Yep. To take a physical-world analogy: Would it be okay to try and prove the vulnerability of a country's water supply by intentionally introducing a "harmless" chemical into the treatment works, without the consent of the works owners? Or would that be a go directly to jail sort of an experiment?
I share the researchers' intellectual curiosity about whether this would work, but I don't see how a properly-informed ethics board could ever have passed it.
The US navy did actually basically this with some pathogens in the 50s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-Spray ; the idea of 'ethical oversight' was not something a lot of scientists operated under in those days.
> Would it be okay to try and prove the vulnerability of a country's water supply by intentionally introducing a "harmless" chemical into the treatment works, without the consent of the works owners?
The question should also be due to who's neglect they gained access to the "water supply". If you also truly want to make this comparison.
The question is also: "Will this research have benefits?" If the conclusion is "well, you can get access to the water supply and the only means to prevent it is to closely guard every brook, lake and river, needing half the population as guards". Well, then it is useless. And taking risks for useless research is unethical, no matter how minor those risks might be.
> If the conclusion is "well, you can get access to the water supply and the only means to prevent it is to closely guard every brook, lake and river, needing half the population as guards".
I share the researchers' intellectual curiosity about whether this would work, but I don't see how a properly-informed ethics board could ever have passed it.