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Questions tagged [experiments]

a scientific procedure undertaken to make a discovery, test a hypothesis, or demonstrate a known fact.

7 votes
1 answer
1k views

Is the story of the Fourth Cookie true?

This story of a psychology experiment was told as part of a Commencement Address by author Michael Lewis. It has been quoted in a number of places around the web. They began by grabbing students, as ...
Paul Johnson's user avatar
  • 16.6k
27 votes
1 answer
2k views

Is Feynman's claim about the history of measurements of the charge of the electron after Millikan accurate?

In a 1974 speech Richard Feynman famously described an example of confirmation bias in science: One example: Millikan measured the charge on an electron by an experiment with falling oil drops, and ...
skepdrop's user avatar
  • 371
3 votes
1 answer
26k views

Did a prisoner die from a needle prick when he was told that it was a snake bite?

I read somewhere that there was a prisoner facing a death sentence sometime before the 1950s, on whom a psychological experiment was conducted. Experiment: He was blindfolded and told that he would be ...
noobs's user avatar
  • 157
46 votes
1 answer
14k views

Did the study mentioned by "The virginity fraud" TEDx Talk happen?

During 2017's TEDx Oslo Talk The virginity fraud, the presenters refer to a (supposed) study on the reliability of virginity testing around 9:15 mark: The absurdity of virgin testing is illustrated ...
Dragomok's user avatar
  • 655
3 votes
0 answers
487 views

Is oenology real? [closed]

I am French so oenology is obviously a big thing here. I then read from time to time that it is, generally speaking, a scam - "scam" being defined in various ways: that the influence of the context (...
WoJ's user avatar
  • 533
2 votes
2 answers
503 views

Can blood transfusions lead to neurologic rejuvenation?

“We know [neurologic] rejuvenation exists. Now we have to figure out the bare minimum of therapeutics or genetic tinkering necessary for it to be safely translated into a human.” In the article ...
Luxspes's user avatar
  • 471
10 votes
1 answer
8k views

Did the "Russian Sleep Experiment" happen?

While talking about scary things and war, my girlfriend acted surprised when she found that I don't know what "Nikolayev gas" is. When I opened up wikipedia and didn't find anything she told ...
Tomáš Zato's user avatar
48 votes
1 answer
8k views

Did Benjamin Franklin perform an experiment by flying a kite in a lightning storm?

Is there any credible evidence that Benjamin Franklin actually did his famous kite experiment?
Devashish Das's user avatar
25 votes
1 answer
21k views

Is this video of the Soviet Dog Revival Experiment real?

In this video a dog's head is brought back to life by artificially injecting blood and air. The dog's head reacted to sound and touch and used its tongue to taste. I am not skeptic about its ...
smUsamaShah's user avatar
  • 2,333
4 votes
1 answer
4k views

In Milgram's studies (1963) were the volunteers alright after?

I heard some claims that most participants of Milgram's studies were happy they had done the experiment and were fine years latter, other times I've been told that the participants experienced ...
Celeritas's user avatar
  • 2,574
12 votes
0 answers
7k views

Do fleas jump lower after being covered by lid? If so, do their offspring adjust to this lower height?

This is one of the popular experiments mentioned in motivational books. Here is summary from a motivational webpage: At the beginning of the experiment a number of fleas are placed in a jar. The ...
wasyl's user avatar
  • 221
5 votes
3 answers
1k views

Do people's IQs change?

In a 1968 study of the Pygmalion Effect: Rosenthal and Jacobson gave an intelligence test to all of the students at an elementary school at the beginning of the school year. Then, they randomly ...
Celeritas's user avatar
  • 2,574
6 votes
0 answers
451 views

Does the video Experiments in the Revival of Organisms depict genuine results?

The video in question, which is in the public domain. Warning: may contain disturbing imagery. http://archive.org/details/Experime1940 The 20 minute 1940 Russian video purports to show the results ...
John Rhoades's user avatar
  • 2,156
7 votes
0 answers
9k views

Is yogurt affected by human emotions?

The documentary I Am (Wikipedia) (YouTube video) makes a number of claims, including that more signals are sent from the heart to the brain than vice-versa, and that the your emotion or mood can have ...
spot's user avatar
  • 79
7 votes
1 answer
976 views

Did Akakhievitch open up the patient's brain and, one by one, ablate several thousand neurons, each of which related to the concept of his mother?

Source: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=single-brain-cell-stores-single-concept Once a brilliant Russian Neurosurgeon named Akakhi Akakhievitch had a patient who wanted to forget his ...
Carlo Alterego's user avatar

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