Only humans perform experiments on other species that we would regard as torture if they were done to us. We argue that it's for the greater good, of course, but the ease and speed with which we rush to accept that is suspicious; in other areas of life we would regard such arguments as obvious self-serving spin. It's not hard to imagine that future generations will look back on many of these experiments with the same moral horror that we have toward some of the past.

I had this feeling when watching the Capuchin monkey fairness experiment in Frans de Waal's TED talk. From an ordinary point of view, it's cute and charming. You laugh along with the audience; the monkeys are funny. You go away with a heartwarming feeling that you've learned something about primate (and thus human) nature. But if the veil drops and you look at it more immediately, the video can also seem horrific. At least it struck me that way. That and other things have got me wondering whether there's something wrong with a science that excludes empathy as a component of knowledge.