Vladimir_M comments on Science: Do It Yourself - Less Wrong

53 Post author: alyssavance 13 February 2011 04:47AM

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Comment author: MartinB 13 February 2011 08:07:14PM 0 points [-]

The Nazis also believed many sane things, like exercise and the value of nature and animal welfare and the harmful nature of smoking.

one question I pondered at times is if the experiments done on prisoner by Mengele and others actually lead to anything interesting. In theory the lack of ethics would allow for more research with less effort. But it seems they did not, and actually worked rather sloppy. I guess that is preferably, because otherwise the ethics people would have a hard time keeping eager researchers in check.

Comment author: Vladimir_M 13 February 2011 08:22:01PM *  8 points [-]

There are interesting data on hypothermia based on Nazi human experimentation, which are especially interesting because it's impossible to replicate these measurements for obvious reasons. The ethics of using and citing those have been a matter of controversy for decades:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/holocaust/experi02_no.html

Otherwise, however, the human experiments done by Nazi doctors seem to have been scientifically worthless. Mengele in particular was just a particularly cruel dilettante.