I winced.
“That is the question I want you to answer,” he said. “You are completely insulated from any possible backlash to your answer—the people who will ultimately judge me will never know you were consulted, even after the fact. There is no stick to be applied to you as a result of your answer. And now I will offer the carrot. The same carrot that got me into this.”
I was already reaching for the whiskey. Dammit, I thought, this isn’t fair. All I ever tried to do was entertain people.... Balls, came the answer from deep inside.
“If you tell me that constructing the experiment was a moral act,” he went on inexorably, “I will tell you everything I can about the results.”
Well, what would you have done?