Question: What is the best question you have received about science

David Nunan answered on 11 Nov 2015:

Some of the best questions I’ve been asked are the one’s I don’t know the answer to. For me it shows that the person asking the question is really interested and has questions they probably haven’t been able to find answers to.

Someone once asked me when was the first controlled/clinical experiment. It was actually by a guy called James Lind who was the medical officer for a ship called the HMS Salisbury in 1747.

He noticed that sailors kept getting sick with something called ‘scurvy’ (a nasty condition that causes teeth to fall out and bleeding gums) and wanted to find out why and how to stop it. He chose 12 men who all had scurvy and randomly gave each of them different extra things in their diet. 2 of the men were given cider, 2 given seawater, 2 were given vinegar, 2 were given garlic + mustard, 2 were given acid (ouch!) and 2 were given oranges and lemons. The men given the oranges and lemons showed an amazing recovery from scurvy whilst the other men did not.

By doing this experiment Lind found a link between a lack of vitamin C in the diets of the sailors was the cause of scurvy. All sailors in the navy were then supplied with citrus fruits (oranges, lemons) and soon after sailors stopped getting scurvy.