Madness. After reading the article, my immediate response is that the scientists are mad and or very gross. Some of them were funny, some were stating the obvious but others were pure disgust or madness. To be exact, the funny ones were the aircraft passengers, laughing and tickling one, nail biting boys and the men who can sleep through anything. The obvious ones are ‘disgust has no single expression’, ‘laughing is an innate response to tickling’, ‘extreme stress harms cognitive ability’ and ‘sleep learning is possible’. However, the elephant LSD dosage, drinking vomit, see-saw and turkey ones were disgusting. Besides being disgusting, I also feel very sorry for the animals, but in the vomit case, the person who drank it or had to watch that person drink it.
I think that the image of natural sciences has become completely ruined after these mad experiments. The funny or stating the obvious experiments was just a laugh but it didn’t make me think ‘wow scientists are so amazing and discover so many new things’.
According to my experiences and understandings, from my personal point of view, I can accept that natural sciences can sometimes be gruesome especially when dissecting dead things. But from this dissection I can understand the reasons behind it and the fact that they want to understand it more or even hope to find a cure of some sort for that organ. Also, with my education of natural sciences, I don’t think the experiments they did were necessary. A lot of them were necessary. I mean, injecting a LSD dosage 3000 times more than what a human would take isn’t necessary. It isn’t like an elephant’s going to find LSD by themselves and take it. The fact that a scientist wanted to find this un-necessary ‘discovery’ resulted in the death of the elephant doesn’t appeal to me. I think that the elephant shouldn’t have had to die for this stupid experiment. Also, to even give the elephant a name implies that someone has cared for it for some time and looked after it since it got moved to the zoo. By killing the elephant (even if unintentional) in the zoo seems slightly immoral. Overall, I simply don’t agree with the experiments and think they shouldn’t have been done.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
AOK2:Natual Sciences . Ming Fung
"Madness or genius", I chose this text beacuse of the interesting content it talks about bizzare experiments which caught my eye.
The first picture I got from reading this article, was that science can be out of our imagination. We can put scientific reasoning behind anything, anyone. In the article it mentions creating double headed dogs, scientific research is suppose to be beneficial to the society and the progress of man kind, at least that is what I believe. As a whole, the article gives me a sense of cruelity, how humankind manipulates other creatures and trying to test their limits of the knowledge based on somethings that do not even relate to our needs.
However, I guess many important scientific breakthroughs came from madness, and the curiousity to do bizzare things. If it was not for the cave men playing with rocks and stone, we would never have discovered fire, therefore we would not even be exsisting right now! Of course, if the discovery is beneficial it would be an art of a genius, if it failed and created random results we call it madness. We have no right to define these experiements of being madness or genius.
Natural Science is what I think as constant experimentaling, like we at the very labs of our school. We draw conclusions, defining if it is useless or not. We set an aim before we do these experiments, of course we want to find something out. In my perspective, these bizzare experiments totally qualify being a good experiment, as they can draw results and conclusions out of it. However it may seem too out of the box for many people, reviving animal corpses, testing on elephants with LSD, and etc... These experiments maybe performed because everything useful that can be researched on has already been done, or not possible. The need of these experiments cannot be discussed, as it may contribute as some kind of benefit for us humans.
The first picture I got from reading this article, was that science can be out of our imagination. We can put scientific reasoning behind anything, anyone. In the article it mentions creating double headed dogs, scientific research is suppose to be beneficial to the society and the progress of man kind, at least that is what I believe. As a whole, the article gives me a sense of cruelity, how humankind manipulates other creatures and trying to test their limits of the knowledge based on somethings that do not even relate to our needs.
However, I guess many important scientific breakthroughs came from madness, and the curiousity to do bizzare things. If it was not for the cave men playing with rocks and stone, we would never have discovered fire, therefore we would not even be exsisting right now! Of course, if the discovery is beneficial it would be an art of a genius, if it failed and created random results we call it madness. We have no right to define these experiements of being madness or genius.
Natural Science is what I think as constant experimentaling, like we at the very labs of our school. We draw conclusions, defining if it is useless or not. We set an aim before we do these experiments, of course we want to find something out. In my perspective, these bizzare experiments totally qualify being a good experiment, as they can draw results and conclusions out of it. However it may seem too out of the box for many people, reviving animal corpses, testing on elephants with LSD, and etc... These experiments maybe performed because everything useful that can be researched on has already been done, or not possible. The need of these experiments cannot be discussed, as it may contribute as some kind of benefit for us humans.
William Wong : Natural Sciences, Lesson 2
“Madness or Genius?” is a compilation of some of the most bizarre tests ever conducted. The article was definitely trying to portray some of the given experiments negatively. However experimentation being only one aspect of Natural Sciences has ceased the manipulative language techniques in the article to change my views and what I have believed in for several years.
All of the experiments from the article are definitely bizarre but they are validly justified as they for constructive scientific inquiry. Vladimir Demikhov in the 1950’s, conducted experiments that transplanted organs from animals to other animals. This paved the way for allowing human transplants, which has been proven, to have saved over 100 million lives worldwide. The preservation of many lives cannot justify the losses of a few. Furthermore, in most religions, wouldn’t human life be seen as more valuable than a canines?
Yes, some of these experiments can be seen as immoral, as consent was not always acquired or safety and rights always considered. But some of the outcomes, possible or definite, do overcome the moral implications that object to these experiments. Some would recall this as the philosophy of “For the Greater Good”. I believe that one must assess the outcomes of and the possibility of them weighing against the risks and the degree of risk involved. For an exaggerated example, if a Medical Doctor was to utilize extracted blood from a monitored person, to conduct an experiment that has a 95% chance of providing information to cure cancer, allowing “thousands” of human lives to be saved (seen as morally correct), but a small chance of not coming to any outcome would disadvantage a patient in surgery who would benefit from extra blood to recover faster, but does not necessarily require it. I would view this case, as very worthwhile.
Jason H- Aok 2 reactions on the 'Madness or genius' news article)
After reading the 'Madness or genius' news article on various bizarre experiments, science is depicted as mad, immoral and pointless, to some extent. Mad because drinking and rubbing yellow fever vomit on body is harmful. Immoral because LSD is hallucinatory drug which kills at high dosage; still, scientists injects a massive dosage of LSD into an elephant, inflicting large amount of pain on the animal to see if it "induces temporary madness". And pointless because the test on what extreme stress has on cognitive ability test, as we all know, extreme stress causes the brain to lose cognitive abilities which can be seen through the example of how we tend to forget lines whilst performing because of "stage fright".
However, we all know that not all scientists are mad, some discovered things that can alter the world.For example, Alexander Fleming discovered the first antibiotic in the world, Penicillin; Marie Curie discovered the radioactive element known as Radium. Both of these discoveries contributed to medical science nowadays, curing what once can't be cured. I understand that scientists wants to make discoveries that can change the world. Strong impulses hides their ability to think of the consequences. Its just like Frankenstein creating a being likeness of man, when he realized what he did wrong, it was too late already. My response can be summed up nicely by John Stuart Mill's quote "It is not because men's desires are strong that they act ill; it is because their consciences are weak."
However, we all know that not all scientists are mad, some discovered things that can alter the world.For example, Alexander Fleming discovered the first antibiotic in the world, Penicillin; Marie Curie discovered the radioactive element known as Radium. Both of these discoveries contributed to medical science nowadays, curing what once can't be cured. I understand that scientists wants to make discoveries that can change the world. Strong impulses hides their ability to think of the consequences. Its just like Frankenstein creating a being likeness of man, when he realized what he did wrong, it was too late already. My response can be summed up nicely by John Stuart Mill's quote "It is not because men's desires are strong that they act ill; it is because their consciences are weak."
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