Bottom post of the previous page:
Or its actual purpose: A murderous DA that has the chance to let you scan an item twice for the full tech benefit, scan it once to destroy the item but still give you tech, or destroy the item and give you nothing. Say I kill an Op for his super high illegal and combat tech weapon. Since nothing Science makes using the tech is as awesome as the gun itself, I can pop it in the E.X.P.E.R.I-Mentor and then try to scan it for those sweet tech levels, but KEEP the gun. The risk I am taking is of course that the machine might eat my gun and try to kill me at the same time. I can mitigate that risk somewhat by wearing one of the suits in the lab that matches my experiment type and also upgrading the machine. Even then, I still might be blown up or middle fingered, but HEY, I enjoy taking the chance.