11 Craziest Things People Have Done In The Name Of Science

Stomach ulcers were always thought to have been caused by stress. The idea was so accepted that it became a common trope in books, TV and cinema with frantically overtaxed business men and women darkly asserting that something had "given them a stomach ulcer". Ulcers are no joke though, with many suffers having their stomach removed or simply bleeding to death - all because they were too stressed.

Drs. Robin Warren and Barry Marshall, however, thought that something didn't quite add up here. They were convinced that this painful and deadly condition was caused by a bacteria, not board meetings, and set about trying to prove it by growing cultures of the suspect bacteria and feeding it to mice. The scientific community then promptly and completely ignored them - their experiments on mice were seen as inconclusive and the pair were prohibited from experimenting on humans.

Eventually, the duo grew tired of the collective "LA LA LA CAN'T HEAR YOU" attitude of their esteemed colleagues and decided to take the matter in hand. Despite the ban on human experimentation, there was nothing stopping them testing on themselves and so they did just that. Dr. Marshall mixed up a delicious concoction of bacteria, Helicobacter pylori, collected from ulcer patients and drank it down in one. 

He immediately developed gastritis, nausea, vomiting, and halitosis - all sure signs of a stomach ulcer. Not only that, but two weeks later he began to take antibiotics and cured himself, thus proving once and for all that ulcers are caused by a bacterial infection and undermining years of received scientific wisdom (red faces all round we think).

The two were finally awarded the Nobel Prize in 2005 for their stunt, which has allowed us the ability to treat a debilitating and deadly disease with a simple round of antibiotics (antibiotic resistance aside - that's another story for another time).