I believe it was originally down-voted for making the assumption that science could solve politics (we're talking opinions, not facts, so you cannot rigourously apply the scientific method).

The comment also fell for the trap of falsely equating opposition with conflict.

As a thought experiment, take the issue of abortion. GP is telling me that certainly either "Abortions should be allowed because of the mother's rights" or "Abortions should not be allowed because of the unborn child's rights" is WRONG. Tell me how anyone could possibly create an "experiment" which would result in a meaningful answer. How would you measure the morality and goodness of the event in a way that everyone could agree upon? Do you see the problem?

> As a thought experiment, take the issue of abortion. GP is telling me that certainly either "Abortions should be allowed because of the mother's rights" or "Abortions should not be allowed because of the unborn child's rights" is WRONG. Tell me how anyone could possibly create an "experiment" which would result in a meaningful answer. How would you measure the morality and goodness of the event in a way that everyone could agree upon? Do you see the problem?

The problem here is that biological and neurological research has a long way to go to resolve the question after what week of pregnancy what level of consciousness or intellectual capacity is there. So at the moment there is no way to answer this question in an acceptable way.

No, the problem is that they are "should" questions, and thus experiments can't answer them at all. Now, if you assume a moral framework in which a certain combination of consciousness or intellectual capacity on the part of the mother makes her rights paramount (or one which does so for the child, or one which does some calculus on the relative levels of those traits between the mother and the child to determine which is paramount) then you can reduce this to a fact question that is conceivably resolvable by experiment (and, thus, leave only the problem that you mention), but I would assert that there is no such consensus moral framework, so you've actually identified the easy problem with resolving the conflict, while ignoring the fundamental and intractable one.

This is a fruitful example: the vast majority of those opposed to abortion will concede that a zygote has no conciousness or intellectual capacity, yet most of them will nonetheless insist on the zygote's personhood and right to life.

Exactly.