From 1927-1947, Harvard operated a "Fatigue Laboratory." A lot of their research was never published. But we know they were involved in: 1. Lots of self-experiments. 2. Development of early methods to study molecules in blood. 3. Refining meals given to soldiers during WWII. One of its founders was Lawrence J. Henderson, the same person for whom the Henderson-Hasselbach equation (used to calculate pH) is named! The laboratory was called the "Fatigue Laboratory" because one of its main missions "was to work with industry to explain the physiology of fatigue." That an academic laboratory worked so closely with industry to boost the physical productivity of employees is, of course, a bit suspect. The lab's members travelled around the world studying workers in situ; in their actual workplaces. They watched workers at the Boulder Dam, for example, and studied people working high in the Andes mountains to see how well they did in low-oxygen conditions. From 1941-1945, the laboratory did lots of secret work for the U.S. military, too. A book about the lab, published in 1973, quotes one of its researchers as saying: "We would be remiss if we did not note that many nutritional problems were investigated in the years 1941 to 1945, the results of which were not published in the open literature." At Harvard, the laboratory even had "a hot room that served as an 'artificial desert' that could be operated at temperatures up to 115°F and a cold chamber that could be run at temperatures from 40°F down to −40°F. Both were equipped with treadmills and equipment to measure subjects' physiological responses, including metabolic rates at rest and during exercise." "Newly designed cold weather clothing was tested in the cold chamber at -40 degrees Fahrenheit, and desired improvements were made and tested in the field by staff and soldiers in tents and sleeping bags. Electrically heated clothing was designed for high-altitude flight crews and tested both in laboratory chambers and field tests before being issued." One thing I really like about this is the emphasis on real-world testing. I wish more biotechnologists would set up "simulated environments" to test, say, how well engineered microbes, designed to measure pollutants in the air, would fare in the real-world. Many other such examples that would benefit from this! I first heard about the Harvard Fatigue Laboratory from Isha Jain at Arc Institute. Here is an excellent, first-hand account of the laboratory's activities: journals.physiology.org/doi/….