Professor Guinea Pig: Difference between revisions
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** Stapp is possibly one of the few crossovers in the category of of [[Badass Bookworm]] and [[Colonel Badass]]
* In order to demonstrate that stomach ulcers were caused by Helicobacter pylori, Barry Marshall cultured and drank a beakerfull. Along with his partner, he got a Nobel prize for this <s>idiocy</s> self-endangering behavior, which admittedly helped many people.
** This is a myth. See [https://web.archive.org/web/20131017114043/http://www.csicop.org/si/show/bacteria_ulcers_and_ostracism_h._pylori_and_the_making_of_a_myth this CSICOP linkl]. Basically, experimenting on himself demonstrated that these bacteria can make you sick, but not specifically cause an ulcer (which he didn't get), and his sickness went away without treatment. Furthermore, experimenting on yourself is a bad idea because you are a biased observer. They did get a nobel prize, but for the conventional research part of what they did, not for this stunt.
*** Having read the original paper as a student of pathology this troper can clarify that they did, in fact, demonstrate a link between the two, hence the Nobel Prize, ingesting micro-organisms to induce illness not being particularly original. Granted the prize was not for swallowing the broth, but the experiment did provide a valuable proof of the mechanism of intestinal pathology by the bacterium in question.
* Isaac Newton was a real-life example of this trope. In addition to looking into the sun through a telescope, he also forced blood to his head until he passed out, and ''jammed a bodkin'' ''[[Eye Scream|behind his eye]]'' to check if squashing it would make what he saw go blurry by changing the distance between the back of the eyeball and confirm it was a lens at the front.
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