Abstraction affects mental functionality. It forms expectations by designing a language in which the present can be expected to be predicted within some objective, measurable tolerance. The problem, always has been, and always will be - is that people can't be measured and tested like machines.
> This only becomes an issue when we can see how it can be applied to some aim.
So yes. That's correct, that's the terrible thing that can be observed and measured when it happens. Prevention is important.
> Thus if there were no engineers nobody would consider the scientists moral obligations with the exception of their experiments themselves causing harm.
Sorry, no, that again, ridiculous. You think that way. Not everyone thinks the same. Intent. Experimentation is intended to discover in a controlled environment while giving heavy weight to moral implications. People choose to opt in to scientific studies. People trust that process when they make that decision.
> The argument to limiting science is that engineers might take it and create some terrible machine with it. Perhaps the most notorious example being a nuclear bomb.
Yes, and what makes us think we are so evolved and so advanced to believe we can't accidentally create something similar with present technology - lacking awareness to it's creation? Evolution won't protect us against our own idiocy.
Reasoning about computation affects cognition, which has real world consequences that extend to everything else that is not reasoning about computation. That's just all there is to it.
> I believe we agree on the role of science, I don't think we agree on what their culpability should be.
They should be able to talk about personal, first hand experiences openly without being professionally attacked, first. Second, they should be able to talk about existing problems without fear of whose bottom line it might affect. There should not be blame in systems where everything is hard as heck to understand. Obligation to the truth - yes. Blame for the belief that there was the intent to create a problem by virtue of uncovering one? No. That has shortsightedness written all over it.