Welcome to watch Mojo.

And today we're counting down our picks for the top 10 controversial science experiments.

Oh, experimental.

That's all company out of this'll Case was called a medical triumph, but in truth, the case was a failure.

I'm alone and lost in the mall for this list.

We're looking at experiments that generated debate as a result of their methodologies, results or the risks involved to participants.

In other words, they must have provoked actual argument rather than universal.

Condemnation will be excluding reviews of other studies that didn't involve new experiments.

What's the craziest scientific experiment you've ever heard off?

Tell us in the comments below Number 10 Little Albert, conducted by famed behaviorist John B.

Watson and his graduate student Rosalie Rayner, this experiment is controversial due to its methodology and ethical shortcomings.

Watson wanted to use classical conditioning to give an 11 month old child a phobia of rats and other furry objects.

They let the child referred to his Albert play with a rat, then whacked a metal bar with a hammer behind him.

The loud noise reportedly instilled in the child of fear of furry objects.

In general, it was a landmark experiment in behaviorism, a school of thought that dominated psychology for decades.

However, looking back reviewers have criticized the experiment for using Onley a single subject, and it's dubious ethical standards.

Heck, they made the kid afraid of bunny rabbits.

And Santa Claus we have established that way will try to make it what we so Children, you'll be looking forward to your presence.

We'll try very high number nine, The Large Hadron Collider experiments.

They're scaring a child, and then there's ripping, Ah, hole in the fabric of space time.

Fortunately, the Large Hadron Collider, completed in 2000 and eight, hasn't actually done the latter, but there were fears it would, making its construction controversial indeed, especially among the public.

Located near Geneva, Switzerland, this gigantic particle collider smashes atoms together to plumb the secrets of the universe, designed and built by thousands of engineers, scientists and mathematicians from across our tiny planet with the goal of helping other scientists learn about things have incredibly small size by smashing them together.

However, before it was activated, many worried that it would create stable, microscopic black holes Tatar type.

I have enjoyed our time together, but I've got a very bright future ahead of you.

Similar concerns had surrounded New York's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider before its activation in the year 2000.

Fortunately, safety reviews have concluded that any such black holes would evaporate or fly off into space.

They also noted that high energy collisions occur naturally without catastrophic consequences.

Uh, well, so far, so good.

Number eight, The Darrelle Ben pre Cognition study in 2011 respected psychologist Daryl Ben announced some rather bold findings in the EPA's Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

He reported that people could recall certain words better when they were given time to repeat them.

The twist.

He claimed this worked even when they were only allowed to practice the words after testing.

This amounted to a scientific argument for pre cognition or extrasensory perception.

The results could be seen as challenging how the human brain perceives time.

Needless to say, the study created an uproar.

Similar experiments were unable to replicate them's results.

It also sparked debate in the scientific community over the pier view process, accepted methodologies and experimental psychology and difficulties in publishing replications and non significant results.

Number seven Loftus is lost in the mall study.

I'm alone and lost in the mall.

Memory is a fickle thing.

Over time, our recollection of specific events can change or just fade altogether.

Well, that's the thing.

I have this condition, a condition.

It's my memory.

Amnesia?

No, no, no, no.

It's different from that.

I have no short term memory.

I know who I am.

I know all about myself.

I just since my injury, I can't make new memories.

Everything fades.

But have you ever had a memory that wasn't actually your own?

You'll probably answer no, at least not that you know of.

In the mid nineties, a team led by American cognitive psychologist Elizabeth Loftus set out to prove just how easy it is to implant a childhood memory in someone oven event they never experienced.

The false memory they chose was being lost in a mall.

They were lost for an extended period of time that they were frightened.

They were crying on.

They were ultimately rescued by an elderly person and then brought back together with their family.

The findings were considered groundbreaking casting an unprecedented level of doubt on the human memory.

Adding to the controversy, It was also used to discredit recovered memories repressed in survivors of abuse and other traumatic experiences.

Through suggestion, we're finding that maybe as many as a quarter of our subjects will develop a complete or or a partial memory of this experience that never really happened to them.

Number six Limits challenge to free will and you can't mess with free will.

Uh huh.

Can I ask why?

Yes, you can best beauty of it.

The concept of free will is one that's been debated as long as anyone can remember.

In the 19 eighties, however, it seemed as if neuroscientist Benjamin Lim had finally delivered a definitive answer limits landmark experiment, studied the human brain and found that it registered activity before test subjects made a conscious choice.

All I have to do is watch the spinning dot and click a button whenever I feel like it, then report to the scientist.

At what time I felt the urge to click from this.

It was suggested that our choices are unconscious and thus not truly our own.

This would be a controversial conclusion, even with ironclad methodology.

In other words, his experiments seemed to show that the conscious decision didn't cause the movement.

The brain activity bringing about movement started before the individual willed anything toe happen.

Since then, however, limits experiment has had both supporters and detractors, with critics arguing over how to interpret the brain activity that preceded action.

Number five.

The elderly related words provoke slow walking experiment.

Mhm.

The idea of social prime ing seems to make intuitive sense.

Que someone to think about something.

For example, a professor.

And it could affect their behavior, such as their performance on a general knowledge test.

Space time gravity Finish that for me.

However, what John bars and colleagues claimed to have discovered in 1996 was nonetheless startling When subjects were primed with the stereotype of an elderly person.

They reportedly walked more slowly afterwards, as if they themselves had become old.

Yeah, that's really me, isn't it?

It's got to stay calm.

This became hugely controversial in 2012, when researchers failed to replicate barges finding and suggested that experimenters had unconsciously biased the results.

Bars reacted with a scathing personal attack and the whole field of social prime ING has since been described as a quote train wreck.

Number four Jane Elliott's Blue Eyes Brown Eyes experiment The day after Martin Luther King Junior's assassination in 1968 school teacher Jane Elliott decided to try an experiment to teach her all white third graders about discrimination.

The Children were divided into a brown eyed and a blue eyed group with the former deemed superior.

And given certain privileges, the brown eyed people get five extra minutes of recess.

You blue eyed people are not allowed to be on the playground equipment at any time.

Subsequently, the brown eyed Children began talking down to their blue eyed peers, who became shy and performed poorly in tests.

After several days, their positions were reversed.

White people are smarter than brown eyed people.

They they are cleaner than brown eyed people.

They are more civilized than brown eyed people.

The experiment received considerable backlash, with one letter writer deeming it quote cruel to white Children.

However, it also gave Elliott a national platform as a diversity educator.

Today it's largely remembered positively, but its efficacy in fostering lasting racial sensitivity has been questioned, as has the decision to try it out on Children.

I watched what had been marvelous, cooperative, wonderful, thoughtful Children turn into nasty, vicious, discriminating little third graders.

Number three.

David Reimer's involuntary gender reassignment.

This experiment became even more controversial.

Overtime David Reimer was born biologically male in 1965.

After a botched circumcision, his parents raised him as a female.

Under the guidance of psychologist John Money, Money believed that gender identity was learned strongly favoring nurture over nature.

He thought that while genes were important as faras gender was concerned, Ah, babies essentially neutral for the first two years of life, he believed.

During these critical two years, the Babys upbringing, how it is nurture would determine whether it feels masculine or feminine.

Since Reimer had a twin brother, it was seen as an ideal case study for decades.

Money's claims influenced doctors performing child sexual reassignments.

However, by his early teens, Reimer was actually severely depressed and underwent surgery to reverse his reassignment.

I tried to fit in E.

I tried with the makeup.

It turned out to be a disaster.

I mean, you've got the, you know, the red, the red circles on the cheeks and look like I look like a clown.

Basically, when he spoke out decades later, it sparked a huge debate about money's extreme methods and nature versus nurture.

Sadly, Reimer and his brother later took their own lives.

The experiment has been roundly criticized by both Money's colleagues and intersex activists.

Above all, thistles, a cautionary tale things is what can happen when science pursues a beautiful theory with scant regard for the human cost.

Number two.

Stanley Milgram's Obedience to Authorities Schalk Experiments.

History is rife with seemingly ordinary people participating in horrific acts because they were just following orders is involved pretty much routinely to explain everything from abuse at Abu Ghraib, corruption in Enron or everyday terrorist atrocities around the world.

In the early 19 sixties, psychologist Stanley Milgram put together a study in which an authority figure instructed volunteers to deliver increasingly intense electrical shocks to a stranger.

Oh, experimental, that's all.

Get me out of here exactly.

I have trouble my heart starting to bother me.

Now get me out of here, please.

My starting the bottom refused to go on.

Let me.

Theological rece ity wasn't riel, but the test subjects, with their fingers on the button, didn't know that and wouldn't you know it?

Most of them followed orders, even delivering potentially lethal levels of electricity.

They were, however, extremely distressed by the ruse raising ethical concerns.

Well, I figured 200 holders were given were quite a bit.

I wanted to stop, but he kept insisting not to stop.

I mean, the felon there is Holland, he said.

I don't want to do it.

I want I want to get out of here.

I want to get out of here.

Why didn't you stop anyway?

I did stop, but he kept going.

Keep going.

People continue to argue over his methodology and interpretation of the results.

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Number one Philip Zimbardo Stanford Prison experiment Is power inherently corrupting in the early 19 seventies?

That's what Dr Philip Zimbardo set out to answer specifically, as it applies to the correctional system.

He would convert the basement of the University's psychology department into a subterranean jail.

Student volunteers were divided into the roles of guards and prisoners and were then instructed to play out those roles in a simulated prison.

The experiment also aimed to address questions of group identity, power structures and the effects of being dehumanized.

It was intended toe last 7 to 14 days, but the plug was pulled after just six, with abuse rampant and multiple prisoners backing out.

What made the experience most depressing for me was the fact that we're continually called upon to act in a way that just it's contrary to what I really feel inside.

It seems like a pretty clear answer to the core question.

No.

Well, there have been claims that the guards were coached to behave a certain way and that the experiment was biased by implied demands.