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“They Sweat for Science”: The Harvard Fatigue Laboratory and Self-Experimentation in American Exercise Physiology

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Abstract

In many scientific fields, the practice of self-experimentation waned over the course of the twentieth century. For exercise physiologists working today, however, the practice of self-experimentation is alive and well. This paper considers the role of the Harvard Fatigue Laboratory and its scientific director, D. Bruce Dill, in legitimizing the practice of self-experimentation in exercise physiology. Descriptions of self-experimentation are drawn from papers published by members of the Harvard Fatigue Lab. Attention is paid to the ethical and practical justifications for self-experimentation in both the lab and the field. Born out of the practical, immediate demands of fatigue protocols, self-experimentation performed the long-term, epistemological function of uniting physiological data across time and space, enabling researchers to contribute to a general human biology program.

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  1. Department of History & Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania, 303 Claudia Cohen Hall, 249 S. 36th St, Philadelphia, PA, 19104-6304, USA

    Andi Johnson

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Correspondence to Andi Johnson.

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Johnson, A. “They Sweat for Science”: The Harvard Fatigue Laboratory and Self-Experimentation in American Exercise Physiology. J Hist Biol 48, 425–454 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-014-9387-y

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