What unethical experiment do you think would be interesting to conduct?

I heard there's a guy called Luigi with a cool idea.

Just wipe out ALL mosquitoes, and then measure what the actual influence is on the food-web for other animals and plants.
- no joke but i remember reading something about this aagggeesssss ago where a group of researchers modelled the effects of no more mozzies on the food chain and found that, because barely anything fucking eats them, their eradication would be negligible
  
  Glad to hear it.
  Proceeding with Phase 1.

How many billionaires need to be publicly executed to fix the usa political system.
- Title says unethical
- More than just the ones in America, I'd reckon.

Allow all kinds of drugs and other enhancements in sports and see where the limits of the body are
- Ultra Olympics
- This is happening next year. It's called the "enhanced games" or something.
  
  TIL
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_Games
- Too late, the techbros already went with this one

I really want someone to just really start messing around with the human genome, see the limits of gene expression. Let's add horns, let's add tusks, let's add tails, and wings, and carapaces, and antennae, and claws, let's just see what happens. Human evolution has gotten so tired and trite; let's add some spice.
- Don't let the furrys hear you
  
  Too late. Off to back those experiments... as soon as I figure out how to become one of the suspiciously wealthy furries
- Or creating super mutant athletes. Like how fast do you think a modified human body could run? Or jump?

Here's a very unethical linguistics experiment that I think would be interesting:
Raising a group of children completely isolated from any language, spoken or otherwise. They would not be fully isolated from people, but those people would not be able to communicate with each other in the vicinity of the children (no speaking, no gestures, etc.) Of course, to isolate them from language would mean strictly controlling their lives (very unethical). Could they communicate with each other, and maybe even develop a language?
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child
  Not a controlled environment but it's happened several times, with varied results.
- Haven't they tried this??
  
  they tried babies without anybody and they all ended up dying at some point. turns out human connection is pretty essential

Take ten or twenty thousand children, take over a fairly large portion of a midwestern state, build a large and complete environment for them to live in including towns, museums, theme parks etc. and raise them as normal Americans but absolutely 100% avoid introducing them to the concept of religion until they're 25.
- Before the oldest turns 24, that small city would just sublime into a higher plane, leaving behind nothing but a beautiful prairie and a fresh minty smell.
- I suspect they'd invent their own. No one introduced religion to humanity. It came from within.
  
  Then the experiment would yield data.
- So you just wanna expand the absolute bonkers premise of Kid Nation . Lol
  
  Actually no, I was figuring on having adults present to raise, educate and care for the children, but under strict orders to not introduce them to superstition.
- I'm pretty sure that they would start making one up very soon.
  
  I'm not meaning dump 20,000 children alone in the left half of Wyoming, I mean, keep them with their parents, hire teachers, teach them math and science and...basically a history that replaces a lot of "and they believed their gods said" with "the ruling class decided they wanted to". What happens to children when they are raised in a functioning, supportive, nurturing society that does not contain religion or superstition?

Making a lot of clones of myself, raising them all differently, and seeing how many of them turn out in the same way as me.
- Agreed, it's an interesting thing to think about at least. The nature vs nurture debate is practically as old as time itself but it feels like we're no closer to an answer outside of "it's a bit of both." But how much?
  
  Twin studies show thats its about 50% each.
- Not the same, but your comment reminded me of an upcoming game I want to try The Alters
  
  Oooh there's a playable demo! I'm gonna try it as soon as possible!
- AFAIK genes only account for physical properties like hair color and shit, and upbringing effects everything else.
  Source: someone I met who claimed to be a psychiatrist told me and I've never confirmed it or that she actually was a psychiatrist.
- There's a interesting sci-fi book with a (vaguely) similar premise - House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds.

Seems pretty tame compared to various other answers, but keeping people under anesthesia longer than expected during surgery and seeing how it affects things like memory or personality.
Supposedly after an open heart surgery I had gone through over a decade ago, my mother swears my personality changed. Though I can't remember if that's true because my memory has felt, in a sense, kinda foggy since then. So I wanna know if it was because I was under for longer than expected or because the surgery itself.
- I would wager that it's more to do with the surgery itself. Even transient hypoxia from blood not getting to your brain for a little bit can make a big difference. Anesthesia is used very frequently with rare complications, but complex heart surgeries have higher complication rates.
  
  Sounds fair enough that it could have just been the surgery. I'm nowhere near a medical professional, but I can totally see unforseen complications having happened to me.
- I'd be interested in this too. Maybe some synapsed stop firing if they are put to sleep for long enough.
  Alternatively your mother might be gaslighting you.
  
  I doubt she is gaslighting me because there's not much for her to gain from her doing it. Tighter control over family is something I expect from her family rather than her.

Try to find out at which temperature Musk begins to melt.
- That sounds incredibly humane actually. Information like that will save lives.

I want to see what happens we just have mob lynchings of politicians if their approval drops to below 50%.
Maybe the world would become a utopia?
👀
- Tbh I don't think anything would really get done. Politicians would just recycle the same super popular ideas to prevent themselves from getting lynched.
  It'd be like how video games companies are just churning out safe titles they know will sell really well, but with our government instead of video games.
  
  Historically the most popular political idea is "all your problems are the fault of those guys over there".

Worldwide, making all coffee decaf, and not telling anyone.
- You fucking monster
- From what I've heard you'd probably see a spike in medical deaths basically immediately.
  
  I'd probably die in a car crash pretty quickly

Lobotomize all conservatives to see if their IQ increases.
We've exhausted all other options.
- In The Host (2007) they lobotomise the protagonist but he's so dumb it doesn't affect him

The metal gear solid thing where you clone someone into two separate people but one gets all the recessive genes and the other gets all the dominant ones
- You'd have to have the third, true 1:1 clone as control for this to be a valid experiment.

Most research on human embryonic stem cells - currently impossible in western countries due to ethics concerns.
Theoretically, if a few stem cells from every embryo early on and frozen that might be a huge boon for them once they grow up to adults with potential health issues. Need a new heart? Grow one in a lab from the preserved cells - perfectly compatible.
Currently these kinds of things can't be explored, and whilst the ethics may be dubious the potential medical benefits left on the table are astonishing.

Raise a group of a dozen newborns with absolutely zero contact outside of their own group. Food and necessities get provided of course, but no language learning, no nurturing, no generational teaching.
What kind of community do they form when they are old enough to grasp such things? Do they develop their own language; or a different method of communication entirely. How do they stratify their society, or even do they?
At a certain point, when they are old enough, introduce challenges that only work if they cooperate with one another. See what happens.

Take the people expressing their violent political fantasies in threads like this and make them live in the worlds they're advocating for.
- I suggested lobotomizing all conservatives. I'd 100% live in that world and love every minute of it.
  
  What happens to them after? There are a lot of logistical issues to figure out if about 1/3 of the population of the planet suddenly couldn't feed, dress, or care for themselves at all.

The mouse utopia experiment but on humans. Ive always seen a subset of people who bemoan having to work or develop specialized skills to contribute to society. They want everything provided for them so their whole life can be leasure and comfort. A lot of socialism and communism selling points tend to be about having social services and things provided to you.
I'm interested to see the long term affects of people in a society where EVERYTHING is provided for you all the time. Every survival concern, sexual pleasure, every base urge, every whim and desire. For decades and decades and decades. Would it be a genuine good for society or would it be a monkeys paw situation?
Ive always hypothesized that any human society that attempts this will quickly erode into something similar to the mouse utopia.
Without any environmental pressures or meaningful challenges to overcome a large portion of the population without strong internal drives will become lethally/suicidally lazy, apathetic, and narcicistic
I suspect theres a large amount of people who simply have zero internal drives to apply themselves to doing a thing unlesd they have to. without the pressure of survival in either a physical or economic way they would simply sit on their ass, jerk off, play games, and maybe groom themselves, for decades until they die. Merit and overcoming challenge are important aspects of drive and dopamine generation. You deprive a person of those things they become lethargic. If that sentiment proves itself true it will be a hard pill to swallow for a lot of ideologies.
Unethical questions:
Statistically speaking, how many people would escelate their wants to socially taboo depravities? How quickly?
How long on average would it take for pleasure to become less meaningful in the face of instant gratification? Is there a logarithmic function that charts this?
How many people on average decide to begin self harm out to seek novel sensations? How long until onset?
How many people choose to live out a full life vs taking the placebo cyanide capsule and being removed from experiment? What would their reasonings be?
- the issue that caused societal collapse in the ~~mouse utopia~~ Behavioral Sink was overpopulation, not that they had their needs met comfortably lol
  for a more accurate comparison look at Rat Park Experiment.
  TL;DR: rats in solitary confined standard lab testing cages will consume lots of morphine laced water available as an alternative to normal water, rats in a spacious cage with other rats of both sexes and entertainment are not very interested in the morphine laced water. in fact they drank more of the laced water when naloxone, a drug that negates the effects of opioids, was added to it. the implication being that the rats were more interested in sweet water than morphine in good social conditions
- I think we see aspects of this in the behaviour of the rich and ultra-rich (where "screw the rules I have money" applies). It's pedophilia all the way down.
- I'm in that Foto and I don't like it!
  Would it be space limited like the mousetopia too? If not you could have everything you desire and just go hiking for the Dopamin would be my dream lol
- I'm curious if it's even possible to satisfy every whim of a human. Do they get any access to human culture? If not, it would be like cloned birds failing to migrate.

Actually just stop allowing anyone with "defective" genes to reproduce.
I am fully I wouldnt exist in this hypothetical world (-11 vision in both eyes), but I would be curious what would happen if we only ever let perfectly healthy people with no genetic defects have kids.
Like would it eventually just become a perfect world where nobody needs glasses or asthma inhalers? Or would we die off because not enough genetically "perfect" people exist to make this plan work?
- I'd be curious to see how the definition of "defective" evolves over time in a society like that.
  
  Yeah it would devolve to being like people with freckles or something utterly superficial eventually
- Some traits end up being beneficial. For instance sickle cell anemia vs malaria.
- Any malady that could get through would, in theory, be able to destroy nearly everyone. If the response that would grant immunity to future generations were a mutation with a negative side effect attached, you've just ended humanity (assuming any survived). We've lost plant species to similar.
  This one example ignores a whole host of other problems with the idea.
- That’s sounds interesting it would also be cool to see how long before defective genes show up again
- As a bundle of recessive genes, I definitely wouldn't meet the Gattaca standard. :)
  https://youtu.be/W_KruQhfvW4

Nice try, Mengele

Lock someone is a room-wide 24h fMRI or some other imaging technique to get a full recording of a human body working.
- Is it unethical if they volunteer? I'd be down!

Who from the US government will last the longest in a bonfire. Although it might be questionable if this experiment is really unethical.
- I'll allow it, we can also see if two wrongs make a right.

I'd be really curious about the Tarzan experiment, having a human infant raised by apes.
- It will end up like every other feral kid found.

I'd like to see if we can build hybrid computer systems using cultured animal tissue (like Cephalopod or maybe GMO human / Cephalopod), basically grown onto an array of tiny wires. Push sensory information through the tiny wires and see if the lump of cells can learn. If it does, put it in a Eva. Or a butler robot. Or a robot vaccuum.
Idk. Its an idea for a scifi novel I've had. Some company does this and what people don't realize is the supposedly autonomous systems making their lives easier are fully conscious but live tortured existences. It would get more and more lovecraftian as the cephalopod hybrids some how take over (I was thinking maybe cancer? or networked mind) and start chopping everyone to bits. Maybe they try and eat them but they have no mouth, like how an octopus arm when detach will hunt and try to feed a non-existent mouth.
- I think that's a black mirror episode (what dystopian shenanigan isn't, nowadays?) , something like they copied your mind digitally and then (cruelly) trained the copy to become your perfect digital assistant.
- Didnt someone get doom to run on living cells?
  
  Yeah see, but I wanna get live cells running on doom.

Making chimeras sounds cool as shit. What's even unethical about it? Why can't I have an army of beavermen to dam the world's waterways unless my ransom demands are met?
Ok, I think I see where the unethical part lies...
- Yeah it’s beaverPEOPLE, not beaverMEN. Get with the times!
  
  I’m a beaver man myself. Pubes are sexy.

Put a hundred toddlers on an island. Leave a few older children that will disappear a few years later that are taught to fish/hunt/gather. See what kind of language develops, or what kind of civilization. How many survive?
It is VERY unethical. Add variables to other islands, such as the amount of children, and what you teach them.
- You know there was a mad king who tried to do the same?
  Babies just end up dying if not talked to. He also wanted to figure out the language of gods
- This is somewhat similar to how Nicaraguan sign language was developed. Basically, kids at a school for the deaf invented it.

I love the story of the father who raised his son on Klingon until it became too awkward for modern usage.
Thought that would be a fun experiment on my child. Don’t know much Klingon though.

Recreate the setup of Training Day and see how many people become dirty cops because they get finessed by Denzel Washington

I always found the stories of human/chimp hybrids fascinating.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanzee
https://bigthink.com/the-past/soviet-human-ape-super-warriors-humanzee-ivanov/
Unproven, but theoretically as possible as horse/donkey, zebra/horse, or lion/tiger.

I find those rats with the NOVA1 gene fascinating. I wonder what would happen if we downright tried to give rats human-level intelligence? They are more empathetic than humans I hear, they would make the perfect replacement for our species!
And another thing I would like to try, is to find a really big person, and see how far they can swallow me feet-first, before they run into problems, or one of us is injured.
- I hope you cut your toenails first!
  That said, I doubt anyone would have an oesophagus wide enough to accommodate anything bigger than a hand, so you might need to choose a different host species and potentially, orifice.
  
  That's why it's called an unethical experiment
- How can rats have human level intelligence, if we as humans have to essentially consume the whole bodyweight of a rat daily, just to sustain our very energy demanding brains.
  
  Good point. We should try something far longer lived, but good at surviving. Crocodiles? Nah...too much work to get them intelligent. Octopuses maybe?
  EDIT: Octopi just to avoid the annoying corrections.
- Do you want “Planet of the Rats?” Because that’s how you get “Planet of the Rats”
  
  Actually, I do want planet of the rats

Hypothesis: Conservatives will refuse to believe contradicting facts regardless of punishment.
Experiment: Use increasingly painful stimulus for negative reinforcement when subjects espouse harmful views, ie racism.
- I'm on the "make stupid hurt" train.

Separate a child from society. Like place them into a void with no human culture. And see what they think later on.
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child
- You're running a few centuries behind.

Hypothetically. I'd see if I could take someone and bring them into a Truman show world without them knowing.
- Isn't this it?
  
  I feel like it's has to be with this timeline

Remove every unhealthy person and/or gene modify existing ones to eliminate every allergy orbodily defect caused by gene defect.
Also gene modify so that theres no mental detorioration and humans die just because they are old and the nody can't keep up with maintenance.
- That's not even unethical, we just have bioconservatives in charge.
  
  Remove every unhealthy person
  Well that seems very unethical.
  About gene modification, assuming it were to fully work without risks, it would still only be ethical if the patient were to consent, which not everyone would.

Throwing somebody straight into lava in a volcano. Would be interesting to see what happens.
- Leidenfrost probably
- OK Mr. Mishima

gather massive amounts of stats on the ideal amount of physical punishment to mete out to children to produce the best results in adults.

Trolling against some lemmy mods? (surely one of the most hazardous things to to)