Who were these people then? To say that they weren't scientists is to say that scientists can never be held accountable because every "actual" experiment is morally and ethically righteous.
Morality has nothing to do with it. There can't possibly be a control variable. Would you call someone who goes around smashing things a "scientist"? What is the experiment?
> It's wasn't a test. Someone just poisoned all the air.
If you want to be pedantic:
It was a test of if the air-poisoner-inator sufficiently poisoned the air. If the air was not poisoned then the experiment obviously failed. If the air was poisoned then the hypothesis was correct and the experiment succeeded.
A bomb test tests if the bomb bombed the location it was meant to bomb with the correct amount of bomb. The control variable would be not dropping the bomb.
> Would you call someone who goes around smashing things a "scientist"?
Yes, automotive engineers do this every day to build safer cars, and anyone in the safety industry obviously replicates unsafe conditions (explosions, fires, electrical failures, chemical spills, etc) to test safety equipment.
"Remember kids, the only difference between screwing around and science is writing it down” - Alex Jason
They are doing contained, well-thought-out experiments, with hypotheses, peer review, control samples, ability to repeat trials, data collection, and discussion.
