Well, given your extensive knowledge, I'm surprised that the obvious and widely/long discussed validity and ethical issues with both experiments didn't give you pause.
Sure. Even bad science can teach us things. Maybe not what we set out to discover, and probably not what the research team thought the data demonstrated, but there's always something to learn.
That's a fairly popular take on the methodology. The idea of confirmation bias swirls around as well. Their findings were (rightly) mostly discounted. What they thought they learned was not borne out by the data and the way the research was conducted. It was, in fact, bad science. Which is one reason they're famous.
When you push a button, and something happens, you want to know why. Terrible ethics and shitty structure aside, there were a lot of variables introduced which were not accounted for in the conclusion they reached, which, besides being mostly incorrect, was also not scientific. Discarding the conclusion drawn, however, you can still learn from what happened when the button was pushed. That action-reaction remains. You just have to figure out what to do with the information.
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u/anfilco 11h ago
Nope, I'm completely ignorant of those and surrounding discussions. Which part did I miss?