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In a lecture on scaling laws, a professor once explained that an early study of LSD gave the drug to elephants with doses based of relative heights of elephants
by marmaduke 8y ago
In a lecture on scaling laws, a professor once explained that an early study of LSD gave the drug to elephants with doses based of relative heights of elephants compared to humans. The elephants died from the overdose. Scaling a dose based on height was inappropriate.
- tlb 8y agoBack in the 90s, I (and many people) believed that when the Internet gave everyone instant access to all the world's information, urban legends would die out because it would be so easy to fact check things and surely nobody would spare a few minutes of research to avoid propagating a half-truth. Alas, this theory didn't fully account for human nature. A grounded version of this story (if you're curious) is given at https://erowid.org/chemicals/lsd/lsd_history4.shtml https://erowid.org/chemicals/lsd/lsd_history4.shtml
- nanomonkey 8y agoTLDR: it's uncertain if the elephant died from the LSD or from the massive amounts of thorazine and barbiturate that were injected into his ear in an attempt to counteract the effects of the LSD overdose.
- marmaduke 8y agoAh interesting. That part was surely left out by the professor.
- btrettel 8y agoThe Buckingham pi theorem typically doesn't tell you which scaling laws are valid, just how many of them there are consistent with the variables you believe are involved with the problem.