Separating researcher from knowledge (opens in new tab)

A portion of knowledge and advances in modern medicine are the result of experimentation on unwilling test subjects. These subjects suffered greatly and often died at the hands of experimenters who viewed them with absolute apathy, as no more than a means to an end. While most of us condemn such behaviour and find it reprehensible, we don’t reject the medical knowledge obtained this way. At a surface level, this might sound hypocritical. I don’t consider it to be so: acknowledging the value o...