Scientific Experiments

Toilets spew invisible aerosol plumes with every flush. How do we know? The proof was captured by high-powered lasers.

By John Crimaldi

A drone with some petri dishes attached is making research much less stressful for whales and scientists alike.

By Jesslyn Shields

From Isaac Newton to Ivan Pavlov, scientists have developed and tested hypotheses through carefully crafted experiments for centuries. Here are three groundbreaking hypotheses and the predictions they tested.

By Mark Mancini

A startup in California is touting the anti-aging effects of transfusing teenagers' blood on older people.

By Diana Brown

We might not be able to reanimate a corpse, but Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' has influenced the research and ethics of scientists for 200 years.

By Jesslyn Shields

HowStuffWorks explains the secrets of static electricity.

Neanderthals distilled tar more than 100,000 years before modern humans created glue; archaeologists compared three potential ways this ancient tech was used.

By Jesslyn Shields

The Stanford Prison Experiment is one of the most well-known psychological studies, infamous for the participants' cruel behavior. But the whole story of the study is much more complex.

By Ed Grabianowski

According to a new study, whole-body vibration has muscle and bone health benefits for mice.

By Shelley Danzy

Around the world, in study after study, one color and one number always emerge as faves. Can you guess what they are?

By Karen Kirkpatrick

Critics worry that journals with lax standards are lowering the reliability of scientific literature — and exploiting the inexperience of young researchers.

By Patrick J. Kiger

Researchers have discovered a way to trigger and control a visual hallucination without drugs, illness or direct brain stimulation.

By Jesslyn Shields

After surveying thousands of published genetics papers, researchers found nearly one-fifth had errors caused by Microsoft Excel in their supplementary files. Uh-oh.

By Jonathan Strickland

Animal testing has a long, gruesome history, but it's also saved countless human lives.

By Oisin Curran

Science is forever uncovering the mysteries of our universe, but some questions remain elusive. What topics have us still scratching our heads?

By Nathan Chandler

Do people born on the 13th of a month have a lifetime of bad luck? Researchers examined whether an “unlucky” birthdate could impact employment, earnings and marriage.

By Laurie L. Dove

Some truly bizarre and troubling things have been done through the ages in the quest for scientific knowledge. The 10 experiments on this list all made humans into lab rats.

By Maria Trimarchi

From the looks of it, we don't have much in common with our mouse friends. But at a genetic level, we're closer than you might think. Close enough to make a difference in our health?

By Kate Kershner

Rats! They're just like family. Evolutionarily, anyway. So when it comes to research and biomedical study, what can they do for us?

By Kate Kershner

Since we're trying to figure out what makes Ted tick (or makes Ted's ticker stop ticking), why not cut out the middle mouse? It's complicated.

By Kate Kershner

About 86,000 rats and mice are used a year in research, while the twitchy-nosed guinea pig has only 1,300 mentions. But you can thank guinea pigs for ridding the world of scurvy pirates.

By Kate Kershner

Mice are small and reproduce quickly, but they're more than just an animal of convenient size and libido. Mice have some truly special genetic gifts that it doesn't take a scientist to appreciate.

By Kate Kershner

Scientists like rats a lot more than the general population. But when they need a good bunch of them to test some hypotheses, they don't lurk in alleyways or around trashcans with a burlap sack.

By Kate Kershner

Few would argue that lab rats lead an easy life. Add to it the assertion that they are prone to cancer just by being lab rats, and we've found a whole new level of depressing. But is it true?

By Kate Kershner

The human body has around 100 trillion cells. What can you learn from studying these tiny organisms that you can't learn from studying the entire person?

By Kate Kershner