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For Science!: Difference between revisions
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* ''[[Bleach]]'''s [[Mad Scientist|Mayuri]] [[Psycho for Hire|Kurotsuchi]] and Szayel Aporro Granz.
* [[Big Bad|Dr. Jail Scaglietti]] from ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]]'', who has an unquenchable thirst for knowledge related to [[Lost Technology]] {{spoiler|which was imbued into him [[Artificial Human|by his creators]] so he can be their pet [[Mad Scientist]]}}.
* ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'s'' resident [[Mad Scientist]] Satomi Hakase, in order to discover the [[Interspecies Romance|secret behind robot love]] at the expense of her very-much-in-love creation Chachamaru, tried to hack the [[Robot Girl]]'s memories to find out exactly ''who'' she was in love with. This resulted in a [[Tears From a Stone]] moment for the [[Ridiculously
* Dantalion from ''[[Shakugan no Shana]]'' is a typical [[Mad Scientist]] who doesn't care if any of his experiments succeed or fail or even destroy existence (likely a fail), so long as something interesting happens. Generally disliked by his fellow [[Demonic Invaders]] for his reckless and unpredictable experiments, some on his own kind, some resulting in powerful artifacts turned against them and [[The Hunter|Flame Haze]]. But he's such a ''fun'' character...
{{quote| '''Domino''': What's going to happen now professor?<br />
'''Dantalion''': I don't know! That's why we do these experiments! }}
* Major motivation of the [[Big Bad]] in ''[[Steamboy]]''. The movie leaves some ambiguity over whether he's ''right''.
* Washu from ''[[Tenchi Muyo]]!'' is ''just'' eccentric enough to pull off wanting to experiment on Tenchi without crossing into villainous water.<s>Though her daughter might be another matter...</s> Plus she's so darn cute! In the original script she ''was'' the villain, and Kagato was just an illusion created by her. But then the creative team decided she was far too fun a character to kill off, so the anime world got its greatest scientific genius, and got to keep her. It's also played for laughs considering what she wants from him and her [[Hello, Nurse!]] outfit just makes it even funnier. Plus all the things she says when she is getting her tissue and *ahem* fluid samples: "You want me to use my mouth?" Which is rejected, which eventually prompts her to give the "whole package."
* How much does [[Baccano (Light Novel)|Huey Laforet]] love this trope? So much so that he not only considers his own daughters (as well as everyone in the world [[Heterosexual Life Partners|sans Elmer]]) guinea pigs, he's also sired them purely For Science.<br />** We also have Fermet, who "tested the extent of their immortality" by stabbing hot fire pokers into Chez's [[Eye Scream|eye sockets]], throwing him into a fire, and bathing him in acid, etc, etc. [[Who Wants to Live Forever?|For about 100 years]]. For ''science''. {{spoiler|Or so he claims. After Czeslaw kills him and absorbs his memories he states it was just a justification for him to indulge his sadism. And he should know.}}
** Szilard is another example. His entire feud with Maiza is {{spoiler|he wouldn't share the secret of immortality}}. His plotline in 1930s revolves around completing the Grand Panecea. He regularly eats other immortals to acquire their knowledge, and has been known to grant partial immortality to people specifically so he could eat them, too.
* Doc from ''[[Hellsing]]'' explicitly states in the final volume that his whole motive was to push the boundaries of science. In the name of science, he created ghouls, Nazi vampires, cyborgs, weapons, a catboy with a tenuous grasp on causality, and assisted in the near total destruction of London. All For Science.
* Doctor Stein from ''[[Soul Eater]]'' has the battle cry of "I am going to dissect you!" before he starts to fight. It's not just based for his fights alone, though he has said it to Crona and Medusa (who [[Foe Yay|he might want to do even more with...]] [[Interplay of Sex and Violence|or not.]] [[Conveniently
* Arachne's creation of the Demon Weapons suggests this. We're not given an explanation why she put Eibon's work into practice, only that she did so. If Medusa does have a masterplan to deal with the Kishin, her enjoyment of her methods - and justification to Stein - rather suggests she is in part doing stuff for the scientific hell of it.
* Lloyd in ''[[Code Geass]]'', so much. When he gets the chance, he even asks "I wonder if you'd let me analyze that Geass... For Science, of course."<br /><br />Subverted, in that it is explained that he uses the "For Science" mentality to avoid the emotional stress of losing friends, and in a later episode what he says to Nina implies that it's also so that he won't feel the responsibility for making weapons that kill a lot of people.
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** His name is a pun on Wernher von Braun, see Real Life Examples.
* This is the raison d'être of Dr. Odine in ''[[Final Fantasy VIII]]'', who doesn't care who he works for or what his inventions are used for as long as he gets to keep researching and inventing things. When he discovers that his research will eventually be developed into a working machine, which in turn is what's allowing the [[Big Bad]] to project her consciousness back in time and wage war in the present, his reaction is to be thrilled that his ideas will be put to use.
* In ''[[Impossible Creatures]]'', "For science!" is one of Dr. Lucy Willing's unit acknowledgment quotes. She's more of a [[Wrench Wench]] than a mad scientist, but it does take most of the campaign to convince her that the [[Mix
* In ''[[League of Legends]]'', one of Heimerdinger's battle cries is "For great science!"
* The ''[[Half Life]]'' mod ''Science & Industry'' added a suicide-bomb weapon in one update, and it didn't take long for the customary cry before detonating one to become "FOR SCIENCE!", giving it pseudoreligious overtones. To be clear, it's the security guards who do the suicide-exploding, rather than the sc ientists. Still, they would have to be pretty dedicated to science to happily die for their company, even if they do get cloned back to life.
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* The Space Pirates of ''[[Metroid]]'' often perform various types of SCIENCE, almost all of them military related. If it isn't a weapon, it's a [[Super Soldier]] or similar. Of course, they usually steal tech, but tend to make improvements or adjustments to the designs, and tend to create or discover new things, as well.
* The city of [[Crystal Spires and Togas|Hallifax]] in ''[[Lusternia]]'' has an entire organization of [[Mad Science|mad scientists]] devoted to "expanding scientific knowledge", called The Institute. It's divided into six parts: the laboratory of [[Functional Magic|Arcane Metaphysics]]; the laboratory of [[Magitek|Aethereal Astrophysics]]; the laboratory of the [[Time Travel|Temporal Continuum]]; the laboratory of [[Rewriting Reality|Metaplanar and Transdimensional Physics]]; the laboratory of [[Mad Doctor|Natural Sciences and Higher Energies]]; and the laboratory of the [[Power of the Void|Void]]. And they're '''all''' ''nuts''.
* Hallifax actually has an organization called [[Time Police|The Sentinels]] wholly devoted to cleaning up the Institute's various messes - ranging from [[Mix
* ''[[Team Fortress 2 (Video Game)|Team Fortress 2]]'' - The fans who aren't depicting the Medic as a sadistic [[Deadly Doctor]] (or a stoner) tend to think of him as this.
{{quote| [Heavy is having open-heart surgery, but isn't under anesthetic, and Medic is holding his heart in his hands, trying to see how it will react to the Beta Medigun. The heart explodes, knocking Medic's pet dove Archimedes off his perch with a piece of flesh. Heavy's head is down, but he picks it up when he hears the noise.]<br />
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{{quote| "Now, beat him with the metal rod...'''FOR SCIENCE!'''"}}
** Steve also invoked this phrase, asking if that was Dr. Weird's reason for making love to a lawnmower.
* Similar to ''The Venture Bros.'', an "[[Morally-Ambiguous Doctorate|altered]]" Reed Richards also occurred in the "Heroes" episode of ''[[Batman Beyond]]''. It's his resemblance to [
* Professor Membrane from ''[[Invader Zim]]''. Everything he does is either For Science or for destroying Santa Claus.
{{quote| '''Membrane:''' (to his daughter) Sorry about imprisoning you and turning you into a media freak, honey. It was in the name of SCIENCE!}}
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* When JFK was asked why America was going to the Moon, he answered "Why not".
{{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."}}
* [
{{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.]<br />
"Wernherr von Braun: The man who aimed for the stars and hit London instead." }}
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** 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]].
* Japan's [
** 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.]]
* It is worth noting that the "science" performed by Unit 731 and Mengele ''et al'' was likely motivated in a large part by [[For the Evulz|sheer sadism]] - Aushwitz survivor Alex Dekel said that: "I have never accepted the fact that Mengele himself believed he was doing serious work – not from the slipshod way he went about it. He was only exercising his power. Mengele ran a butcher shop – major surgeries were performed without anaesthesia. Once, I witnessed a stomach operation – Mengele was removing pieces from the stomach, but without any anaesthetic. Another time, it was a heart that was removed, again without anaesthesia. It was horrifying. Mengele was a doctor who became mad because of the power he was given. 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, but it was a madness on his part."
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** Of course, even if we do find it, we have to figure out how to use something that could only be detected in a humongous facility at relativistic velocities. Specifically, how would you find a use for it when it can only (apparently) be observed and generated in an isolated form in high energy physics experiments? Until it can be generated by something smaller, or the existing tech is ''drastically'' scaled down, there's little application for it beyond scientific curiosity.
*** 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 [
* ''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]]'''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''.
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* Lasers. Between the laying of the theoretical groundwork after [[World War One]] and the first practical uses in the mid to late sixties, lasers were described as "a brilliant solution awaiting a problem". Everyone agreed that stimulated emission of coherent light was fascinating and clever, but no-one had much of an idea of what to do with it in practical terms.
** [[Frickin' Laser Beams|Weapons, of course]]!
* The [
* 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.
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{{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 [
** 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 [
** 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!]]. [
** The US also did it to black service men.
* Osakan researchers genetically engineered [[Super Mario Brothers|Mario]] from glowing bacteria. [http://kotaku.com/5429450/mario-recreated-in-petri-dish FOR SCIENCE!]
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*** Whale meat actually doesn't taste very good, which sort of makes it worse.
** They do publish, for what it's worth. A recent investigation pitted several ''actual'' scientists to pore through published whaling "research" papers for a single year. Out of the thousands of papers they were forced to endure, they found less than a dozen that had any scientific relevance whatsoever.
* This is also true for the many other countries that host the Network: the ''[
* While not as ethically bankrupt as some of the others, it takes a strange dedication to discovery in order to create the [
* Often used as a joke among friends for doing anything.
* Places that conduct bar/pub trivia will usually, upon announcing the topic of the question is science, be met with a loud outburst of "SCIENCE!" from competing teams.
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[[Category:Motivation Index]]
[[Category:Plots]]
[[Category:For Science]][[Category:Pages with comment tags]]
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