20 Studies That Would Be Immensely Valuable, If Wildly Unethical

Back in its early days, science was a bit of a wild west, both in terms of men in funny hats shooting at each other and also a lack of laws and regulations. You wanna cut open some poor people and see what’s inside? Go for it. Traumatize children for life? They’ll toughen up. Give some minorities some diseases? You’ll have to fight the government to get there first.

Nowadays, we have silly little “ethics boards” and “human rights,” which is a good thing. Mostly. It does mean there’s a whole lot of questions we’ll never have the answers to because it would mean doing horrific things to living beings, but their lives are more important than science, right? Right. Right?

User numbnesstolife must have been feeling similarly conflicted, because they asked r/AskReddit, “What’s a scientific experiment you’d be fascinated to see the results of but could never be conducted due ethical concerns?”