7 Studies That Only Proved That Scientists Are Perverts

7 Sex in an MRI Machine (And Women Flying Solo)

The invention of MRI machines gave doctors the handy ability to look inside people, helping with everything from bone injuries to brain tumors to that silly ride at Epcot Center. However, the scientific community is apparently full of people who spent the entire run time of Innerspace hoping to see the interior workings of Martin Short ejaculating Dennis Quaid's spaceship into Meg Ryan.

So in 1999, four couples and three single women were recruited for a study. Once assembled, the participants were instructed to climb into the MRI machine (here known as the metal tube of judgment) and have sex with each other. The single women were tossed inside with a masturbation directive (and a wall calendar of shirtless firemen).

The Perverted Bit:

The experiment began with the couples engaging in "face to face coitus in the superior position" (which is sexless egghead speak for missionary). After the scientists had gotten enough dissected sex photos (dissexted?), they told the males to leave the machine and told the women to keep going by themselves, presumably to capture that extra edge needed for the medical journals.

The lone women would diddle it up until they reached "the pre-orgasmic stage," at which point they would inform the scientists over an intercom (which while not in use for communication was presumably feeding in an endless stream of R. Kelly songs, such as "My Pony," "Bump and Grind" and "Gotham City"). After some pre-orgasmic images were taken, the women would resume diddling until climax, which the MRI machine would also record.

The researchers were not the kind of people who thought that this situation would make maintaining an erection difficult, and as such "did not foresee" that sex in a sterile metal tube surrounded by a makeshift curtain and a room full of scientists would be a major boner slayer for nearly every male involved. There was only one guy who had no problems, and the scientists chalked this up to his "artistic commitment" to the project; he and his partner were both a) involved in and dedicated to the experiment from day one and b) amateur street acrobats and therefore "trained and used to performing under stress." So if nothing else, we already know that this experiment will answer most unanswered questions in the field of Amateur Street Gymnasts Who Like to Fuck in Metal Tubes.

The experiment's purpose is only ever vaguely described, and never really goes beyond "We want to see what it looks like when we make people have sex in an MRI machine." Their findings are always along the lines of "People don't seem to like having sex in MRI machines, except, again, unlicensed street acrobats." As stated in this video (which begins with the most amazing non sequitur in the history of the world), the experiment was of interest to specialists and "laypersons with an interest in reproductive anatomy" (read: the Internet).

6 Johann Wilhelm Ritter and His Battery

The invention of the world's first electric battery, the voltaic pile, in 1800 was a monumentally historic event. For the first time, people had captured electricity and were free to study its effects and potential. One of those people was Johann Wilhelm Ritter. However, rather than using it to invent something awesome, such as the light bulb, Ritter used the voltaic pile to apply current to sensitive areas of his body, including his nasal cavity, tongue and eyes, because that was evidently the absolute best idea he could come up with. Clearly, programming Karnov 187 years early would have been the superior idea.

The Perverted Bit:

Determined to follow this line of thought until the bitter end, Ritter decided to electro-blast his yogurt cannon, possibly because he was known to be an eccentric who tap-danced on the borderline of crazy.

He wrapped his dong up in "a cloth moistened with lukewarm milk" (you know, because), then touched a charged wire from the battery onto the cloth. After a bit of a jolt, his penis started to swell. Rather than hurling the cloth out of the window for fear of penile explosion, he kept it firmly applied until he experienced the most terrifying orgasm of all time (we're calling shotgun on that premise so we can pitch it to Stephen King).

Showing all the measured reserve of a 10-year-old boy discovering nudity, Ritter began frequently zapping himself, going so far as to jokingly write to his publisher that he intended to marry the voltaic pile (given what we've just learned, we are in no way surprised that actual women were less than excited to have sex with him).

After a while, Ritter began experiencing some nasty side effects, including muscle spasms and paralysis, all over his body (his boner, while arguably his favorite place to electrocute, was by no means the only area of his anatomy that he attached to the battery). Rather than discontinue his "experiments," which by this point seemed to have no higher academic pursuit beyond trying to turn himself into a Spider-Man villain, Ritter would self-medicate with opium to keep the discomfort at bay, leaving him free to play with his masturbattery until the end of time. Or at least until he died at 33 from tuberculosis augmented by a deteriorating physical frailty, which a regime of drug use and constant electric shocks certainly did nothing to help.

5 Whipping Buttocks

Endorphins are the body's natural opiates, flooding your system with that natural high you experience when you exercise, have an orgasm and fall in love. They work on the same place in the brain as heroin and morphine without all that Trainspotting bullshit. Endorphins are also released in a big dose after you experience something painful like stubbing your toe or pulling a muscle.

Seeking to do a study on the relationship between endorphins, depression and addiction, a group of Russian researchers gathered together all the available literature on each subject. They thoroughly reviewed this information and thought long and hard about the most appropriate research to do, taking careful note of all the different methods known to release endorphins we touched on above, and assembled a bunch of appropriately sad junkies to form their test group.

The Perverted Bit:

The researchers then heroically threw all of that stuff out and beat a load of depressed drug addicts on the ass with canes. The idea behind the literal ass beatings was to release the body's endorphins, acting as a natural medication for those suffering from depression and addiction and various other diseases.

The researchers claim that they had excellent results, recommending 30 sessions of 60 cane strikes to the butt cheeks, because getting whipped on your naked ass in a Russian lab is nothing if not pure science. According to one of the ladies who dispensed the canings, "At first they didn't like it, but when they started to feel the benefits they kept asking for more."

After the results of the study were released, the researchers began charging for caning sessions, which were purchased en masse by dubious characters doing little beyond simply replacing one addiction with another. The line between therapy and S&M gets even more blurry when you consider that those receiving the "treatment" insist that it is much more effective when dispensed by a member of the opposite sex. Paying $100 for an hour-long session of ass-caning is Science; demanding that a member of the opposite sex do it to you is You Suck You're a Pervert.

4 Kinsey and Team Get Freaky

Alfred Kinsey was the first major sexologist in America and did some pretty groundbreaking work, including being portrayed in a movie by Liam Neeson. He began his career researching insects, but soon realized that he would see many more naked breasts if he switched his field to sex. He taught what was called a "marriage course" by his employers at Indiana University, so named because they wanted to avoid generating controversy.

Kinsey began his research in 1938 by distributing sex surveys to his students, asking about things like their bedroom habits and partner preferences. He abandoned the surveys before too long and switched to one-on-one interviews, feeling that his students would be more honest in a face-to-face conversation. All the while, his superiors never bothered to question what might be the goal and/or purpose of his course beyond pure self-indulgence and boner-driven curiosity.

The Perverted Bit:

Kinsey had been seducing male graduate students since back during his entomology days, so it should come as no surprise that he would continue to do so in his new field of study (which conveniently centered entirely around having sex with everything in sexing distance).

One such person within sexing distance was a student named Clyde Martin, with whom Kinsey had conducted one of his face-to-face interviews. After the interview, Kinsey offered him a job as part of his research team. He then had sex with Martin, because that's research.

When Martin decided that he was more into girls than man-sex with his boss, he took stern and sensible action, a phrase which here means "He demanded to have sex with Kinsey's wife of 20 years." Kinsey was more than happy to oblige, because of his commitment to the pursuit of knowledge (see research, above).

As Kinsey's team grew, so did his wiener and its thirst for new hiding places. With encouragement from Kinsey, his team members had sex with him, each other, each other's spouses and anyone else they cared to invite along. Being an enterprising and forward-thinking academic, Kinsey hired a photographer to document all this research. The goal and subsequent conclusion of said research was shockingly never made entirely clear.

3 "Would You Go to Bed With Me?"

Everyone knows that there are differences between men and women that go way beyond the bits we use to make babies, and we've explained before that some gender stereotypes are actually true. In 1978, one stereotype that inexplicably needed careful investigation is the one where men are all unstoppable sex fiends who will sleep with anything that remains motionless for long enough, whereas women are more deliberate and selective in choosing partners.

Along those lines, psychology professor Russell Clark and his students set out to determine if men and women differed in their responses to offers of sex. The experiment involved 48 students approaching people around campus that they would definitely be comfortable depantsing (the paper is very clear on this point). The student would then say, "I have been noticing you around campus. I find you to be very attractive."

The Perverted Bit:

This incredibly subtle pick-up line was followed by some variation of suggestive request, ranging from asking for a date to simply asking, "Would you go to bed with me?" (The line "My van is soundproof" was removed from the study after early results proved unsatisfactory.) If the subject refused whatever offer was made, the student made a note of the response and then revealed the study and thanked the subject for their participation.

That's if the subject said no.

If the subject said yes, the end result was ostensibly the same -- make a note, reveal the study and thank the person for participating. This was less of a problem for the male students in the study (according to the results, not one female they approached said yes to the offer of sex), but for the women, this is somewhat of an issue. Now, we're not fuck scientists (yet), but it doesn't take a boner genius to see why sending off women to demand sex from college-aged men might be the worst idea, especially when the women have to follow it up with "No, haha, it's uh, I'm just doing some science, never mind." Suddenly they found themselves trying to babble out an explanation of the study to a strange man and hoping they didn't just toss gasoline into a rape engine.

In fact, one editor suggested in his rejection to publish the study that Clark add in how many of the female participants got raped before telling him to send it to Penthouse Forum.

2 Robert Dickinson and His Test Tubes

For anyone who may have forgotten their high school sex ed classes, most of the relevant baby-making equipment that women have is inside their bodies. So while everyone can draw a pretty accurate dick from the age of 10, vaginas are somewhat more of a problem. Not for Robert Dickinson, an anatomist and gynecologist who worked in the early 20th century. He was a bold soul, not one to shy away from a vagina, and came up with some unique methods for seeing what he needed to see to accurately detail the female reproductive anatomy.

Although studying cadavers was the obvious solution, Dickinson considered them less useful for his purposes, as he wanted to observe healthy vaginas in good working order. So he would get living subjects and tell them he wished to examine their vaginas, presumably while wearing every doctor-related item he could think of to demonstrate his legitimacy, including but not limited to wearing his Ph.D. around his neck like Flava Flav.

The Perverted Bit:

After sufficiently gaining the trust of his female subjects, Dickinson would then stick glass test tubes into their bajingas. He inserted his test tube repeatedly at various angles, shining a light down it and making notes and sketches of what he saw. He was pretty inclusive in his research, observing and drawing a range of vaginas, from those of virgins to those of women participating in "vigorous and varied coitus," a phrase which here means "busted."

To see how the internal female anatomy responded to intercourse, he got his female subjects aroused (sometimes using a vibrator), then pointed emphatically at his Ph.D. necklace before proceeding to essentially have sex with them using the test tube.

This is considered science.

1 Plastic Surgeons Find an Excuse to Look at Lots of Butts

Plastic surgeons need to know what to aim for when they're slicing people up, and sometimes it isn't as obvious as removing 100 pounds of fat or injecting 100 pounds of boob. Sometimes, minutely specific modifications have to be made for a patient to achieve that perfect (if scar addled) body. Along those lines, it makes sense that plastic surgeons need some idea of what an awesome butt looks like, and don't always necessarily have access to the film library of Jean-Claude Van Damme or that shot from the Entrapment trailer when Catherine Zeta Jones' ass cheeks are being attacked by lasers. Research needs to be done.

The Perverted Bit:

Evidently they needed a lot of research.

For a paper headed "What Makes Buttocks Beautiful?" scientists looked at a cornucopia of ladies' butts. As in 2,400 of them. The idea was to create the perfect visual reference guide for ass-filleting plastic surgeons, providing the cosmetic surgery profession with an exhaustive booty library. Dozens, if not hundreds, of examples seems completely reasonable.

Two and a half thousand seems a bit excessive. Especially when you consider that only 1,320 of the photos were actually used to write the paper. That's a lot of surplus ass (surplass?). Apparently that still wasn't enough examples, though, because the researchers called in 132 real-life women to take their butt measurements. Presumably Sir Mix-A-Lot was an adjunct on this study.

For more proof that genius and perversion go hand in hand, check out 6 Famous Geniuses You Didn't Know Were Perverts and 6 Famous Artists You Didn't Know Were Perverts.

If you're pressed for time and just looking for a quick fix, then check out The 10 Bases of Sex Metaphors.

And stop by LinkSTORM to see our experiment with iguanas and canola oil.

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