Do the Maesters experiment? (Game of Thrones)

[FaxModem1]

In A Song of Ice and Fire, and in Game of Thrones, we do see the Maesters collect knowledge, their documentation is second to none. They spend a lot of time remaking the books that have worn down with age so that what knowledge they do have isn't lost. This is akin to the Church in the Middle Ages and the preservation of knowledge from the Classical Era.

But, do they experiment? The only real person who seemed to experiment that I can find is Qyburn, and he was kicked out of the Maesters for it. Were his experiments beyond the pale, or was it because he experimented at all? What advances, if any, have they made in Westeros?

[Raw Shark]

Fuck yeah, they do. The stuff we know about is only the stuff people found out. Marwyn was not exactly an amateur.

[Lord Revan]

Wasn't there at least Maester so discovered a cure for greyscale in the TV-series, but no-one else dared to repeat the experiment because the maester in question got infected due to his experiments.

[Ralin]

There's a Maester mentioned in one of the latter books that was convinced he could reattach Balon Greyjoy's father or brother or something's fingers after he lost them in an unfortunate ax game incident. It failed and both the patient and the Maester died horribly (and in the exact same way), but it always made me wonder exactly how advanced Maester medical science was that the guy would even think he could pull it off to begin with. Arrogant or not I can't imagine he would have gotten to that point if he hadn't already made a few dry runs at it first.

Also I think that Qyburn mentions at one point that the Maesters had been cutting up dead bodies to figure out how they worked for a long time and that what got him kicked out was doing the same to living bodies.