neon green liquid being poured into Erlenmeyer Flask
Mayukh Saha
Mayukh Saha
February 29, 2024 ·  5 min read

‘Scientists’ Discuss What Experiments They’d Conduct If They Had Zero Morals

One can indeed say that morals are what stop us from acting on thoughts from the deepest recesses of our minds. We are curtailed by society in our speech, thought, and actions. So, what if that switch was somehow turned off? What if we were allowed full control over ourselves and could do anything, regardless of morals and ethics?

How would scientists over the ages utilize this unique power? One could assume that they would perform some pretty gruesome experiments. Without morals and ethics, there are no rules, so one could speed up the rate of scientific discovery. There would be no moral cost, because that has been taken out of the equation. Some of them could be life-changing, while others could simply be heinous evil. So, let’s see what some Reddit scientists would do if they did away with their morals. Keep in mind we can’t technically verify if these Reddit users are indeed scientists, but their comments are interesting nonetheless.

When Morals Are Done Away With, What Experiments Would A Scientist Do?

1. Serial Killer Clones

One user on Reddit claimed, “I want to take DNA from infamous serial killers like Dahmer or Albert Fish or the like, clone them, then have the baby raised in a normal, supportive, loving family, I’d study the kids all through adulthood to see how much is nurture and how much is nature.” While it does look quite altruistic on paper, things could go sideways in a very short period of time. 

2. Treating Serious By Treatable Conditions With Skittles

The ‘scientist’ who wants to test this theory out wants to experiment the full potential of placebos. For those wondering, the placebo effect “is an unexplained phenomena where people who take medications that aren’t real, but they believe are real, have an actual, measurable effect on their illness.” What the scientist wants to do is explore this concept- “Can we treat chronic illnesses like arthritis, lupus and bipolar disorder with just placebos? What about viral illness? Can you imagine if someone’s HIV viral load decreased while they’re eating Skittles thinking it’s a new miracle drug?

3. Dissolving Moments From History

Another user wrote, “I experiment on ancient coins. Museums are generally against me doing a full compositional analysis as that would involve me dissolving the whole coin in acid. But it sure would tell us a lot more than not.

4. Social Isolation

A fourth individual mentioned, “Experiments with social isolation intrigue me. Raise a child with no language and see what happens. No contact. Wild children give us some insights, but also a sample of the kind of trauma this can produce. Completely and undeniably unethical. Incredibly cruel. But sooooo intriguing!!

5. Miniature Elephants- They Would Look Cute, But There Is A Risk Involved

u/SpoonwoodTangle commented, “I want to create Miniature Elephants! Through ingenious genetic manipulation I’ll be able to miniaturize any living mammal! And yeah I know there’s a South Park reference, and also a Jurassic Park (the book) reference. Mostly I want a cuddly mini-phant that I can socialize as a lovely companion. All while spiking municipal water supplies to shrink the general population and go Godzilla on their asses. That’s what you get for making fun of my homemade pie, Karen!

Read: Reddit ‘scientists’ share the scariest things humanity ‘doesn’t know’ about the world

6. Infra-Red Dogs

u/CleanableYetti mentioned, “I want to work on genetically modifying the genes that control our active cones in our eyes. Specifically I want to try to activate a tertiary cone in the eyes of dogs so that they can see infared light just like snakes can. In simpler terms, we could make rescue dogs that have infared vision to help locate missing people or recover people in natural disasters. In even simpler terms I want to make heatseeking dogs.

7. Access To Medical Records- Sounds Very Unethical, But Could Be Helpful

A cautious commenter posted, “I wouldn’t say “mad scientist,” but medical privacy laws get in the way of a LOT of incredibly useful research. Everything has to be so de-identified and confidential that it makes doing any sort of large-scale statistics nearly impossible. You have to make a ton of assumptions because you can’t know many details. If I had full access to everyone’s medical records, we could probably fix a whole lot of s**t.

8. Animal Crossing In Reality

u/hey-youinthebushes commented, “I want to put an ecosystem of animals on their own island BUT feed them and see if they continue to hunt or start using civil behaviour.”

9. Figuring Out Puberty

u/flyingbatbeaver had an interesting experiment to try- “I’d want to know how long it’d take a group of children, raised to puberty, to figure out sex. I’m sure they’d figure out masturbation on some level. But how long would it take for them to figure out “tab A into slot B”? The kids could be raised about as normal as possible, but with any mention of sex and reproduction completely removed. And there would be no shame or deterrent while they figure it out. Like, the caretakers wouldn’t tell them “we don’t do that” if they found out one was masturbating or that two consenting teenagers are touching each other. There would be some kind of explanation for trying to encourage that type of stuff in private instead of around the others.

10. WADA Wants To Know Their Location

u/Sajusmina commented, “I want drug Olympics, where everyone using something to enhance performance. To see the true limit of humans.

Humans without morals could honestly do a lot worse than the experiments mentioned above. As far as we understand, there is still some benefit to humanity in these experiments.

Keep Reading: ‘Scientists’ Built the First Modular Body—a ‘Living Being’ That Isn’t Alive

Attention: These stories are based on posts found on Reddit. Reddit is a user-generated social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website where registered members submit content to the site and can up- or down-vote the content. The accuracy and authenticity of each story cannot be confirmed by our staff.

Sources

  1. “(Serious) Scientists Reveal What Experiments They’d Like To Conduct If They Had No Morals.” Reddit