experiment gone wrong story

14 Experiments Gone Wrong

From psychological studies that would never pass ethical muster in the present day to disastrous new product launches, here are some experiments gone horrifically wrong, adapted from an episode of The List Show on YouTube.

1. Winthrop Kellogg's Ape Experiment

In the early 1930s, comparative psychologist Winthrop Kellogg and his wife welcomed a healthy baby boy they named Donald. The psychologist had grown interested in those stories of children who were raised feral—but he didn’t send Donald to be raised by wolves. He did the opposite: He managed to get his hands on a similar-aged baby chimp named Gua and raised her alongside Donald.

Gua initially did better than Donald in tests that included things like memory, scribbling, strength, dexterity, reflexes, problem-solving, climbing, language comprehension, and more. But she eventually plateaued, and it became evident that no amount of equal treatment was going to make her behave more like a human (for example, she was never going to be able to speak English).

But when the Kelloggs ended the experiment, they did so abruptly and without much explanation, which is contrary to the meticulous records they otherwise took throughout the course of the study. While Gua wasn’t showing any signs of picking up English, Donald had started to imitate the vocalizations of his sister from another species—so it’s not hard to speculate why the Kelloggs called it quits.

2. The Stanford Prison Experiment

You may have heard about the Stanford Prison Experiment, a social psychology study gone awry in 1971. The point of the experiment, which was funded by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, was to measure the effect of role-playing and social expectations. Lead researcher Philip Zimbardo had predicted that situations and circumstances dictate how a person acts, not their personalities.

To start, 24 young men were assigned the roles of prison guard or prison inmate, with some held back as alternates. Each was paid $15 per day for his participation in the study, which was supposed to last two weeks. The prisoners were “arrested,” taken to a fake prison in the basement of a school building, then made to wear a dress-like prison uniform with chains around their right ankle.

By the second day, the faux prisoners had revolted. Over the next few days, some of the prisoners were so traumatized that they were pulled out. The experiment was disbanded on day six, after an outside observer witnessed the upsetting events taking place and sounded the alarm.

Many modern-day researchers don’t believe the experiment can be replicated because it doesn’t meet today’s research ethics standards—namely, informed consent. After all, it’s hard to give fully informed consent when there’s no way to predict how events could unfold. Beyond that, some psychologists doubt the core findings of the experiment and claim that the cruelty didn’t emerge organically, but was instead influenced by Zimbardo nudging the experiment in that direction. Zimbardo, however, has defended his results and stated that these criticisms are misrepresenting his study and the experiences of the people in it.

3. Franz Reichelt's Aviator Suit

If there's anything to be said for Franz Reichelt, it's that he had supreme confidence in his own invention. In the early 1900s, Reichelt crafted a parachute from 320 square feet of fabric, all of which folded up into a wearable aviator suit . He had conducted several parachute tests using dummies, which all failed. He pinned the blame on the buildings, saying that they simply weren’t tall enough.

In 1912, Reichelt planned to test his latest version by flinging a dummy from the Eiffel Tower. But when he arrived at the famous landmark, the inventor surprised the waiting crowd by strapping on the parachute suit himself and taking the leap. The parachute didn’t open, however, and Reichelt became a victim of his own invention. (An autopsy reportedly determined that he died of a heart attack on the way down.)

4. McDonald's Bubblegum-Flavored Broccoli

In 2014, McDonald's concluded that they needed to offer more nutritious options for children—which led one mad scientist in Ronald’s test kitchen to come up with bubble gum-flavored broccoli. Luckily for all of us, this horrifying experiment never made it to a Happy Meal near you.

5. William Perkin's Mauve-lous Mistake

In 1856, chemist William Perkin   was experimenting with ways to manufacture a synthetic version of quinine, a tonic water ingredient that also happens to treat malaria. At the time, dyes were only made from things like plant material and insects—but when Perkin was mixing up his latest quinine concoction, he accidentally produced an oily sludge that left a lovely shade of light purple residue. He had unwittingly discovered a way to produce mauve. The color was a smash hit, especially after Queen Victoria donned it for her daughter’s 1858 wedding. 

6. The Michelson-Morley Experiment

Another happy failure is the Michelson-Morley Experiment. The experiment was supposed to detect ether , a substance that carried light waves, according to some scientists. The working theory at the time, in the late 1800s, was that ether was motionless, so the motion of Earth through space would alter the speed of light depending on what direction you were facing.

This was popularly known as “ether wind.” To test the ether wind theory, scientist Albert Michelson invented a device that could theoretically measure changes to the speed of light, thus detecting the supposed ether wind. The device was perfectly accurate, but it didn’t detect any changes in the speed of light. What Michelson and his collaborator Edward Morley discovered—or rather, didn’t discover—eventually led to Einstein’s theory of special relativity, and the realization that the speed of light is a universal constant, and there is no absolute space or absolute time.

7. The Cleveland Indians' 10-Cent Beer Night

In 1974, the Cleveland Indians tinkered with a new promotion to increase game attendance—giving fans the opportunity to purchase an unlimited amount of beer for 10 cents a cup , which wasn't the best idea. The game against the Texas Rangers was an eventful one: memorable events of the evening included a woman running into the Indians’ on-deck circle and flashing the umpire; a naked fan running onto the field and sliding into second base; and a father and son who ran onto the outfield and mooned the bleacher section.

Things took a violent turn when fans launched fireworks into the Rangers’ dugout, and the whole thing eventually turned into an all-out riot, fans against players on both teams. Players were hit with folding chairs, there were numerous fist fights, and some players were injured when they were pelted with rocks. After that, the Cleveland Indians kept 10 cent beer nights, but limited the promotion to two drinks per person.

8. Stubbins Ffirth's Yellow Fever Experiment

Stubbins Ffirth was a medical student who believed that yellow fever wasn’t contagious. To prove it, he tried some awful experiments on himself at the turn of the 19th century.

Ffirth cooked vomit from yellow fever patients on his stove and breathed in the vapors. He dropped the vomit into his eye, into an incision he had made in his left arm, and put drops of a patient’s blood serum into his left leg. Eventually, he was basically drinking shots of black vomit—straight. (He described the taste as “Very slightly acid.”)

How did he Ffirth manage to ingest all of this without falling ill? Well, we now know that Yellow Fever is spread by mosquitoes. So maybe Ffirth was vindicated? Is this just a disgusting experiment gone right ?

Not exactly. We also know now that yellow fever can be spread from human to human through direct bloodstream contact, and Ffirth was deliberately introducing samples to his bloodstream. So how’d he avoid contracting the virus? It’s been proposed that he may have had an immunity from an unrecorded bout of yellow fever earlier in life. Or maybe he just got extremely lucky and the samples he used were virus-free. Either way, if you’re chugging vomit and cutting open your arm to introduce a potentially lethal virus, it’s fair to say that something has gone wrong.

9. Biosphere 2

In the early ‘90s, eight scientists sealed themselves into a 3.14-acre structure in Arizona. The highly-publicized, $200-million experiment was known as Biosphere 2, and according to one of the scientists involved, its goals included “education, eco-technology development and learning how well our eco-laboratory worked.” But the scientists ran into a number of problems that required outside interference in order to continue the experiment, including a lack of sunlight that affected crops, a cockroach infestation, an injured crew member who had to temporarily leave for treatment, and insufficient oxygen.

In recent years, however, the success of Biosphere 2 has been re-evaluated , with some scientists believing that the base message—that humans can live in harmony with our biosphere—was a win in and of itself. And even if the vast investment was viewed as a mistake, the underlying idea remains solid: Similar experiments have been recently conducted to see if we can sustain human life on Mars.

10. The New Ball

Although basketball was originally played with soccer balls, a leather ball has been used since Spalding began manufacturing sport-specific balls in 1894. The basketball has been tweaked here and there over the years, but the modifications apparently went too far when the NBA experimented with a microfiber ball in 2006. “The New Ball,” as it was commonly known, was cheaper to make and was supposed to have the feel of a broken-in basketball right from the start.

Sounds good in theory, but players absolutely hated it. Shaquille O’Neal, LeBron James, and Dirk Nowitzki complained about the ball to the press. One issue was that the ball apparently became much more slippery than a traditional leather ball when it was wet, which happened frequently when sweaty basketball players were constantly handling it. Some players even reported that their hands were getting cut due to the increased friction of the microfiber surface.

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban also commissioned a study from the physics department at the University of Texas at Austin, which found that the ball bounced 5 to 8 percent lower than a traditional leather ball and bounced up to 30 percent more erratically. Feeling deflated, the NBA officially announced they were pulling the ball from play on December 11, 2006—less than three months after its debut in a game.

11. Henry A. Murray's Psychological Experiments

It’s probably safe to say that an experiment falls into the “gone wrong” category when it may have been responsible for producing the Unabomber. As an undergrad at Harvard in the late 1950s and early '60s, Ted Kaczynski participated in a three-year-long study run by Henry A. Murray that explored the effects of stress on the human psyche. After being asked to submit an essay about their worldview and personal philosophies, Kaczynski and 21 other students were interrogated under bright lights, wired to electrodes, and completely torn down for their beliefs. The techniques were intended to “break” enemy agents during the Cold War—and the students were never completely informed about the nature of the study. In short, the man who would eventually kill three people and injure over 20 more with his homemade bombs was subjected to repeated psychological torture.

Kaczynski later described this as the worst experience of his life; still, we can’t assume the study was solely responsible for sending him down the destructive and murderous path he eventually followed. But at the very least, the study is now considered highly unethical and likely wouldn’t pass current ethics standards for research.

12. Wilhelm Reich's Cloudbusters

Psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich managed to draw a straight line from human orgasms to the weather to alien invasion. Influenced by Sigmund Freud ’s work on the human libido, Reich extended the concept to propose a kind of widespread energy he called orgone. To give you an idea of how scientifically sound Reich’s concept was, orgone has been compared to the Force in Star Wars . This energy was supposedly responsible for everything from the weather to why the sky is blue. Reich believed orgasms were a discharge of orgone, and that through the manipulation of this energy you could treat neuroses and even cancer.

As bizarre as this all sounds, Reich went even further in the late 1950s, when he became convinced that aliens were spraying the earth with a specific type of radiation to prevent us from using this powerful energy. In order to save the world, he and his son built Cloudbusters, a row of tubes attached to hoses immersed in water and aimed at the sky. The water, they believed, would absorb the radiation.

Did the experiment work? We don’t know for sure, but the FDA didn’t think so. They ordered Reich's various machines and apparatus destroyed, and had him jailed for trying to smuggle them out of state.

13. Duncan MacDougall's Soul Experiments

In 1901, Duncan MacDougall conducted experiments on extremely recently deceased people—and dogs—to see if their body weight changed immediately after death. A decrease in weight, he theorized, would be indicative of a physical soul leaving the body. To test this theory, he weighed six people before and after their deaths, and concluded that there was a weight difference anywhere from half to one and a half ounces (somewhere between one and three compact discs). He repeated the experiment on dogs and found no difference—and therefore, by MacDougall’s reasoning, dogs have no souls.

Other scientists have been critical of this experiment from day one, citing issues like small sample size and imprecise methods of measurement.

14. New Coke

April 23, 1985, was a day that will live in marketing infamy. And that’s how Coke describes the failed experiment that was New Coke . On that day, the Coca-Cola Company debuted a new version of their popular soft drink made from a new and supposedly improved formula. It was the first major change to the product in nearly a century, and it was one that was supported by overwhelmingly positive reviews in taste tests and focus groups.

But once New Coke actually hit the shelves, fans were absolutely outraged. While the taste tests accounted for the actual flavor of the new formula, it couldn’t account for the emotional ties consumers had to the brand history. Fans started hoarding “old” Coke, and complaints poured in to the tune of 1500 calls a day. CEO Roberto Goizueta even received a letter addressed to “Chief Dodo, The Coca-Cola Company.”

The message was received loud and clear. Coke announced the return of Old Coke in July, dubbing it Coca-Cola Classic—and they never experimented with the formula again. Or if they did, they kept it to themselves, and we’re none the wiser.

• 20 Most Unethical Experiments in Psychology

Humanity often pays a high price for progress and understanding — at least, that seems to be the case in many famous psychological experiments. Human experimentation is a very interesting topic in the world of human psychology. While some famous experiments in psychology have left test subjects temporarily distressed, others have left their participants with life-long psychological issues . In either case, it’s easy to ask the question: “What’s ethical when it comes to science?” Then there are the experiments that involve children, animals, and test subjects who are unaware they’re being experimented on. How far is too far, if the result means a better understanding of the human mind and behavior ? We think we’ve found 20 answers to that question with our list of the most unethical experiments in psychology .

Emma Eckstein

Electroshock Therapy on Children

Operation Midnight Climax

The Monster Study

Project MKUltra

The Aversion Project

Unnecessary Sexual Reassignment

Stanford Prison Experiment

Milgram Experiment

The Monkey Drug Trials

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Facial expressions experiment.

Little Albert

Bobo Doll Experiment

The Pit of Despair

The Bystander Effect

Learned Helplessness Experiment

Racism Among Elementary School Students

UCLA Schizophrenia Experiments

The Good Samaritan Experiment

Robbers Cave Experiment

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True Lab Accident Horror Stories 3

Do you have any tales to tell of lab experiments gone very wrong or lab accidents you have witnessed? What is the most dangerous thing you have ever seen someone do in a lab? Here’s your chance to tell the tale.

A Freshman in Regents Chem

Lab accident, stupid teacher, acid on arm, windows…, fire oops…, running late…, cocoa spill, round bottom flask goes boom, girl, watch what you doing, ld 50 hcn clinical chem hemo.reagent, sodium bash, ether bam…, i did a stupid thing, the blue liquid, label, label, label, hot glass looks just like cold glass, related posts, leave a reply cancel reply.

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3 thoughts on “ True Lab Accident Horror Stories ”

My mom was always telling the story or her High School Chemistry Class: She would say; the boys were making matches and the girls were making nail polish. Clean up started and there was a huge boom! But what caused it. 2 of the kids lost an eye and one lost his arm. The teacher tried for months to reproduce the accident and could never make it happen, not even close. His only theory was that some foreign substance was introduced, but what was it, The teacher tried all forms of combinations – but nothing. When I went to that school in the 60’s there was still some talk abut that unsolved accident from the 30’s. When I went there the room was typing education, no longer a lab.

carol never wore safety goggles… Now she doesn’t need them

A student burned his eye in a University of Utah lab. The U. knew about dangers beforehand, an audit finds, but didn’t take action.

The student was working on an experiment with sodium hydroxide — a solution that can melt a soda can in seconds and dissolve a chicken wing to the bone.

The chemical compound, known as lye, is perfect for research because it’s so corrosive. But that also makes it dangerous to handle. As the student carried a beaker across the lab at the University of Utah, some of it splashed and landed in his eye.

Covering his face with one hand, he ran around the room looking for an emergency eyewash. There wasn’t one. So he dodged down hallway after hallway in the science building. Thirty seconds later, he was able to flush his face with water. But his cornea had already been severely burned.

Two months before that July 2017 accident, the lab was inspected and found to have nine major deficiencies, including the missing eyewash, no chemical hygiene plan, no safety instructions, improper chemical labels and no spill kit. A year after, those issues were still not resolved.

In fact, they were not addressed until August 2018, after another student was burned on his legs and feet.

Those injuries — and a handful of others — are documented in a new state audit released Tuesday. The report condemns U. administrators and the school’s health and safety team for allowing a hazardous lab environment across all science departments.

Auditors said the U. has known about serious deficiencies for years. It hired a consultant in 2017 to review its research practices. But it never put into place the recommendations to reduce risks, such as requiring staff to wear protective lab coats and restricting the volume of caustic chemicals that students can use. Since then, similar accidents have repeated nearly every year.

And if the state’s flagship research institution continues to ignore the issues and delay fixes, the audit said, it’s at risk for much worse injuries, maybe deaths.

“Any given one of them could be very serious or unfortunate,” said Brian Dean, audit manager for the Office of the Utah Legislative Auditor General. “Ultimately, this system is broken. The department that is required to [oversee] this isn’t tracking the problems.”

The audit comes after a trio of high-profile tragedies at other research universities in the country; it was requested by state lawmakers who feared similar events could happen at the U. In 2008, a researcher at UCLA died after she spilled a chemical on her torso and the highly reactive liquid caught fire. In 2010, a graduate student at Texas Tech University lost three fingers from a chemical burn. In 2016, a lab assistant at the University of Hawaii had her arm amputated after an explosion.

In all three of those cases, like at the University of Utah, the schools knew about lab shortcomings beforehand and had failed to address them, the audit states.

Dean said the U. still has time to course-correct.

In a written response to the audit, U. President Ruth Watkins agreed with its findings. Ultimately, the report concludes that, as president since early 2018, she is responsible for ensuring the school’s labs are safe. She said the U. has started adding and replacing fume hoods and emergency washes in its labs.

“The findings of this audit are of such importance," she noted, “that the university administration has already begun implementing changes to most effectively address the challenges and opportunities that were identified.”

Watkins also said administrators will work to communicate better with the U.’s Department of Occupational and Environmental Health and Safety, which reviews the labs on campus each year. The audit dinged both for not coordinating. Staff members at Health and Safety weren’t reporting the deficiencies to top leaders at the school and the school’s leaders weren’t asking for more information in annual presentations. Because of that breakdown, no necessary changes were being addressed.

As part of the fixes, the computer system for tracking research deficiencies will be updated so that it’s easier to see which labs have issues and which ones aren’t improving. Right now, there is no central platform for that data.

The school will report back to the Legislature in October. It currently points to its new Meldrum Innovation Lab in the College of Engineering as a model for safety. Students must complete a safety course to work in there.

The audit looked specifically at lab inspections between 2016 and 2018. When Health and Safety identified a problem one year, it persisted the next year in the same lab 49 percent of the time, auditors found. Half of all labs had one major deficiency. And the safety reviewers rarely stressed any urgency to fix them and never followed up.

Andrew Weyrich, the recently named vice president for research at the U., spoke to members of the legislative audit subcommittee Tuesday about how the school is restructuring the chain of command so those gaps won’t happen.

“The university in the past has looked and cataloged some of the deficiencies,” he acknowledged. “But we do need to change the culture. We have a lot of labs that are great, but we have work to do.”

The biggest problems highlighted in the audit were researchers not completing annual safety training and not updating their chemical spill protocols. Other issues included those working with blood-borne pathogens not having the hepatitis B vaccine and those working with animals not filling out health questionnaires.

Sen. Karen Mayne, D-West Valley City, said those issues greatly concern her because the safety of students and staff are on the line. “There need to be policies in place that everyone follows," she noted.

Rep. Brian King, D-Salt Lake City, looked at the U.'s staff sitting in front of the audit subcommittee and added: “You better get this fixed.”

In a 2016 survey by the school, several researchers wrote about the dangerous environment in the science departments. One said there was a “laissez faire” attitude toward safety. Another noted that “there appears to be no verification and no repercussions here.”

A third wrote: “With the open environment of many labs on campus, I am concerned that just a few that do not follow safety procedures can expose many people to infectious material.”

Many people working in the labs don’t wear protective equipment.

In 2017, just 12 percent reported wearing lab coats and 16 percent said they put on goggles. Those are both dips from the previous year. The audit calls that “clearly unacceptable.”

In February 2018, a U. researcher was showing students an experiment at the front of a lab. The chemical she was using was highly reactive with air and caught on fire after she accidentally spilled it. She was wearing a lab coat — which protected her torso — but didn’t have on the proper gloves and her hands were covered with burns and blisters.

She was using the same chemical that killed the UCLA researcher in 2008.

“That coat protected the researcher’s body,” said Tim Bereece, the audit’s supervisor. “It could have been so much worse. … Coats are required when you’re working in the labs. Their use at the U. is very low.”

The auditors implored the school to take precautions now before a more serious incident or a lawsuit. Students and staff working in labs often use chemicals that are hazardous, cancer-causing, flammable and corrosive.

Bereece added: “They know about this. But action hasn’t been taken.”

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Experiments That Went Way Wrong

Real science is terrifying. If you're not delicately transferring corrosive acids from one thin, glass beaker to another, you're probably shooting neutrons into plutonium cores or getting way too close to venomous octopodes. If you dedicate your life to science, you better be perfect at everything, be comfortable with death, or have really good life insurance. There are just as many amazing discoveries made by perfected scientific practices as there are ones made from terrible mistakes, so you're probably doing something right, alive or dead. Here are a few examples of science gone terribly wrong.

Karl P. Schmidt, herpetologist (1890-1957)

When the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago couldn't identify a snake that had come into their possession, they sent it to the Field Museum's resident herpetologist, Karl Schmidt. Unfortunately for Schmidt, the little serpent was a young boomslang, which promptly bit Schmidt and administered a deadly dose of venom as he was trying to study and classify it. He was injected with a slow-acting hemotoxin that causes your organs to slowly start bleeding out (ouch). Schmidt resigned himself to death, as boomslang antivenom wasn't readily available in 1957, and documented his own bloody demise over the course of a couple of days. He transcribed his experiences with internal bleeding and organ failure out in his final notes—that is dedication.

Carl Scheele, chemist (1742-1786)

The first unspoken rule of chemistry is not to eat everything you make, but Carl Scheele didn't get the memo. Scheele was studying chemistry at a time when oxygen was still being referred to as "fire air," so there are definitely some allowances to be made for his proclivities towards tasting all of his discoveries, but the all-day chemical buffet didn't fare too well on his health. Scheele discovered a number of elements on the Periodic Table, like oxygen, tungsten and barium, before he finally succumbed to a rapid succession of diseases associated with his untested and unsafe lab snacks.

Marie Curie, physicist and chemist (1867-1934)

Any list of deadly experiments would be remiss to not include the work of Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie, who died of radiation poisoning after prolonged exposure to radioactive materials during the course of her work. It's not as though her exposure to radioactivity was limited to the laboratory, however, since she was known to carry around radioactive materials in her pockets and was often exposed to unshielded X-rays as a technician. Her papers and possessions are still considered unsafe to touch due to the high levels of radioactivity they emit. We have a feeling she would've been a Fallout gamer in modern times.

Haroutune Krikor Daghlian, Jr., physicist (1921-1945)

When you're working with a subcritical plutonium core, you should probably take every precaution you humanly can to prevent that thing from going supercritical. During a relatively routine project at Los Alamos, Harry Daghlian accidentally dropped a ten pound tungsten carbide brick directly onto a volatile core. Even if you don't know science, you know that sounds like bad news. Unable to just move the heavy brick out of the way, Daghlian quickly took apart the assembly of bricks that shielded the core by hand, taking a lethal dose of radiation in the process, but ultimately saving the lives of many around him.

Louis Slotin, physicist and chemist (1910-1946)

After Daghlian's deadly accident, the same plutonium core remained in use at Los Alamos, where it became the catalyst for a second disaster. Louis Slotin was using a screwdriver instead of the usual lab-approved separators to keep the plutonium core separated from a hemisphere of beryllium, a material which would cause intense radiation should the two come in contact. The life-preserving screwdriver slipped, a burst of radiation exploded from the plutonium core, and Slotin immediately fell ill, dying nine days later. After this incident, the plutonium sphere was nicknamed the "demon core," and later used in an experimental nuclear detonation at the island of Bikini Atoll.

Anatoli Bugorski, physicist (1942-)

Finally, a scientific disaster that doesn't end in absolute tragedy. While working on the U-70 Synchrotron, a particle accelerator in Moscow, Anatoli Bugorski accidentally stuck his face with a high-energy proton beam, which is not as cool as Ghostbusters makes it look. While low-energy proton beams are sometimes used in cancer treatments, the beam that passed through Bugorski's head was many magnitudes greater than safe medical usage, causing half of his face to swell. Doctors expected Bugorski to die from radiation poisoning, but Bugorski survived after suffering hearing loss, facial paralysis, and multiple seizures. The story ends on a good note, as Bugorski was able to get his Ph.D. after the event.

Karen Wetterhahn, chemist (1948-1997)

Even when you're taking proper precautions, it's sometimes not enough to protect you from a scientific mishap. In 1997, Karen Wetterhahn unknowingly dropped two beads of dimethylmercury onto her latex-gloved hand, but made nothing of it until she started experiencing the symptoms of mercury poisoning a few weeks later. As it turns out, not all kinds of latex is impermeable to dimethylmercury, which was not known at the time of the accident. Wetterhahn finally passed away after many months of suffering, but the incident helped rewrite safety protocol, improve standards in protective equipment, and potentially save many other lives in the long run.

Alexander Bogdanov, physician (1873-1928)

Alexander Bogdanov's interests ranged from politics to philosophy and science, but it was his experiments with blood transfusions that ultimately caused his demise. Believing that blood from other people would increase his vitality and rejuvenate his body, Bogdanov began transfusing himself in 1924. According to his own studies and observations, it seemed to be working for him. Unfortunately, blood typing and testing wasn't really involved in Bogdanov's process. After transfusing blood contaminated with both tuberculosis and malaria into himself, Bogdanov passed away from this fatal concoction.

Sheharbano Sangji, chemistry student (1985-2009)

Tragedy struck UCLA in late 2008, when student Sheri Sangji accidentally spilled a highly pyrophoric chemical, igniting a fire that would ultimately end her life. While science usually thrives on experimentation and breaking boundaries, most of the incident's aftermath has centered around ensuing lawsuits. According to litigation, Sangji was allegedly never briefed on proper lab procedures or issued the proper equipment by her professor, who was accused of felonious negligence. We're not sure who was at fault, but at the very least, students and professors are now extremely aware of the consequences of unpreparedness and how dangerous certain combustible chemicals can be.

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