The weird is all over the place to some extent，not just in scientific research, but in many different disciplines, such as conspiracy theories. I want to talk more about the weirdness of the experimental world. I think the world has some strange studies, like the twenty strangest experiments, which prove that there are experts in some fields of science who do things that are a little bit different from normal people. Weird means very strange and unusual, unexpected, or not natural. (2022)Weirdness is not a borderline thing for me right now. Weirdness, on the contrary, is a creative act that blurs the sense of boundaries. Come up with a weird idea from a weird perspective and take actions to create and implement the so-called idea. Maybe a lot of research starts with weirdness.
First and foremost, weird research exists, and it can be seen in scientific experiments. (Alder., Alder and Aboujieb., 2020) argues that, to some extent, fin-de-siècle science was not invented, but rather strange from the start. The so-called “science” is not a single discourse or a single set of methods, but a diversity of positions, knowledge and practice. In other words, “science” comes from strange positions and practices. For example, there are twenty well-known experiments that prove the existence of strange experiments. The top 20 most bizarre experiments in the world in 2007, mainly examining people and animals, include proving human nature and animal physiology. One of the weird experiments that really shocked me was the one-headed dog. The idea for this experiment comes from the history of human slaughter, which led some scientists to explore the practice of separating the head from the body. Specifically，a doctor from the Soviet Union, Sergei Brukhonenko, developed a primitive heart-lung machine he called an “autojector” and used it to successfully keep a severed dog’s head alive. (Boese, n.d.) The experiment proved that, to some extent, the head and the body could be separated. But whether a human head and body can be separated and survive has yet to be studied experimentally.
In addition to that, in 1963, Delgado did an experiment in which he implanted a chip in the brain of a bull that sent signals to the animal by pressing a remote control. In the bullring in Spain, the bull charged at Delgado, only to turn away not far from him, because of the chip in the bull’s brain. The chip can remotely manipulate different parts of the animal’s brain, and can also stimulate the animal to produce different states like anger. These proves, in a way, that strange research exists in science. Two of these experiments started with a weird point, and then they acted on animals and they came up with shocking results. To some extent, these scientific experiments prove the existence of strange research. Because the starting point of these strange experiments is to look for weird results.
There are also examples of studies of people. On the one hand, researchers have found that electricity stimulates pleasure and sexual desire in mice. The same applies to how people function. By inserting specific electrodes into the human brain to stimulate the diaphragm area in an attempt to generate sexual pleasure in gay men and increase the need for sexual desire in order to further shift gay men from being exclusively sexual to being heterosexual or bisexual. The study suggests that human sexual orientation can be changed through specific means. After reaching this conclusion, the researchers did not continue to scale up the experiment, choosing to respect the sexual orientation of humans themselves. On the other hand, study on the male and female psychology of sexual behavior also exists. There was a psychological study in 1978 that said: Will you sleep with me? The main purpose of the study was to investigate the differences between men’s and women’s attitudes towards sex. During the experiment, most women made excuses to refuse the request. But 75 percent of men are happy to enjoy it. Both experiments were related to human sexual behavior, and one was to see if electricity could change sexual orientation. Another study looked at how men and women view sexuality differently.It is worth affirming that people should respect different sexual orientations and ideas.❤️❤️
Last but not least, “Weird tales are sites of experiment, narrative laboratories in which alternative systems of knowledge and knowing can be imaginatively tested.” (Alder., Alder and Aboujieb., 2020) except for the scientific study of human sexuality and animals’ body. The existence of weird research is also shown by the content of physics, future, the secrets of the Universe and others. “The idea of energy lies behind the weird’s secular, anti-anthropocentric ontology—that the cosmos is powered by something beyond human ken and to which humans are irrelevant, and which might manifest in forms that can, at best, be only partially known on a normal sensory empirical level. ” (Alder., Alder and Aboujieb., 2020) This theory can be explained in several books, such as a Physical Invasion. Taking heat as a starting point, in this series of studies, heat is used as a weapon to fight off intruders, eventually reaching a point of equilibrium. This is also considered qualified thermodynamic optimism. So weird research exists, and it exists in different fields.
To sum up, weird research exists. It exists in science, physics, psychology, art, and other fields. Ross means “weird” in an entirely positive sense loosely tied to connotations, to indicate creative appropriation, wild deviation, mixing and matching. This also shows to some extent that weird research is composed of weird starting point and creative behavior. In the first two weeks of study, I seemed to start to understand what weird. was, but I didn’t quite understand what weird was. Maybe after I read all the books on weirdness and take all the classes, I will come up with my own understanding and cognition of weirdness. But there is no denying that weirdness is the source of many things and phenomena. These weird studies would have been more useful if most people focused on it.
Figure 1: A picture of the weird experiment that I presented on Miro in my group about the first sprint.
References
- [online] Available at: <https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/weird> [Accessed 30 September 2022].
Alder, E. (n.d.) Weird Fiction and Science at the Fin de Siècle. [Online]. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Boese, A., n.d. Elephants on acid and other bizarre experiments.
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