Elephants on Acid

cool book. Lots of short stories, great for when you dont have time to sit for a whole chapter..

I think this book would be a great addition to the library of any science teacher or professor. Reading a story from the book could spark some lively discussion about the scientific method, scientific ethics, and the pursuit of knowledge. I think the reviewer who complained that this book promotes animal cruelty misses the point. The author isn't advocating the type of bizarre experiments he chronicles, he's merely reporting them. There are some experiments in here that are classics like Pavlov's experiment on conditioned response or the Milgram experiment on the psychology of obedience. There's also a part of the book about flatulence that I'm sure adolescent males will love.

I am not really much of a reader, but couldn't put this one down. Each experiment differed from the last and kept your attention the whole time. Recommend this to anyone interested in the weird and extreme, or just with a geek side in them.

What the author has accomplished here is a very readable and fascinating book about scientists and the bizarre experiments they envisioned. It is not a scientific publishing, mired with technical details, but a great read about how calculating minds attempt to understand and influence the world around us, and how wrong those minds can be occasionally. Caveat: there are some very graphic images of animals being harmed for the sake of science. Despite how you feel about this, it is important to remember that the author did not conduct these experiments, he is merely reporting on them. This book is still packed full of information and humor (I utterly howled about the scientist who was recording facial expressions of people who were forced to decapitate a live rat- and then failed to see the more important issue of people killing on command!). Highly recommended and doctors in particular seem to be really taken with this book.

This book is fantastic. You can get a good sense of whether or not you will enjoy this book by taking a look at the top 20 most bizarre experiments page on the museum of hoaxes website.[...] The book is a strangely compelling compendium of the unusual things that scientists have dedicated their life to exploring. The author really brings the strange cast of characters to life and helps you understand not only the facts of these strange cases, but also the context of what the scientists were hoping to accomplish by determining if they could create human/ape hybrids, or keep a dog head alive by attaching it to a living dog's circulatory system. A word of warning: some of the experiments are not for the faint of heart.