9 Unethical Psychological Experiments That Actually Happened
6. Elephant On LSD
Usually an unethical psychological experiment is carried out because the potential findings are too fascinating for researchers to resist. However, every once in a while, some lunatic comes along with a PhD and just does something awful for no discernible reason. In this example, that lunatic is Dr Louis Jolyon Jolly West. In 1962, he decided that he was going to inject a bull elephant with LSD to see what would happen. Just another day at the office. He theorised (with very little evidence) that it might induce what is known as the elephants musth state; an annual period of extreme aggression characterised by an increase in testosterone. A dart was fired into the rump of a three tonne bull named Tusko, delivering a ludicrously high dosage of LSD. Tragically, Tusko did nothing more than trumpet loudly and collapse into convulsions. The researchers fought to revive him by administering similarly excessive amounts of barbiturate and thorazine but sadly he died less than two hours later. What infuriated critics of the study was that the entire design seemed completely unfounded. A recreational LSD dosage for humans is approximately 0.2mg to be taken orally (not that Id know) and upscaling this to an elephant gives you 9mg. However, for some reason, Tusko was given 297mg via injection 33 times as much. Incidentally, a much more controlled study in 1984 found that LSD does make elephants kind of grumpy but definitely does not induce musth, so good job Dr Jolly.
Peter Austin initially joined WhatCulture as an occasional contributor to our Film, Gaming and Science sections, but made the mistake of telling us that he'd been making videos in his bedroom for over a decade. Since then he's been a vital member of our YouTube team and routinely sets the standard for smart-casual wear in the office.
