In 1907, Duncan MacDougall of Haverhill, Massachusetts, decided to try and prove the existence of the soul. A third also lost weight and then more weight (but not as much as the other) shortly afterward. While most would conclude that what he discovered was some bad scales, MacDougall concluded that he had proved the existence of the soul. “[I]t was not my fortune to get dogs dying from such sickness,” he wrote, so he killed some healthy dogs instead. Or, and it's a big possibility here, dying people don't keep deadly still and the scales just weren't that accurate.