One of the men who developed pepper spray is outraged by police who use it on protestors. Just another example of an inventor who can't control his creation.

The reaction to the pepper-spraying incident as UC Davis last week has been nearly uniformly one of horror (I say nearly because of the credulous acceptance of the police actions by certain Fox News anchors). But to those outside of the Fox News bubble, the pepper-spray attack demonstrated a disturbing combination of callousness and aggression.

Interesting, those people include Kamran Loghman, one of pepper spray's developers. Loghman worked for the FBI in the 1980s and helped to make it into a weapons-grade material. He has also helped to write guidelines for police departments for using the spray. The New York Times found him and asked him what he made of the UC Davis incident. He told them, "I have never seen such an inappropriate and improper use of chemical agents."

And that's the thing about building weapons-grade technologies: You can't control their use.

Of course, Loghman is not the first inventor to see his creation used in a way that met with his disapproval. Alfred Nobel may be the inventor most closely associated with that sentiment, but this turns out not be quite accurate. The story goes that after inventing dynamite, he tried to make amends for it by endowing the peace prize that bears his name. But Nobel's ideological trajectory was much less clear. He believed that dynamite would help governments achieve peace through deterrence, and worked late into his life developing new weapons. He did not live to see World War I and the damage that dynamite could wreak.