant them in living humans, or just regular forced castrations... what a guy.

** See the [[Other Wiki]]'s article on US ethical violations For Science!. [[wikipedia:Syphilis experiments in Guatemala|LINK]].

** The US also did it to black service men.

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* A particularly sad case is that of Thomas Midgley Jr. He discovered that adding lead to gasoline would virtually eliminate 'knocking' in internal combustion engines. He inadvertently poisoned himself and a number of factory workers—with five fatalities—and contaminating the atmosphere with tons of lead for decades to come. His next trick involved formulating a refrigerant that was less dangerous than the refrigerants then in use. He succeeded by inventing freon—again contaminating the atmosphere for decades to come. When he contracted polio, he invented a rope and pulley device that allowed him to get into and out of bed more easily...a device with which he accidentally hung himself.

** It is very likely that Midgley caused more damage to the environment than any other man in history.

* As pesticides and herbicides began to grow in popularity, many industrial chemists began inventing chemicals and blindly testing them simply to find a better one. These tests were limited in scope and simplistic as well; if a chemical killed an insect, it was an insecticide, a plant, an herbicide, a man, a chemical weapon. Sometimes these overlapped; the most famous cases are some of the insecticides developed in interwar Germany, which turned out to be [[The Holocaust|Zyklon-B]], Tabun, and Sarin~~.<ref>The~~ earliest nerve agents.~~</ref>~~

* As pesticides and herbicides began to grow in popularity, many industrial chemists began inventing chemicals and blindly testing them simply to find a better one. These tests were limited in scope and simplistic as well; if a chemical killed an insect, it was an insecticide, a plant, an herbicide, a man, a chemical weapon. Sometimes these overlapped; the most famous cases are some of the insecticides developed in interwar Germany, which turned out to be [[The Holocaust|Zyklon-B]], Tabun, and Sarin -- the earliest nerve agents.

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