This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Semiapies: Speaking as a total materialist and a science-loving scientist-respecting guy, I don't really buy that this trope is most rooted in Science Is Bad as much as fear of who the scientists work for. The scientists in such a scenario are always working for the organization the writer/audience is most likely to believe does really evil things and most fears - either the government, a foreign government, or an evil corporation. Stranded aliens or people with special powers never get subdued by graduate students and dragged off to a university.
Sciatrix: What about a Mad Scientist? Some of the more evil fictional ones would be pretty capable of this sort of thing (and have the resources to pull it off). Besides, we have Real Life examples of scientists with the ability to do this (thanks to operating under abusive regimes) who took full advantage of it, most notably Josef Mengele. I can see where you're coming from, but I can also see converse examples.
Kalaong: Total agreement. Anybody with the even the vaguest sense of enlightened self-interest would want a willing subject for extended research, not scraps of decaying tissue soaking in formaldehyde. The Government, however, is usually fairly impatient for results, and on top of that pretty harsh on anybody even slightly above average; QED tax brackets. Money can just be confiscated for "good causes" but anything with a true WTF factor would probably justify turning loose every Morally Ambiguous Doctorate they got; and if you think about it, the only thing a public service can reliably provide that the private sector cannot is immunity from prosecution. If you take the Bunny-Ears Lawyer trope to its natural conclusion, Hannibal Lecter wouldn't be left in that asylum IRL; he'd be in a supermax Luxury Prison Suite with all his books and a 24-hour mute guard.
Novium: Maybe it isn't *just* the evil scientist/ science is bad thing. I'm thinking along the lines of the goose that laid the golden eggs. The idea that mankind will short-sightedly destroy something unusual or special is not a new one.
Dead Kennedy: There are plenty of real life examples of this trope, most notably the actual human vivisection performed by Japanese and German scientists in WW 2. Public awareness of these sort of experiments probably originated this trope, but the revelation that the supposedly just and honorable American government had funded experiments using African-Americans as unwitting test subjects, such as the infamous Tuskogee experiment, has done a lot to keep it popular. Furthermore, the argument that one would "keep your only specimen alive" is a pretty weak rebuttal to someone facing the possibility of being that specimen. A lifetime of imprisonment and being subjected to invasive surgeries and potentially harmful tests meets my definition of "they would cut you up." I seriously think the main page underestimates the reasonableness of this belief in most cases.
Desertopa: There have been quite a few examples of this in real life, but current ethical testing standards are much stricter than they used to be. The Tuskegee experiment itself directly led to the establishment of the Office for Human Research Protections and the requirement of institutional review boards for the protection of human subjects. The constraints laid down by both have gotten progressively stricter over time, and at this point it is illegal in America simply to perform tests that have a high risk of making the subjects feel bad about themselves without full, informed consent. The trope is much more justifiable when the story takes place before 1979, or in real or fictional countries that do not purport to have humane standards for human experimentation.
Kalaong: It's only illegal if you get caught. Do your experiments, then kill your subjects and destroy the bodies with acid or feed them to pigs. The Government gets a cool new toy and no troublesome witnesses.
Ulti S.: Moved that Bleach example to Playing with Syringes where it belongs.
VVK: I'm removing the claim that there are no "sentient" non-humans as far as we know. Sentience
simply implies having subjective experience, and we are not thought to be alone in that respect. If someone can clarify that that was supposed to say something else, they can set the statement straight and put it back there. And besides, it's not like there aren't ethical standards for animal studies as well, which was also effectively implied not to be the case.
