Understanding your opponent's motives and mindset is a distinct advantage.
Even granting that they entered the field with the best of intentions – and I think with Wessely in particular, that is highly contestable – but even granting that, it clearly didn't stay that way as the evidence stacked up against their hypothesis and approach (which it was doing from fairly early on), and they resorted to increasingly ridiculous, offensive, and illegitimate means to deny that and suppress it.
For the best part of three decades they consistently chose to place their egos, reputations, careers, empires, status, and – let's be blunt – not inconsiderable incomes above the science and the welfare of their patients, and they were increasingly ruthless and underhanded about it.
Understanding their motives and mindset is an important part of finding out what happened, handing out appropriate accountability, and learning from it so we can try to prevent it happening again.
These people deserve no respect or quarter. They gave us none.