Comment by gruez
4 years ago
> Research without ethics is research without value.
didn't we learn a lot from nazi/japanese experiments from ww2?
4 years ago
> Research without ethics is research without value.
didn't we learn a lot from nazi/japanese experiments from ww2?
From my understanding - no, actually. We learnt a bit, on the very extreme scale of things, but most of the "experiments" were not conducted in any kind of way that would yield usable data.
Yes and no. It’s my understanding that the Germans pioneered the field of implanted medical prostheses (like titanium pins to stabilize broken bones). A lot of that research was done on prisoners, and they were even kind enough to extend the benefits of the medical treatments that they developed to prisoners of war (no sarcasm intended).
We did. Often we wish they could have got more decimal points in a measurement, or had known how to check for some factor. Despite all the gains and potential breakthroughs lost nobody is willing to repeat them or anything like them. I know just enough medically people given 2 weeks to live who were still around 10 years latter that I can't think of any situation where I'd make an exception.
Though what a lot is is also open to question. Much of what we learned isn't that useful to real world problems. However some has been important.
It doesn't really sound like that's the case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_human_experimentation#Aft...
are there more impactful benefits that aren't listed on the wikipedia page? It sounds like the main research contribution is philosophical discussions over whether or not it would be okay to use the data if someone had a good reason for it.
Hypothermia is the only one I'm aware of. There is some useful data there that has helped treatment.
Learn how to torture? Maybe. Learn real knowledge? No. Most of those info are not just sick but also impractical.
The goal of military is to protect or conquer. The goal of science is to find the truth, and the goal of the engineering is to offer solutions. Any of the true leaders in either fields knows there're more efficient means/systems to get those goals, even in ww2 era.
Experiments producing lots of data doesn't necessarily mean they were useful. If the experiment was run improperly the data is untrustworthy, and if the experiment was designed to achieve things that aren't useful they may not have controlled for the right variables.
And ultimately, we know what their priorities were and what kind of worldview they were operating under, so the odds are bad that any given experiment they ran would have been rigorous enough to produce results that could be reproduced in other studies and applied elsewhere. I'm not personally aware of any major breakthroughs that would have been impossible without the "aid" of eugenicist war criminals, though it's possible there's some major example I'm missing.
We certainly did bring over lots of German scientists to work on nukes and rockets, so your question is not entirely off-base - but I suspect almost everyone involved in those choices would argue that rocketry research isn't unethical.
By in large no. The Nazi experiments were based on faulty race science and were indistinguishable from brutal torture and what remains is either useless or impossible to reproduce for ethical reasons.