John Brand: GP who carried out much cited research into motion sickness after serving in the Royal Navy

Sea sickness is an occupational hazard for anyone working on water, and after serving five years in the Royal Navy John Brand described himself as well qualified to study it, having “suffered severely” at times.

As a research fellow at the University of Edinburgh, Brand and his co-investigator, James Reason, came up with what has become the most cited hypothesis for the causes of motion sickness—the conflict theory. Brand and Reason suggested the condition occurs because of a “conflict between the senses and stored patterns of motion.” The research, published in 1975, has been cited more than 2000 times.1

Brand also studied the effects of anti-motion sickness drugs. For one experiment he and his co-investigators took 100 Royal Navy volunteers, gave half a placebo and half varying doses of an anti-motion sickness drug, put them on life rafts, turned on a wave machine, …