Part of modern science is that it's monitored endlessly for violations of ethics, something that has undoubtedly saved lives. I get the impression that in the aftermath of the war, the Institute didn't have those watchers to police their behavior and it spiraled downward. As common as it is, no one in the institute sees it as immoral or unethical to kidnap people, interrogate them, kill them, and replace them with an identical synth to monitor the surface. Or, arguably even worse, treat generation three synths as tools and slaves while using them for slave labor. It might just be me, but I think the Institute is so difficult to condone is that they work exclusively on logic with none of the underlying morality that we use to influence decision making.

I personally can get the whole slave treatment(because they created them) and the illegal experiments. What bugs me is how Bethesda never really explained the kidnapping and replace shenanigans. That is the only thing standing in the way of any actual justification for that faction....

I feel that this gross breach of ethics was in the making well before the aftermath of the war. The relationship between Vault Tec and the US military articulates this lack of moral ethics. The intended purpose of the vaults was to conduct social and biological experiments on its residents. For me, this really illustrates the downfall of ethics in the scientific community before the great war came to an end.

The "watchers" who policed the ethics and behavior of the scientific community before the war were declining. The institute is a continuation of the pre-war mentality and the lack of oversight prevented a change in course. This similarly reflects to how the Think Tank was capable of performing inhumane actions in the Mojave.

Limitlessness wrote:

I feel that this gross breach of ethics was in the making well before the aftermath of the war. The relationship between Vault Tec and the US military articulates this lack of moral ethics. The intended purpose of the vaults was to conduct social and biological experiments on its residents. For me, this really illustrates the downfall of ethics in the scientific community before the great war came to an end.

The "watchers" who policed the ethics and behavior of the scientific community before the war were declining. The institute is a continuation of the pre-war mentality and the lack of oversight prevented a change in course. This similarly reflects to how the Think Tank was capable of performing inhumane actions in the Mojave.

These are excellent points. I had totally forgotten about the lax stance on ethics in the Fallout timeline.

Considering they literally manufacture humans and use them as tools  wheter the Gen 3 has any say or not means their ethics are pretty abhorrent and the fact that the Institute kidnapped several people for experimentation of FEV and replacing them with Gen 3 copies really put me off them. For the Institute it's a matter of "Can we do it?" and not "Should we do it?"

Kakashi Hatake wrote:

Considering they literally manufacture humans and use them as tools  wheter the Gen 3 has any say or not means their ethics are pretty abhorrent and the fact that the Institute kidnapped several people for experimentation of FEV and replacing them with Gen 3 copies really put me off them. For the Institute it's a matter of "Can we do it?" and not "Should we do it?"

Did you ever catch the body of Sammy in Goodneighbor? How the watch killed a synth double? Imagine what his friends and family must have thought after the news was broken. Or, even worse, Warwick's family if they find out.

@GreyKnight666 If I remember correctly Bill Sutton who lives in Warwick Homestead already found out about Roger and so he sent Cedric Hopton to Goodneighbour to get someone to take the fake Roger out. The following quote from Bill's letter to Cedric shows how well the Institute can succeed in completely fooling someone(or not).

"The man you're after is called Roger Warwick, except he ain't actually a man at all, he's a damn synth spy. Those institute bastards grabbed the real Roger and they put this faker in his place. Well, they might of fooled Roger's wife and kids, but they ain't fooled me."

@"Kakashi Hatake" Oh yes. I forgot about him because I've only ever done that quest once. I was thinking more his wife and son, as they didn't know that Roger was replaced. Though his son did mention in dialogue that synth Roger was a lot nicer to him than before, so maybe there's more to the way synths replace humans.