[jariel]

"when the 'Experimenter' appealed to the necessity of science, compliance rates where highest. When the Experimenter appealed to pure authority and gave direct commands, compliance rates were low."

This is maybe the most important detail to me which seems to be overlooked.

Often people fail to recognize that there is such a thing as legitimacy of authority, and that's a real thing. No one of us is an expert in any field, it's hard to make heads or tail of the nuanced issues in all of these arenas. We often have to trust the legitimate authority. Which makes it all that much harder when a) maybe doing some action appeals to a darker aspect of human nature or b) the authorities are corrupt or c) the authority is maligned by some other failures, such as bad information.

[974373493200]

The answer should be consent and the recognition that everyone is the highest authority over their own body. I may choose to deffer to an expert on decisions about myself but no amount of expertise or potential benefit to others will convince me to do something against another person without their consent. There need to be a deontological veto to any consequentialist analysis when the proposed action is coercive.