I agree with you about the harmful spamming aspects being troublesome. If it was a medical trial that harmed the test participants, it would be deemed unethical. On the other hand, using opt-in would have resulted in a bias in the results. The experiment might be ethically dubious in regards to harming participants, but the design of the experiment is still logically sound. Calling it "bad science" is fair if your position is based purely on the ethical implications, but typically, the phrase "bad science" is used to describe improper experiment design and erroneous conclusions.

Eric left out a lot of wanted/needed details and data about his experiment. Due to the ethics questions involved, it would be best if his data was release and his experiment was evaluated, rather than lots of other people repeating the same or similar experiments.

The harm is already done, so let's try to learn from it.

Maybe I'm just being too forgiving?