The more I learn of 1950s to 1970s NASA and related, the less over the top Cave Johnson from Portal 2 seems.
And then I read books like Ignition! and realize that, at that time, parts of rocket science literally were, "What are the most energetically explosive sets of things we can mix together and actually live with?" Turns out, not that many, despite an awful lot of efforts.
It's really hard to admit to ourselves that modern technology, especially knowledge of the human body, sits atop ethically disturbing science, like IIRC the Nazi research in concentration camps, like prisoners being left to freeze to death, was crucial in understanding how we'd survive in high altitude and space.
Or take the experiments the Japanese did on prisoners in WW2; a hard question to ask ourselves is how far ahead these moments have pushed our understanding of the world, when a more cautious approach might have taken much longer or simply not have been enough.
I think that life is more important than any scientific experiment, but I wonder how limited our knowledge would be today were it not for those people and animals tortured to death. Would the space race have started decades later?
Most of the "experiments" done in Nazi concentration camps were actually very bad science by any metric and was just a manner of torturing and disfiguring prisoners. The remaining handful of experiments (the hypothermia and high-altitude experiments you mentioned) have been argued[1] to be full of experimental issues that make also them simply bad science. Very little (if any) science is based on their experiments (some papers did reference the Nazi data, but doing so these days is exceptionally controversial).
The idea that we got a lot of science out of the Nazi regime is a laughably absurd piece of literal Nazi propaganda. Not to mention the Nazis actively drove out and murdered their most prominent and skilled scientists (because they were Jewish, communists, or both).
It was more or less on par with the bad science of the age. Most science was done in a similar fashion, people experimented on themselves with X rays, radioactive materials and lead additives until it literally killed them. Nonetheless, science advanced.
But of course people are gonna argue it was bad science, precisely because today any reference to such data is "exceptionally controversial". So you will have people expunging the history of science of any reference to unethical experiments, regardless of any impact they may have had at the time.
The link is to a peer-reviewed study which analysed the methods used in the Dachau hypothermia experiments and found that they were not rigorous and several of the results are actually at odds with more modern research on the topic. It's not reasonable to call such a paper as something that is "expunging the history of science". If you disagree and feel that their methods weren't rubbish, feel free to write a counter argument in the form of a peer-reviewed study.
To quote the conclusion of the report:
> This review of the Dachau hypothermia experiments reveals critical shortcomings in scientific content and credibility. The project was conducted without an orderly experimental protocol, with inadequate methods and an erratic execution. The report is riddled with inconsistencies. There is also evidence of data falsification and suggestions of fabrication. Many conclusions are not supported by the facts presented. The flawed science is compounded by evidence that the director of the project showed a consistent pattern of dishonesty and deception in his professional as well as his personal life, thereby stripping the study of the last vestige of credibility. On analysis, the Dachau hypothermia study has all the ingredients of a scientific fraud, and rejection of the data on purely scientific grounds is inevitable. They cannot advance science or save human lives.
Of course it's bad science, I won't argue against that. What I call into question is the enormous selection bias at work here: modern methodological inquiries will be performed only on famous and controversial pieces that are likely to produce notable modern papers. The vast majority of bad science of those days, that happened - by accident or intuition of the experimenter - to resonate with modern science, won't be examined and remain part of the scientific history.
So "expunging" may not necessarily be intentional, but it's clearly an adequate description of what's happening.
I would be very happy if more research time was spent on the replicability crisis. I don't consider "actually this paper is garbage and we cannot trust its conclusions" to be "expunging" -- it's an improvement of science.
But in this particular case, (after I looked into it again) calling their "research" bad science is giving it too much credit. The issues are not just methodological (though they do have plenty). They outright fabricated data, came to conclusions that do not make sense given the data, and did not care at all about the health of their subjects (which was supposedly the primary point of the "study") so they didn't accurately record what effects different hypothermia treatments had (which was again the main point of the "study"). Pretending that these "studies" should be treated as anything other than pointless and cruel human torture pretending to be science is being intellectually dishonest.
A lot of science comes down to how you interpret data and you have to have a reasonable amount of faith in the academic integrity of person who did the recording and interpreting because if you can't trust them then there's no way of knowing if the data is good or not (and using it is going to lead to bad science by good scientists in the long run) -- call me a skeptic, but I personally don't trust the academic integrity of Nazi scientists who were torturing innocent people (and we know fabricated their data).
It's also revisionist history. There was a great debate in the day, should the data be destroyed, due to horrifying source, or kept?
The general decision was, keep it, it has value, so learn from it, and not waste whatever good may come from the horrors wrought.
An additional here is, 'bad science' seems like a century later hindsight.
At this point in history, many people literally believed that opening the body was a crime against god and nature.
From the Christian perspective, this belief aligned with "your body is a temple" biblical references. From an operative perspective, sulfa drugs didn't lead to the best outcomes, in terms of an operation. So opening the body was a bad outcome, meaning why fight religious sentiment and belief for no reason?
Yet the Nazis, sick as they were, has a free hand to open bodies and see them while still alive.
Horrifying as these experiments were, they did provide insight into human anatomy.
And trying to revisionist history that away is just wrong.
> Horrifying as these experiments were, they did provide insight into human anatomy. And trying to revisionist history that away is just wrong.
Too bad their experimental method did not correctly segregate subjects into control groups, they did not record many important variables necessary to actually use the data, and several of their results are at odds with modern understandings of anatomy (meaning the data was fabricated). Seems like pretty bad science to be championing for. Let's not forget, these scientists believed in scientific racism -- why on Earth would you assume that they would honestly record their experimental data on human anatomy?
To quote the conclusion of the report:
> This review of the Dachau hypothermia experiments reveals critical shortcomings in scientific content and credibility. The project was conducted without an orderly experimental protocol, with inadequate methods and an erratic execution. The report is riddled with inconsistencies. There is also evidence of data falsification and suggestions of fabrication. Many conclusions are not supported by the facts presented. The flawed science is compounded by evidence that the director of the project showed a consistent pattern of dishonesty and deception in his professional as well as his personal life, thereby stripping the study of the last vestige of credibility. On analysis, the Dachau hypothermia study has all the ingredients of a scientific fraud, and rejection of the data on purely scientific grounds is inevitable. They cannot advance science or save human lives.
So your assertion is that racism was not common in, for example, the US? Or that, as a separate example, all Nazi scientists documented poorly?
There is a very strange modern trend, where if someone is racist, or a murderer, or some other horrid thing, that be interference everything they did was wrong, and incorrect, and has zero value.
The assessment of a person(eg racist) is a valid act and required, but this does not invalidate any positives. It merely means that said person is a racist, and that action/punishment on that front should occur.
Pretending otherwise is a lie, and true scientific fallacy.
Probably not a good idea to do a whataboutism when we're talking about the actual Nazis.
I don't have anything more to say on the topic -- you're completely ignoring the fact that the data that we got from the one Nazi experiment that was once thought to be useful is bad data, partially because of bad experiment design (including not caring whether their "test subjects" died due to mistreatment) and partially due to outright fabrications.
If you disagree with the conclusion of the peer-reviewed report I linked (as opposed to having a general issue with the fact that it turns out that the Nazis were shit scientists -- something I can't sympathise with sadly) you can write it up as a paper and get it published in a peer reviewed journal.
Parent is specifically addressing the misconception that the acts committed by Nazis on prisoners contributed meaningful medical knowledge. Your comment is likely being downvoted for its snarky tone.
My response was not snarky, that is something you attributed to it. The parent said:
> The idea that we got a lot of science out of the Nazi regime is a laughably absurd piece of literal Nazi propaganda
I don't see how someone could know who Werner von Braun is or that Nazi scientist laid the foundation for the US/Soviet space programs and make such a statement. Our civilization would have never made it to the moon without "Nazi" science, and we would have achieved orbit much later.
I do think the parent is wrapped up in a delusion that acknowledging contributions of Nazi makes them a Nazi. But that is another topic altogether.
> I think that life is more important than any scientific experiment
Science has advanced enormously due to doing unsafe experiments on humans. For example, Jonas Salk tested the polio vaccine by injecting himself. The Wrights flew their first airplane themselves. Lindbergh risked death on his first transatlantic flight. (Previous attempts had ended in death.) He was dubbed "Lucky Lindy" for good reason. Test pilots had short life expectancies. So did Formula 1 drivers up into the 1970s.
We'd have a lot more deaths today if these brave people had not risked their lives.
Heck, we all risk our lives by getting out of bed in the morning.
When I was a kid, some of the grownups I knew had stomach ulcers.
This was considered a chronic condition caused by stress. One of the few remedies was to go on a "bland diet" to avoid irritation. Nothing spicy for you! Ulcers also led to stomach cancer.
In 1984, Robin Warren and Barry Marshall had a theory that ulcers were actually caused by a bacterium called Helicobacter Pylori. And they thought they might be cured by antibiotics.
So Marshall drank a glass of broth full of those bacteria from an ulcer patient. He got ulcers. Bad ones.
The two doctors worked out a course of antibiotics and cured Marshall's ulcers. They won a Nobel Prize for it.
For any of you younger folks who have never heard of stomach ulcers or stomach cancer, now you know why.
The Nazi's and Unit 731 were actually pretty bad at their experiments. No scientific rigor at all. It was literally just disfigurements, poisoning, and sickening of people.
Pasteur notoriously wanted to use prisoners to test his vaccines. It was one of the first examples discussed in the philosophy course I had in high-school.
Just sounds like some people operating under the assumption of unknown unknowns. Best to see if anything died from exposure in an enclosed environment before releasing any possible contaminants out into the wild.
At the risk of implying you haven't read the article, these experiments took place while those astronauts (specifically the Apollo 11 to 14 missions) were in quarantine. They didn't know whether lunar dust could have some other adverse effect on the biosphere. They stopped doing the experiments after Apollo 14 in 1971.
And then I read books like Ignition! and realize that, at that time, parts of rocket science literally were, "What are the most energetically explosive sets of things we can mix together and actually live with?" Turns out, not that many, despite an awful lot of efforts.