How Harvard's psychological experiments may have lit fuse on Unabomber: expert

"[Kaczynski] was very vulnerable because of his age and all," Dr. Ann Wolbert Burgess, pioneer of the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, told Fox News Digital. "So I think it would affect him. I think it did affect him."

However, the experiment quickly escalated.

Once each student submitted their essay, they were wired to electrodes and seated in front of bright lights, according to History.com. Murray would then reportedly instruct his team to belittle each student's ideals, while subjecting them to what he described as "vehement, sweeping, and personally abusive" interrogations.

Participants were reportedly not fully informed by Murray regarding the nature of the experiment, which was to study useful interrogation techniques that could be used by national security agents and other law enforcement officials while in the field.

"It was clearly not ethical to do research and not to tell people, and especially to do the research where they hooked them up to electrodes," Burgess said. "I mean, now I understand what they were trying to do to see if the heart rate, blood pressure and all that would increase. So they got some measures - some hard measures - but evidently this was allowed over at Harvard and the way Murray played it, this was OK."

Burgess also added that Murray was not treating his subjects fairly while they were undergoing the experimentation, ultimately violating a string of modern ethical standards.

"One of the whole points is that you can't do research that doesn't in some way compensate the person in some manner," Burgess told Fox News Digital. "You don't have to pay them, but you can compensate them in another way - so that always has to be part of the exchange."

Despite the lack of ethical guardrails, Burgess insists the overall nature of the experiment was detrimental to its participants.

"[Studies] can't be harmful," Burgess said. "You're not there to injure, and certainly what Murray and his crew were doing was injurious."

"To call them names, derogatory names, or to say that their work wasn't worthwhile - these were students. Their whole being, at that particular point in their development, is academics and knowledge. They were being demeaned for that, or devalued for that in this critical time."

Harvard University did not respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.

"Did any of this affect him?" Burgess said. "Evidently, his defense lawyers at his trial wanted to make the argument that this did affect his thinking - and it very well could have."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.