8 ms·

The more I learn of 1950s to 1970s NASA and related, the less over the top Cave Johnson from Portal 2 seems. And then I read books like Ignition! and realize t

by Syonyk 4y ago

The more I learn of 1950s to 1970s NASA and related, the less over the top Cave Johnson from Portal 2 seems. And then I read books like Ignition! and realize that, at that time, parts of rocket science literally were, "What are the most energetically explosive sets of things we can mix together and actually live with?" Turns out, not that many, despite an awful lot of efforts.

sph 4y ago
It's really hard to admit to ourselves that modern technology, especially knowledge of the human body, sits atop ethically disturbing science, like IIRC the Nazi research in concentration camps, like prisoners being left to freeze to death, was crucial in understanding how we'd survive in high altitude and space. Or take the experiments the Japanese did on prisoners in WW2; a hard question to ask ourselves is how far ahead these moments have pushed our understanding of the world, when a more cautious approach might have taken much longer or simply not have been enough. I think that life is more important than any scientific experiment, but I wonder how limited our knowledge would be today were it not for those people and animals tortured to death. Would the space race have started decades later?
- WalterBright 4y ago
  > I think that life is more important than any scientific experiment Science has advanced enormously due to doing unsafe experiments on humans. For example, Jonas Salk tested the polio vaccine by injecting himself. The Wrights flew their first airplane themselves. Lindbergh risked death on his first transatlantic flight. (Previous attempts had ended in death.) He was dubbed "Lucky Lindy" for good reason. Test pilots had short life expectancies. So did Formula 1 drivers up into the 1970s. We'd have a lot more deaths today if these brave people had not risked their lives. Heck, we all risk our lives by getting out of bed in the morning.
  - Stratoscope 4y ago
    When I was a kid, some of the grownups I knew had stomach ulcers. This was considered a chronic condition caused by stress. One of the few remedies was to go on a "bland diet" to avoid irritation. Nothing spicy for you! Ulcers also led to stomach cancer. In 1984, Robin Warren and Barry Marshall had a theory that ulcers were actually caused by a bacterium called Helicobacter Pylori. And they thought they might be cured by antibiotics. So Marshall drank a glass of broth full of those bacteria from an ulcer patient. He got ulcers. Bad ones. The two doctors worked out a course of antibiotics and cured Marshall's ulcers. They won a Nobel Prize for it. For any of you younger folks who have never heard of stomach ulcers or stomach cancer, now you know why. https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/the-doctor-who-drank-infectious-broth-gave-himself-an-ulcer-and-solved-a-medical-mystery https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/the-doctor-who-drank... https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/when-scientists-experiment-on-themselves-h-pylori-and-ulcers/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/when-scienti...
    - SapporoChris 4y ago
      Most ulcers can be attributed to Helicobacter Pylori but that's far from the only cause. Also, there are different types of ulcers. For peptic ulcers (https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/digestive-diseases/peptic-ulcers-stomach-ulcers/symptoms-causes https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/digestive-disea...) long-term use of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), such as aspirin NIH external link and ibuprofen NIH external link "an infection with the bacteria Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) rare cancerous and noncancerous tumors in the stomach, duodenum, or pancreas(known as Zollinger-Ellison syndrome) Sometimes peptic ulcers are caused by both NSAIDs and H. pylori."
  - neaden 4y ago
    Right but this is discussing ethically disturbing experiments, and volunteers freely doing dangerous things is not at all comparable.
- cyphar 4y ago
  Most of the "experiments" done in Nazi concentration camps were actually very bad science by any metric and was just a manner of torturing and disfiguring prisoners. The remaining handful of experiments (the hypothermia and high-altitude experiments you mentioned) have been argued[1] to be full of experimental issues that make also them simply bad science. Very little (if any) science is based on their experiments (some papers did reference the Nazi data, but doing so these days is exceptionally controversial). The idea that we got a lot of science out of the Nazi regime is a laughably absurd piece of literal Nazi propaganda. Not to mention the Nazis actively drove out and murdered their most prominent and skilled scientists (because they were Jewish, communists, or both). [1]: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199005173222006 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199005173222006
  - manholio 4y ago
    It was more or less on par with the bad science of the age. Most science was done in a similar fashion, people experimented on themselves with X rays, radioactive materials and lead additives until it literally killed them. Nonetheless, science advanced. But of course people are gonna argue it was bad science, precisely because today any reference to such data is "exceptionally controversial". So you will have people expunging the history of science of any reference to unethical experiments, regardless of any impact they may have had at the time.
    - b112 4y ago
      It's also revisionist history. There was a great debate in the day, should the data be destroyed, due to horrifying source, or kept? The general decision was, keep it, it has value, so learn from it, and not waste whatever good may come from the horrors wrought. An additional here is, 'bad science' seems like a century later hindsight. At this point in history, many people literally believed that opening the body was a crime against god and nature. From the Christian perspective, this belief aligned with "your body is a temple" biblical references. From an operative perspective, sulfa drugs didn't lead to the best outcomes, in terms of an operation. So opening the body was a bad outcome, meaning why fight religious sentiment and belief for no reason? Yet the Nazis, sick as they were, has a free hand to open bodies and see them while still alive. Horrifying as these experiments were, they did provide insight into human anatomy. And trying to revisionist history that away is just wrong.
- John23832 4y ago
  The Nazi's and Unit 731 were actually pretty bad at their experiments. No scientific rigor at all. It was literally just disfigurements, poisoning, and sickening of people.
- ad404b8a372f2b9 4y ago
  Pasteur notoriously wanted to use prisoners to test his vaccines. It was one of the first examples discussed in the philosophy course I had in high-school.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
MengerSponge 4y ago
Turns out Cave Johnson was more pastiche than parody

by Syonyk 4y ago

sph 4y ago

It's really hard to admit to ourselves that modern technology, especially knowledge of the human body, sits atop ethically disturbing science, like IIRC the Nazi research in concentration camps, like prisoners being left to freeze to death, was crucial in understanding how we'd survive in high altitude and space. Or take the experiments the Japanese did on prisoners in WW2; a hard question to ask ourselves is how far ahead these moments have pushed our understanding of the world, when a more cautious approach might have taken much longer or simply not have been enough. I think that life is more important than any scientific experiment, but I wonder how limited our knowledge would be today were it not for those people and animals tortured to death. Would the space race have started decades later?

WalterBright 4y ago
> I think that life is more important than any scientific experiment Science has advanced enormously due to doing unsafe experiments on humans. For example, Jonas Salk tested the polio vaccine by injecting himself. The Wrights flew their first airplane themselves. Lindbergh risked death on his first transatlantic flight. (Previous attempts had ended in death.) He was dubbed "Lucky Lindy" for good reason. Test pilots had short life expectancies. So did Formula 1 drivers up into the 1970s. We'd have a lot more deaths today if these brave people had not risked their lives. Heck, we all risk our lives by getting out of bed in the morning.
- Stratoscope 4y ago
  When I was a kid, some of the grownups I knew had stomach ulcers. This was considered a chronic condition caused by stress. One of the few remedies was to go on a "bland diet" to avoid irritation. Nothing spicy for you! Ulcers also led to stomach cancer. In 1984, Robin Warren and Barry Marshall had a theory that ulcers were actually caused by a bacterium called Helicobacter Pylori. And they thought they might be cured by antibiotics. So Marshall drank a glass of broth full of those bacteria from an ulcer patient. He got ulcers. Bad ones. The two doctors worked out a course of antibiotics and cured Marshall's ulcers. They won a Nobel Prize for it. For any of you younger folks who have never heard of stomach ulcers or stomach cancer, now you know why. https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/the-doctor-who-drank-infectious-broth-gave-himself-an-ulcer-and-solved-a-medical-mystery https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/the-doctor-who-drank... https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/when-scientists-experiment-on-themselves-h-pylori-and-ulcers/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/when-scienti...
  - SapporoChris 4y ago
    Most ulcers can be attributed to Helicobacter Pylori but that's far from the only cause. Also, there are different types of ulcers. For peptic ulcers (https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/digestive-diseases/peptic-ulcers-stomach-ulcers/symptoms-causes https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/digestive-disea...) long-term use of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), such as aspirin NIH external link and ibuprofen NIH external link "an infection with the bacteria Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) rare cancerous and noncancerous tumors in the stomach, duodenum, or pancreas(known as Zollinger-Ellison syndrome) Sometimes peptic ulcers are caused by both NSAIDs and H. pylori."
- neaden 4y ago
  Right but this is discussing ethically disturbing experiments, and volunteers freely doing dangerous things is not at all comparable.
cyphar 4y ago
Most of the "experiments" done in Nazi concentration camps were actually very bad science by any metric and was just a manner of torturing and disfiguring prisoners. The remaining handful of experiments (the hypothermia and high-altitude experiments you mentioned) have been argued[1] to be full of experimental issues that make also them simply bad science. Very little (if any) science is based on their experiments (some papers did reference the Nazi data, but doing so these days is exceptionally controversial). The idea that we got a lot of science out of the Nazi regime is a laughably absurd piece of literal Nazi propaganda. Not to mention the Nazis actively drove out and murdered their most prominent and skilled scientists (because they were Jewish, communists, or both). [1]: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199005173222006 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199005173222006
- manholio 4y ago
  It was more or less on par with the bad science of the age. Most science was done in a similar fashion, people experimented on themselves with X rays, radioactive materials and lead additives until it literally killed them. Nonetheless, science advanced. But of course people are gonna argue it was bad science, precisely because today any reference to such data is "exceptionally controversial". So you will have people expunging the history of science of any reference to unethical experiments, regardless of any impact they may have had at the time.
  - b112 4y ago
    It's also revisionist history. There was a great debate in the day, should the data be destroyed, due to horrifying source, or kept? The general decision was, keep it, it has value, so learn from it, and not waste whatever good may come from the horrors wrought. An additional here is, 'bad science' seems like a century later hindsight. At this point in history, many people literally believed that opening the body was a crime against god and nature. From the Christian perspective, this belief aligned with "your body is a temple" biblical references. From an operative perspective, sulfa drugs didn't lead to the best outcomes, in terms of an operation. So opening the body was a bad outcome, meaning why fight religious sentiment and belief for no reason? Yet the Nazis, sick as they were, has a free hand to open bodies and see them while still alive. Horrifying as these experiments were, they did provide insight into human anatomy. And trying to revisionist history that away is just wrong.
John23832 4y ago
The Nazi's and Unit 731 were actually pretty bad at their experiments. No scientific rigor at all. It was literally just disfigurements, poisoning, and sickening of people.
ad404b8a372f2b9 4y ago
Pasteur notoriously wanted to use prisoners to test his vaccines. It was one of the first examples discussed in the philosophy course I had in high-school.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

MengerSponge 4y ago

Turns out Cave Johnson was more pastiche than parody