# Experiments that failed in the late 60s **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 5, 2005, 9:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/experiments-that-failed-in-the-late-60s/302511 "2005-05-05T09:42:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Pushkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ee59a6/32.png) [@Pushkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pushkin)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2005, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/experiments-that-failed-in-the-late-60s/302511/41 "2005-05-07T19:31:03Z")
> [@Ranchoth](#): > > [Hardiman I](http://davidszondy.com/future/robot/hardiman.htm) Cool, its Aliens. > [@Ranchoth](#): > > [The American SST](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_2707). (Could have made the Concorde look like a pansy.) Cool an F-111. ---
**Author:** ![ccwaterback](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/df705f/32.png) [@ccwaterback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ccwaterback)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2005, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/experiments-that-failed-in-the-late-60s/302511/42 "2005-05-07T20:43:44Z")
I think bucket seats were around before the late 60s, but they really became popular in the late 60s. ---
**Author:** ![ccwaterback](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/df705f/32.png) [@ccwaterback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ccwaterback)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2005, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/experiments-that-failed-in-the-late-60s/302511/43 "2005-05-07T20:45:20Z")
> [@ccwaterback](#): > > I think bucket seats were around before the late 60s, but they really became popular in the late 60s. Whoops, I knew it was inevitable that I would put a success in the failure thread. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Laughing\_Lagomorph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/6bbea6/32.png) [@Laughing\_Lagomorph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Laughing_Lagomorph)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2005, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/experiments-that-failed-in-the-late-60s/302511/44 "2005-05-07T22:53:02Z")
> [@Ethilrist](#): > > I used to drive a Punch-O-Matic. '65 Dodge Dart. Didn’t come standard with seat belts, either, so I guess we can add “attempting to breed a generation of people successful at being thrown clear in case of accident.” We had a 1964 Dart (we inherited it from a family member in the mid 1980s) with the same transmission and no seatbelts. I also remember there was no padding at all on the dashboard, it was solid steel. I’m guessing the car probably also didn’t have crumple zones or a steering wheel designed to collapse if a human body hit it. I can’t believe I drove that thing on the highway. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d26b3c/32.png) [@Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Blue_Sky)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2005, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/experiments-that-failed-in-the-late-60s/302511/45 "2005-05-07T23:04:38Z")
> [@Laughing Lagomorph](#): > > I’m guessing the car probably also didn’t have crumple zones or a steering wheel designed to collapse if a human body hit it. The entire car was a crumple zone. There was a show on Discovery or sime such channel about the history of car safety. They showed an early 60’s sedan running into a telephone pole. The pole didn’t budge and sliced through nearly the entire car. The car stopped with the pole in the trunk area. > [@](#): > > I can’t believe I drove that thing on the highway. I once drove a 1974 VW Super Beetle on I-95 at speeds of about 80mph. What the hell was I thinking? ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2005, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/experiments-that-failed-in-the-late-60s/302511/46 "2005-05-07T23:36:46Z")
> [@F. U. Shakespeare](#): > > I have no first-hand experience with push-button transmissions, but when I’ve read about them, I always worried that they’d be easy to accidentally bump and shift into reverse or park when going 60. > > Was this the case? > > Or was the design good enough to protect against this? > > If the former, I would reckon this is why they didn’t catch on. On early Turbo-Hydromatic (i.e, GM) automatics, the steering column stick shift would read: ```auto P N D S L R ``` The 1964 Pontiac Bonneville being a prime example. Imagine wanting to downshift to low as the road pitches down a deep grade and overreaching a notch. Ow. ---
**Author:** ![Pushkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ee59a6/32.png) [@Pushkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pushkin)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2005, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/experiments-that-failed-in-the-late-60s/302511/47 "2005-05-08T00:10:39Z")
IIRC, the [Aston Martin Lagonda](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aston_Martin_Lagonda) was another duff car with a push button gearchange 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2005, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/experiments-that-failed-in-the-late-60s/302511/48 "2005-05-08T20:47:09Z")
The whole not bathing thing turned out to be a failure. Who’d a guessed? Also, it turns out that [Sex with Dolphins](http://www.tomigaya.shibuya.tokyo.jp/lilly/womandolph12x.html) is contraindicated. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2005, 7:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/experiments-that-failed-in-the-late-60s/302511/49 "2005-05-09T07:28:52Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > 1. INTERFERON: this stuff was supposed to cure cancer, TB, a host of other illnesses, and put a shine on your mother’s silverware! Problem: it didn’t work! Not only that , but people taking it experienced severe side effects (including death). But it was touted to the skies…for a while! Interferon is still used in the treatment of Hepatitis C. In fact, it’s still the only treatment. They’ve tweaked the formula to make it a cocktail of pegylated (whatever that means) interferon with ribavirin, which has a better success rate than interferon alone. Actually, interferon alone had a poor success rate while it was making people feel sicker than a dog. They’ve got it up over 50% now with the ribavirin added, last I heard. ---
**Author:** ![elmwood](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmwood/32/3060_2.png) [@elmwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elmwood)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2005, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/experiments-that-failed-in-the-late-60s/302511/50 "2005-05-09T16:53:38Z")
My parents’ house was built in 1967. One wall in the kitchen is home to a built-in _toaster_. Built-in everything was all the rage in the 1960s, extending beyond the kitchen to the living and family room. Anyone remember built-in televisions and stereos? ---
**Author:** ![elmwood](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmwood/32/3060_2.png) [@elmwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elmwood)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2005, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/experiments-that-failed-in-the-late-60s/302511/51 "2005-05-09T17:01:36Z")
Didn’t mean to follow up my own post, but there were [multimedia magazines](http://www.ubu.com/aspen/aspen.html) like Aspen - released as a box filled with text articles and essays, records, art, and so on. ---
**Author:** ![GeoOT](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/73ab20/32.png) [@GeoOT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GeoOT)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2012, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/experiments-that-failed-in-the-late-60s/302511/52 "2012-05-01T15:01:41Z")
> [@F.U.Shakespeare](#): > > I have no first-hand experience with push-button transmissions, but when I’ve read about them, I always worried that they’d be easy to accidentally bump and shift into reverse or park when going 60. > > Was this the case? > > Or was the design good enough to protect against this? > > If the former, I would reckon this is why they didn’t catch on. They had interlocks on the mechanism that locked out those buttons when the car was moving more that a mile per hour or two. The big reason they failed was they were more expensive to produce (lots of cables and teeny parts) and they weren’t a noticeable sales advantage over conventional column shifters. ---
**Author:** ![Gagundathar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a183cd/32.png) [@Gagundathar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gagundathar)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2012, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/experiments-that-failed-in-the-late-60s/302511/53 "2012-05-01T15:12:56Z")
Interferon is still used to arrest the development of chronic myeloid leukemia. > [@](#): > > Interferon alpha (IFNa, interferon alfa) has been extensively studied as treatment for patients with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) since 1981, initially using partially purified IFNa [1], followed by recombinant IFNa-2a [2]. Prior to the development of the tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) imatinib mesylate, interferon was the non-transplant treatment of choice for most patients with CML. However, with the development of TKIs and the increased toxicity of interferon compared with TKIs, this latter drug has been used much less commonly for the treatment of CML My wife had CML and I injected her pretty little butt with 10 million units of interferon every night for years. She was one of the guinea pigs for the first trials of STI-571, a drug that became the first successful tyrosine kinase inhibitor, imatinib mesylate (Gleevec). ---
**Author:** ![BlankSlate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blankslate/32/80_2.png) [@BlankSlate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlankSlate)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2012, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/experiments-that-failed-in-the-late-60s/302511/54 "2012-05-01T15:18:36Z")
> [@Ethilrist](#): > > and, it didn’t actually fail, they just stopped doing it. It pretty much failed, unless you’re in favor of armies with poor discipline and morale. ---
**Author:** ![kidchameleon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/898d66/32.png) [@kidchameleon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kidchameleon)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2012, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/experiments-that-failed-in-the-late-60s/302511/55 "2012-05-01T15:23:13Z")
Apparently they didn’t stop experimenting on Zombies in the 60s. ---
**Author:** ![cjepson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a9adbd/32.png) [@cjepson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cjepson)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2012, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/experiments-that-failed-in-the-late-60s/302511/56 "2012-05-01T15:29:38Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > Interferon is still used in the treatment of Hepatitis C. In fact, it’s still the only treatment. They’ve tweaked the formula to make it a cocktail of pegylated (whatever that means) interferon with ribavirin, which has a better success rate than interferon alone. Actually, interferon alone had a poor success rate while it was making people feel sicker than a dog. They’ve got it up over 50% now with the ribavirin added, last I heard. The [Wiki on interferon](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interferon#Diseases) seems to list about fourteen uses, so yeah… not exactly a failure. ---
**Author:** ![BlankSlate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blankslate/32/80_2.png) [@BlankSlate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlankSlate)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2012, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/experiments-that-failed-in-the-late-60s/302511/57 "2012-05-01T16:04:39Z")
> [@Ethilrist](#): > > and, it didn’t actually fail, they just stopped doing it. It pretty much failed, unless you’re in favor of armies with poor discipline and low morale. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2012, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/experiments-that-failed-in-the-late-60s/302511/58 "2012-05-01T16:25:52Z")
There was the Harrad Experiment. ---
**Author:** ![BlankSlate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blankslate/32/80_2.png) [@BlankSlate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlankSlate)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2012, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/experiments-that-failed-in-the-late-60s/302511/59 "2012-05-01T16:36:47Z")
In the modern world, experimenting with posting from a phone has been a tragic failure for some folks. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2012, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/experiments-that-failed-in-the-late-60s/302511/60 "2012-05-01T16:40:55Z")
> [@ccwaterback](#): > > Whole Earth Catalogue. They still have this, except they call it the Internet now. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/experiments-that-failed-in-the-late-60s/302511.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/experiments-that-failed-in-the-late-60s/302511.md?page=4)