Day 276: Mad Scientists

This is another post where I look at why we find certain things scary. In a lot of movies, the trouble either begins with a mad scientist (like in Frankenstein) or science itself running amok (like Godzilla). Science and scientists should be helpful but, like mystics in the old days, there are lots about them that lay people do not understand.

So fear of the unknown comes in again with the specifics of science seeming vague and unknowable. But also there is a touch of anti-authoritarianism. Scientists take public money to hide away in their mountain retreats (which probably have self-destruct buttons) and conduct their ungodly experiments. Just what are they doing with our money? What are they doing with our corpses or the weather? Why must everything be veiled in secrecy?

Of course, we know that most modern labs have safeguards against outside variables being introduced that would alter the outcome of experiments, more than as protection against something nefarious. However, think about the large Hadron collider in Europe. The equipment in that lab is attempting to simulate the conditions of the Big Bang. Although it would be exhausting to do so, all of us should probably be worried all the time that they are going to create something world disrupting at any moment.

Yes, science has taken the place of magic in creating monsters and madmen but the results are still just as terrifying. Who is your favorite mad scientist?