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Sally Impossible: What could possibly be more important than your son? Richard Impossible: Sssssssscience?
Battle Cry for the Mad Scientist, the Morally Ambiguous Doctorate, and even good aligned Gadgeteer Genius and Science Hero. This is one of the classic motivations for many a Science Is Bad movie, the researcher will seek knowledge for its own sake rather than to better the world; usually this simple curiosity will evolve into " ambition" and " hubris" before long, as caution and restraint are thrown out the steel-barred window. Or used as raw materials.
When a scientist says he does something For Science!, what this usually means is they simply don't care about the answers to several important questions regarding their research, like:
- How will I fund my research, and how can I make money off of it? (What? These are legitimate questions!)
- Does it have any potential applications — that are not immediately lethal, full of side effects, potentially genocidal or ecocidal?
- Is there any way of gaining any replicable data or results?
- Where will I get
willing test subjects?
- Are these experiments ethical?
- Will it rise up against humanity and/or eat me?
Usually, this nonchalance leads to Reed Richards Is Useless as they file away their inventions under " Forgotten Phlebotinum" rather than seek to commercialize them or expanding the body of knowledge available to humanity. And that's with normal research. Contrary to Fridge Logic, For Science rarely provides additional insight in its field; after the Nuclear Roboclone is created, most Mad Scientists lose interest in documenting how they actually did it and what else can be done with those methods. Where test subjects are concerned, at their most benign they'll only threaten to do minor experiments on friends; if they get volunteers or luckily capture one, the effects will be quirky and temporary rather than deforming Biological Mashups.
These benign inventors may end up in service of the Corrupt Corporate Executive, and will be so happy to have funding they don't ask where the money comes from — or what their discoveries are being used for. Expect them to go "you promised you would use my discoveries for good!" to his "Oh, but I am!"
It can also lead to Jumping Off The Slippery Slope as an inventor slips into full blown, cackling mad science as sanity and ethics are deemed "irrelevant" or hindrances to their work. Other times, the answers they come up with to the above questions will lead them to a life of supervillainy as they get research funds by robbing banks, get test subjects by kidnapping, and out-and-out make things solely for destructive purposes... or because they can.
There is some truth to this — many scientists and especially mathematicians do what they do for the fun of it rather than more practical concerns — but that's little different from the rest of academia.
There is also some significant falsehood to this in that basic research, research done with no application in mind, is what actually advances science and makes the world a better place. The applied science may as well be done by an engineer. In addition scientists usually have a pretty good idea what will take place and are only seeking to test it.
Remember, Science Is Bad, but... but... Just Think Of The Potential! Contrast For The Liberal Arts!
Examples
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Anime & Manga
Comics
- An issue of the Postboot Legion Of Super Heroes features a group of (faux-)suicide-bombing space scientists, the Objective Order, on a rampage against mystical forces, "For science!!" (Yeah, they quote the trope name.)
- In X Men 41, there's a scientist who invents a nuclear-powered machine that both creates earthquakes and irradiates the ground. His colleagues think he's nuts for inventing such a dangerous weapon, but he assures them it will only be used for the benefit of mankind.
- In one Dilbert comic, Dilbert invents a quantum computer capable of interacting with matter in a parallel universe to solve complex equations. Dogbert points out that according to Chaos Theory, the shifts he causes could very well destroy the other universe. Dilbert's response? "Shift happens." (And Dogbert adds "Fire it up.")
Fan Works
Film
- In Bats, Obviously Evil Mad Scientist Dr. McCabe initially justifies creating the titular (killer and super-intelligent) bats with the words "I'm a scientist. That's what we do. Make everything a little bit better." It's later hinted that it was a secret government project, but still you have to wonder why the protagonists accepted that justification so well...
- So Bad Its Good MST3K classic The Beast of Yucca Flats involves Tor Johnson killing people in the name of "progress". Exactly what kind of progress you get from strangling people and not looking at the camera is never made clear, but nobody ever accused The Beast of Yucca Flats of being a good movie.
"Joe Dobson. Caught in the wheels of progress."
- As I understood it, the murders are linked to "Progress" because the Beast was created by an atom bomb explosion. It makes more sense with Godzilla, I guess.
- Danger!! Death Ray (Spoofed by Mystery Science Theater 3000) featured the inventor of the titular Death Ray insisting that he'd built it only for peaceful purposes. It's a death ray. What sort of "peaceful purposes" you could find for a device which has absolutely no use other than blowing stuff up is left as an exercise to the reader.
- Day of the Dead has Doctor Logan, who becomes so obsessed with teaching the zombies good manners, he kills the soldiers guarding them to gather food with which to use positive reinforcement training on the zombies.
- Subverted with Dr. Serizawa in the original Godzilla. He states that his discovery of how to create the "oxygen destroyer" was purely for research and believes it can be used to benefit humanity... but ONLY if it's used for something other than a weapon, since he fears that exposing his discoveries to the world may lead to another war. It's a subversion because he eventually does use his scientific discoveries for the good of mankind by using the Oxygen Destroyer to kill Godzilla.
- This quote from Jurassic Park's Ian Malcolm, a paraphrase from a much longer diatribe from the original novel, sums it up quite well:
"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."
- Somewhat ironic considering that the problems created by bringing back the dinosaurs had everything to do with their use as an economic commodity and very little to do with the science. Also, the book has one of the scientists go out of his way to try and convince Hammond to make the dinosaurs slower and less dangerous for practical reasons, but that's not exciting enough for a park.
- To be fair Hammond doesn't go on about excitement so much as accuracy and authenticity, which the scientist argues they can't find anyways, but they can give people what they expect which, at the time, would have been slower, bulkier, dinosaurs.
- The Three Stooges short "We want our Mummy" has the trio as detectives hunting for a missing archeologist and the lost Tomb of King Rutentuten, and will be paid $5,000 dollars for their commitment to science.
Moe: For Science!
Larry: For Science!
Curly: For 5,000 Bucks!
- The director of The Truman Show does a lot of ethically questionable stuff FOR ART! (Whereas the rest of the production crew is more interested in good ratings.)
Literature
- Greg Egan's novel Schild's Ladder. The freak lab accident that gives birth to a ''galaxy''-shattering kaboom occurs because the scientist wanted to test an obscure physics theory. This being Greg Egan, it's completely subverted by making the resulting Negative Space Wedgie a good thing.
- Tanya Huff's novel Blood Pact has a villainous Department head (female) who is testing bacterian reanimation of corpses (to rebuild organs) and to get a subject for her experiments murders Vicki Nelson's mother and takes the body away. She is assisted by a genuine Mad Scientist for whom the death of the other assistant means only a disturbance in the data.
- Discworld's Leonard of Quirm, although he does in fact care whether people use his inventions for evil. He's just horribly, appallingly naive about human nature, declaring that an effective nuclear bomb would have no military application, though it might be useful in the mining industry. When he learned that people would immediately try to weaponize his
submarine Going-Under-The-Water-Safely Device he sank it.
- Dr. Qwi Xux in the Star Wars Expanded Universe embodies this trope: she's the genius scientist behind the Death Star, the Sun Crusher, and the World Devastators... but she has no idea that they're weapons, and simply takes joy at the creation of works of scientific genius. This is lampshaded when Han points out that the names probably should have been a clue.
- Qwi did actually have peaceful uses for her inventions in mind: the Death Star could be used on uninhabited planets and thus their ores mined much more easily, inexpensively, and safely, the Sun Crusher could be used for planned detonations of unstable old stars that might otherwise supernova unexpectedly and be a hazard to navigation, and so on. She's still a bit flummoxed at trying to explain the names, with the best she can do being "Well, they were just code names!" It was less that she was just doing science for science's sake, and more that she was so in love with science and so massively naive that she didn't pick up on what she was actually doing.
- In fact it's also largely because she was taken, taught and brainwashed as a child to the point of being fairly broken psychologically - she's almost a sort of Cloud Cuckoolander-scientist.
- The Academy of Lagado, from Gullivers Travels, seems to mainly be staffed by hopeless incompetents regularly reciting this to themselves as justification for their nonsensical and meaningless experiments. There is no possible reason to breed naked sheep, but apparently, science demands that they make the effort.
Live Action TV
- Daedalus in Hercules The Legendary Journeys, somewhat embittered after Icarus' death, builds Bamboo Technology Humongous Mecha because he can, without wondering why his patron wants them. He learns better, and goes back to inventing peaceful things, like Silly Putty. (Really.)
- Used with massive amounts of Genre Savvy on Myth Busters, usually by Adam. "We're about to shoot an M-16 into a swimming pool! For Science!" One of their commercials even features Adam saying, "I'm going to jump into shark-infested waters For Science!"
- A promo for the MacGyver special has Adam claiming "This is for love, money, and science!"
- When the normally emotionless Jamie finally admits that the little marching robots he has built are "kinda cute", Adam agrees: "Cute... For SCIENCE!"
- Star Trek Voyager features an episode ("Scientific methods") where some aliens experiment on the crew... by randomly changing their genes. There are even lethal cases.
- They make B'Elanna and Paris horny too. I'd hate to think what that was in aid of...
- In the episode "Jetrel", Neelix encounters the scientist who developed the weapon of mass destruction that destroyed
Hiroshima his homeworld.
Jetrel: If I had not discovered the Cascade it would have been someone else, don't you see? It was a scientific inevitability, one discovery flowing naturally to the next. Something so enormous as science will not stop for something as small as man, Mister Neelix.
Neelix: So you did it for science.
Jetrel: For my planet, and yes, for science. To know whether or not it could be done. It's good to know how the world works. It is not possible to be a scientist unless you believe that all the knowledge of the universe and all the power it bestows is of intrinsic value to everyone and one must share that knowledge and allow it to be applied, and then be willing to live with the consequences.
- In Stargate Universe, Rush lives this trope to the core. He strands the cast on Destiny rather than lose the chance to get there. When power shuts down and they're all going to die, his primary complaint is that they've lost the opportunity of a lifetime to explore the universe.
- Almost every scientist on Eureka does this at some point or the other. Unattended consequences have almost destroyed the town/nation/universe on several occasions.
Music
Tabletop Games
- Gond the Wondermaker, the deity of invention in Dungeons & Dragons, is the one the Forgotten Realms have to thank for gunpowder, primitive firearms, grenades, and all the other joys of scientific progress. Somewhat unsurprisingly, most players choose to ignore the existence of his creations, if not the deity himself. Given alignment is True Neutral.
- Sort of a motto for the Sons of Ether in Mage: the Ascension, particularly for the ones branded Mad Scientists by their peers.
- The fan-made "expansion" Genius: The Transgression does more-or-less the same thing for Wo D 2.0, as the Sons of Ether apparently didn't fit into the Darker And Edgier version of the World of Darkness.
- Although the nWoD's Free Council has its moments, being a cross between the Sons of Ether and Virtual Adepts.
- The Adeptus Mechanicus of Warhammer 40000 has set loose more than one Eldritch Abomination in their pursuit of even a fragment of a Standard Template Construct. They have a particularly poor track record regarding Necrons — the minute they find a tomb full of the slumbering constructs, they inevitably start poking the things until they wake up.
- And if they aren't allowed to do this, they sulk.
- Jus to add promethium to the fire, they also caused an entire Space Marine chapter to go renegade by stealing its holiest relic for back-engineering and threatening them with orbital artillery in the hope of getting them to back down. And then yet another Eldritch Abomination turned up to take it off them before they were able to figure out how it worked.
Video Games
- In Apollo Justice Ace Attorney Wesley Stickler uses this as his justification for underwear theft, of all things.
- Said panties happen to be a part of one character's magic show.
- This is the motivation — or at least the excuse — of Caulder/Stolos from Advance Wars: Days of Ruin; indeed, until the last chapter it's his only real characteristic.
- Vernon Von Grun from City Of Villains.
- "Laugh with me! MHUA HA HA HA HA *COUGH* HAHA HA!"
- Then there is his mentor, Doctor Creed, and his boss, Doctor Aeon.
- His name is a pun on Wernher von Braun, see Real Life Examples.
- This is the raison d'être of Dr. Odine in Final Fantasy VIII, who doesn't care who he works for or what his inventions are used for as long as he gets to keep researching and inventing things. When he discovers that his research will eventually be developed into a working machine, which in turn is what's allowing the Big Bad to project her consciousness back in time and wage war in the present, his reaction is to be thrilled that his ideas will be put to use.
- In Impossible Creatures, "For science!" is one of Dr. Lucy Willing's unit acknowledgment quotes. She's more of a Wrench Wench than a mad scientist, but it does take most of the campaign to convince her that the Mix And Match Critters technology is too dangerous to exist.
- The Half Life mod Science & Industry added a suicide-bomb weapon in one update, and it didn't take long for the customary cry before detonating one to become "FOR SCIENCE!", giving it pseudoreligious overtones.
- To be clear, it's the security guards who do the suicide-exploding, rather than the scientists. Still, they would have to be pretty dedicated to science to happily die for their company, even if they do get cloned back to life.
- In Metal Gear Solid, Otacon wanted to design giant robots because it would be cool, basically. Why the US military wanted to make the robot capable of launching nuclear weapons untraceably is anyone's guess.
- The Last Days Of Foxhound gives the official and definitive answer to that question.
- There's some bit of Truth In Television to this, as various arms developers have indeed been experimenting with tanks with legs, on the principle that they can move on certain terrains other heavy vehicles can't, often leave less impact on said terrain (and thus would be harder to trace), and can be positioned for firing more easily. Having your nuclear option small, mobile, and relatively unrestricted by terrain is a pretty big tactical advantage.
- Aperture Science — "We do what we must because we can." (Most of their projects turn out to be comedic scientific overkill, such as creating a fuel system de-icer that is also an artificially intelligent supercomputer and inventing a device that bends the laws of space-time for "potential shower curtain applications.") The founder of Aperture Science was pretty much insane from mercury poisoning when he started the company.
- Black Mesa aren't exactly that different either. Pretty much everything that goes on there isn't so much for the benefit of mankind as a whole but for the sole purpose of tearing physics a new one. Give me one good reason why they gave their theoretical physicists fairly comprehensive firearms training if the result of their insane meddling was going to be naught but sunshine, puppies, and candy.
- This is the defining characteristic of the University of Planet in Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri. Upside: incredibly fast progress up the Tech Tree. Downside: unethical experiments inspire the lower classes into mob riots. They're portrayed as Neutral Neutral, though, considering there are even meaner people in Planet.
- The witch Deneb from Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen. She created the creatures that have later been re-used, one way or another in every other Ogre Battle game: the Pumpkin Head. Which is a man whose head has been replaced with a Jack-O-Lantern. By the time you get there she has stopped experimenting on humans and is apparently doing large-scale experiments on the lands around her castle instead. (With large areas on the map being purple instead of the normal brown for hills/mountains.) And the only reason given for why she did any of the things she did is that she was "researching some new magic" and "you know how important research is to Deneb". In short, she did it FOR
SCIENCE MAGIC!
- This is all the motivation Ratchet has for his little tinkerings, including, but not limmited to, electrified underwear — "thunderpants".
- If Fallout 3's resident Mad Scientist Dr. Lesko is attacked, he shouts a number of phrases like "science always triumphs!" and "I strike this blow for science!" while fighting.
- While she never actually comes out and says it, Moira Brown's motivation is basically For Science, never once losing her veneer of optimism while asking you to perform increasingly perilous tasks all for the sake of gathering information for her Wasteland Survival Guide.
- Timesplitters: Future Perfect has the Brotherhood of UltraScience which is dedicated specifically to science, with the only goal being the achievement of immortality, no matter how many zombie byproducts it takes. They succeed... sort of. The Big Bad is still not immune to bullets
- In Tales of Monkey Island: Launch of the Screaming Narwhal, when you are in the Marquis du Singe's lab. If you examine the Vole-Powered Generator, the doctor will explain that it is a machine that uses rodents to make lightning. Guybrush will then exclaim "Why would you do that?" to which du Singe naturally replies "Science!"
- The proclaimed motive of Lielich Pharmeceuticals in Ever17. Except it's really just For Money! and For Immortality!
- Change the word science to magic and you have the motives of essentially every (non main character) magus in the Nasuverse. It's rather telling that the policy of the Magic Association isn't 'Don't kill masses of people For Science!' but 'Don't get caught killing masses of people For Science!'
- Like Caulder above, this is the only excuse Izuka (from Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn) has for brainwashing countless Laguz into a blood-thirsty rage and trapping them in their Beast forms. This is also why he performs the same experiment on Duke Renning, Elincia's uncle, creating the psychotic Bertram in the process.
- The game Dwarf Fortress is still in development, and is already incredibly complex, with all its ins and outs being far from fully documented. Because of this, members of the online fan community regularly share their discoveries of new idiosyncrasies and/or awesome things you can do in-game. For example, there is an ongoing effort to find a way to sink a capsule full of dwarves to the bottom of an ocean without crushing or drowning them; no success yet. Anytime a person posts on the forums asking if something is possible, and that thing has not been tried yet, the poster is implored to try the thing out "FOR SCIENCE!" and report the results.
Machinima
Web Comics
- Any and every spark in Girl Genius will have at least some amount of "For Science!" in the nature. While their morality will vary all over the spectrum, this is a unifying characteristic; it even helped hook up one of the Heterodyne boys with the Mad Scientist's Beautiful Mad Scientist Daughter.
"Don't tell me you fear the experiment?"
"I fear the result - but the experiment, why, that is Science!"
"For Science, then!"
"For SCIENCE!"
- A flashback in Dresden Codak demonstrates Kimiko's Gadgeteer Genius potential:
Young Kimiko: I must find a thing called "biscuits".... I will do science to it.
- This strip from The Inexplicable Adventures Of Bob, guest-starring Washu Chan, Oliver Wendell Jones, and Dr. Thaddeus Bodog Sivana.
- Irregular Webcomic sends up Myth Busters For Science tendencies on a fairly regular basis. Examples here and with "for science" used literally here, here, replete with a footnote reference to this very page and here, with the same link. But one has to keep in mind that Nazi science is one step further and Nazi science sneers at TV Tropes.
- Mezzacotta also features many scientists, such as here.
- Skewered expertly-or something-in Real Life Comics, when Tony tries to help Greg move.
- Riff in Sluggy Freelance, is a mad scientist with awesome inventions who still lives with roommates in on-again off-again lower middle class poverty, all from not being able to make inventions that aren't destructive or useful in day to day life. This is parodied in the strip to the point his "Nice Earth" counterpart has won the Nobel Prize for focusing his inventions on peaceful and productive uses. Of course, why he doesn't sell any of his various ray gun designs to the army...
- This strip from VG Cats. If you like Winnie The Pooh, don't read it.
- The Elegant Nova of Progession of Keychain of Creation is the embodiment of this trope. She preformed experiments in a high-fantasy world to make cyborgs, developed a way to SCIENCE!!! herself into a giant cat; and owns a Friction Beam. Her catch phrase is "Science!"
- A related battle cry from xkcd: "Stand back! I'm going to try Science!"
- Another example from xkcd in this strip.
- The Cyantian Chronicles: (And For Art!) Why else would Genoworks Exotica genetically engineer people like winged kangaroos, potpourri skunk people and psychic raccoons.
- Aside from the page image, this strip has "The F*** Not" as the science's answer to "Why?" (In this case, Why bears with jet packs?)
Web Original
- Dr. Insano uses "With SCIENCE, of course!" as his Catch Phrase, and tends to lean towards the destructive side of scientific research if his orbital death ray and his taking control of Neutro are any indication. Some of his inventions, however, such as the raritanium-powered anti-magic field generator, might have peaceful applications. Not that he acknowledges this, as he's quite open about wishing to use them for death, destruction and world conquest.
- Homestar seems to think that "saying something smart" involves dressing in a lab coat, holding up a beaker, and shouting, "Science! Science again! I said science again!"
Western Animation
- On The Venture Brothers, Professor Richard Impossible conducted an experiment that blew up in his face. It granted him incredible stretching powers, but left his family with painful and hideous mutations. Not only is he completely unsympathetic of their plight, but he treats them like prisoners most of the time. Impossible is a thinly-veiled parody of The Fantastic Four's Reed Richards, who has slipped into this trope from Reed Richards Is Useless more than once (most recently during Civil War).
- Doctor Venture himself does highly unethical science either for profit, or just because he can. One season two episode shows his to do list includes such things as "Spit in God's face". The page pic itself is from the pilot episode, where he believes the "Ooh-Ray" has nothing but peaceful applications, much like Tesla's "Peace Ray" (you should he keep in mind his character was different in the pilot).
- Still, Rusty merely views science as a way of profit (even if his few non-derivative inventions tend to be Moral Event Horizons), while Dr. Impossible falls directly in this trope.
- Lampshaded in an episode of Danny Phantom, when Danny asked his dad how much he would get paid for helping out in the lab. "I pay you to mow the lawn. This you'll do for the love of science!"
- Self-proclaimed Evil Genius Jumba Jookiba from Lilo And Stitch seems to have created his genetic experiments just for the heck of it. Although he delights in describing the evil applications of his creations, he seems to have no grand plans for them. In the original movie, he notes that he never gave Experiment 626 (Stitch) a higher purpose.
- In Disney's Gargoyles, there may have been commercial applications for the Gargoyle genome, the procedure to create Mutates, or cloning, but Dr. Anton Sevarius only seemed interested in research and experimentation for its own sake.
- In the pilot episode of Time Squad, the titular squad has to deal with a horde of flesh eating robots created by Eli Whitney (seriously). When Otto asks Whitney why he did this, he replies "I wanted to do something to help mankind". How rampaging flesh eating robots could accomplish that is a question not even Whitney himself could answer...
- What a fine day... FOR SCIENCE!
- An episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has an unknown villain break into a lab and steal genetically-engineered termites that also eat metal, concrete, and plastic. When April interviews the scientist who made them, she asks just what purpose the termites were supposed to serve besides the obvious destruction, and gets a blank look in response.
- This seems to be the motivation behind half of Professor Frink's inventions in The Simpsons.
Grampa Simpson: What the hell is that?
Professor Frink: Why, it's a death ray my good man, behold.
Grampa: Hey, feels warm, kinda nice.
Frink: Well it's just a prototype, with proper funding I'm confident this little baby could destroy an area the size of New York City.
Grampa: But I want to help people, not kill them!
Frink: Oh, well to be honest, the ray only has evil applications. You know my wife will be happy, she's hated this whole "death ray" thing from day one.
- Frylock falls into this trope on occasion — the toilet that ripped off all Carl's skin springs to mind.
- South Park did this with a two-parter in which Cartman goes into the future where all religion is gone and atheism has split into three militant factions, which are now enemies. Said world worships science as a deity and claims they're at war for science.
- Similar to the Venture Bros., An ''altered'' Reed Richards also occurred in the "Heroes" episode of Batman Beyond. It's his resemblance to J.R. "Bob" Dobbs."
- Professor Membrane from Invader Zim. Everything he does is either for this or for the cause of destroying Santa Claus.
Membrane: (to his daughter) Sorry about imprisoning you and turning you into a media freak, honey. It was in the name of SCIENCE!
Real Life
- Inventor Nikola Tesla claimed to have invented an energy weapon for "peaceful purposes", predating the concept of "Mutually Assured Destruction" by decades. Tesla, however, had at least the sense to market the thing not as a "death" ray but as a "peace ray". But then, Tesla was insane.
- Alfred Nobel originally invented dynamite so that it would be safer to handle and for construction purposes such as blowing out tunnels and clearing debris. However, once people started figuring out how to use it as a weapon, Nobel created the Nobel Prizes out of regret. He also turned the Bofors company from mainly producing iron to making cannons and chemicals for firing them.
- Paraphrasing from badly remembered, possibly apocryphal, sources: When JFK was asked why America was going to the Moon, he answered "Why not".
- "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."
- Wernher von Braun, the scientist who worked on JFK's Apollo project had in the past made the V2 missile for the Nazis. Why? For Rocketry!
- One of the most horrifying examples in real life of this is Josef Mengele, the infamous Nazi scientist who performed "experiments" at Auschwitz, and had a particular fascination with twins and other "abnormals", who he researched in order to find scientific proof of racial inferiority. He was known to perform amputations and major surgeries without anesthesia, and once sewed two twins together to make artificial Siamese twins. Said one prisoner of him, "Nobody ever questioned him — why did this one die? Why did that one perish? The patients did not count. He professed to do what he did in the name of science, but it was a madness on his part."
- Tragically, this actually has genuine relevance today: the Nazis- however crackerbox insane they were- were quite fanatical and excellent at recording their research and data, and were renowned for their accurate detailing of the human body (indeed, it is a tragic fact that there are a few survivors who escaped and later studied at places that either choose to or had to use them- say, for budget reasons- who learned that a friend/family member died by finding their picture in their textbooks. NOT a nice way to find out). To this date, there is considerable amounts of ethical issues over using such research materials compiled from the victims of genocide and particularly over using the ex-Axis data in their studies.
- Japan's Unit 731 did similar experiments on the Chinese
- For the time being, the experiments using the Large Hadron Collider will mostly be for satisfying scientific curiosity (namely searching for the hypothetical Higgs boson). Whether any practical use can be made from such a discovery (which would provide insight to the quantum nature of mass) remains to be seen. There are also those who claim that the experiments are unethical, due to the potential for creating miniature black holes which could destroy the planet, but these fears are mostly groundless (REALLY!).
- It's not as impractical as one would think. The boson is what scientists think creates mass. If we find that it exists, we can start tinkering with it. For what applications this can be used for, see every technology from interstellar space travel to telekinesis to nearly Bottomless Magazines in Mass Effect.
- The idea that a miniature black hole could destroy the world is quite absurd, really — the whole reason why the black holes are so dangerous is that they are supermassive. That is, that they have at least the mass of one star collapsed in a superdense package. The entire mass of Earth couldn't produce a black hole worth mention (about the size of a marble); unless the science manages to get the mass of a star out of nothing (and the most fundamental law of science is that it's impossible to create anything out of nothing; mass can be neither created nor destroyed), the idea of planet-destroying black hole coming out of nowhere is quite ludicrous. Black hole isn't a cosmic vacuum cleaner — the only thing that "sucks" is the enormous gravity, impossible to produce in Earth conditions.
- Micro-black holes are small enough to glide between atoms without hitting any of them. The whole matter about black hole's "suck" factor is gravity — these things don't have enough gravity or size to pull in a single atom. No respectable scientist in the field of physics has made complaints about the safety of the LHC, mainly because the phenomenons which it produces constantly happen naturally in the universe, and there hasn't been a single hint to black holes being born spontaneously without a supermassive collapsing star to provide the mass.
- Crashing subatomic particles into each other at relativistic speeds is the collider's job. The sun has been shooting subatomic particles into the particles of the upper atmosphere at relativistic speeds since there has been an Earth. If it was going to create a black hole that destroyed us all, it would have happened long before we ever evolved to worry about it.
- A lot of theoretical research tend to suit this trope, at least at first. When one asks why special relativity was useful in 1905, or Democritus' concept of atomism in classical Greece, one finds that the greatest practical results came decades or even centuries later. A particular meta-example would be Bacon, whose most noted practical accomplishment was how to create practical accomplishments in research. Or immortality.
- There is no such thing as good knowledge or bad knowledge. There is only knowledge. Morality is when you decide not to use it. — anonymous
- Cracked's list of 7 Kickass Sci-Fi Cancer Cures starts with drilling holes in a man's head and firing fiber-optic anti-tumor lasers into his brain. While he's *conscious*.
- All brain surgery that is any way feasible to do so is done while the patient is conscious. That's the best way to make sure that nothing goes wrong — no-one knows it better than the patient himself. Once you get past the fleshy bits on the outside of the skull, theres nothing that registers pain within the brain.
- And then there's the The 5 Scientific Experiments Most Likely to End the World, which featured the Large Hadron Collider mentioned above multiple times. All done for the sake of science, of course.
- Also "6 Most Badass Stunts Ever Pulled In The Name Of Science"
- There was a concern that the first A-Bomb tests would trigger nitrogen fusion and ignite the entire atmosphere, wiping out all life on Earth. Teller first brought it up. "In Serber's account, Oppenheimer mentioned it to Arthur Compton, who 'didn't have enough sense to shut up about it. It somehow got into a document that went to Washington' which led to the question being 'never laid to rest'." By the time the test was done, this outcome seemed vanishingly unlikely (nitrogen does not fuse easily). Further discussion here.
Besides, the big worry was that if the Allies didn't get nuclear fission working soon then the Germans would beat them to it. Given the chance between our blowing up the world and the enemy blowing up the world, it was obvious what to do.
That is, on reflection, not a happy sentence.
- One of the pioneers of head transplants, Robert J. White, appears to have fit this mold perfectly. Even a completely successful transplant would leave someone as a head grotesquely stitched onto someone else's shoulder, with no motor control, severely limiting its practical use.
- Certainly the case when it was pioneered - but nerve grafts are starting to take place with people recovering at least partial motor control of reattached and transplanted limbs.
- Pseudo-real-life example: A bunch of scientists held a conference in World Of Warcraft. Naturally, their battlecry was "For Science!"
- Parodied in this Onion News clip.
- Lasers. Between the laying of the theoretical groundwork after World War One and the first practical uses in the mid to late sixties, lasers were described as "a brilliant solution awaiting a problem". Everyone agreed that stimulated emission of coherent light was fascinating and clever, but no-one had much of an idea of what to do with it in practical terms.
- The Kola Superdeep Borehole, northern Russia. The Soviet government wanted to know what was beneath the surface of the Earth. So they dug a really big hole...
- Carl Sagan harshly criticized Edward Teller for his relentless push to develop the hydrogen bomb. While nuclear fission bombs, such as the ones dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are certainly nothing to be taken lightly, the whole "destroy all life on Earth N times over" model of the modern nuclear arsenal would not have been possible without the hydrogen bomb.
- Nerve.com has a I did it for Science regular section. Somewhat NSFW, of course.
- Having sex in a MRI scanner, for science!
- International Space Station mostly "for world co-operation!" with a bit of "for science!" on the side.
- Parodied by many message board users, who will request various pictures of scantily-clad women "for homework" or "for research".
- The experiment/s listed here. Article title? The Radioactive Boy Scout. Note that the Disclaimer similarly shares a For SCIENCE! worldview (emphasis mine):
"If enough people try these dangerous experiments, the government will try to outlaw any sort of legitimate private experiments with radioactivity or possession of any radioactive minerals or materials (thus spoiling all of our fun)."
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