Question: who is your most interesting scientist

Liam Bagley answered on 17 Jun 2013:

I have to say its probably a guy who I met at a conference in Leeds about a year ago called Jerry Dempsey.
Jerry is quite an old guy now from America. But his research is all about how the body can reach its limits.
He described one experiment where he injected a drug into some cyclists spines to stop signals getting from the muscles to the brain, So they could move their legs no problem, but they just didn’t feel tired when they exercised! He asked them to cycle all out for 5km, some of them didn’t even make it to that, they were so tired and had to lift them off the bike they pushed themselves so hard because they couldn’t feel the pain in their legs! Unreal!
It shows the whole body works together for a person to reach their physical limit.
Jerry is a very cool guy for risking his career doing these type of experiments