title: "They Sweat for Science": The Harvard Fatigue Laboratory and Self-Experimentation in American Exercise Physiology.
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.
authors.affiliation: Department of History & Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania, 303 Claudia Cohen Hall, 249 S. 36th St, Philadelphia, PA, 19104-6304, USA, andria@sas.upenn.edu.
authors.forename: Andi
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Johnson
mesh_terms: D032762:Autoexperimentation / Q000941:ethics / Q000266:history*; D015444:Exercise / Q000502:physiology*; D005221:Fatigue / Q000266:history*; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D007753:Laboratories / Q000266:history*; D008404:Massachusetts; D010827:Physiology / Q000266:history*; D014495:Universities / Q000266:history