To what extent was this study "scientific"? What does it mean for something to be "scientific"?

I feel that is 'experiment' was not scientific at all. The only scientific characteristic of this 'experiment' is that there was a research question which asked if an ape could be taught to communicate, other than that there was no kind of data collection or observational data that was physically recorded. I feel that for something to be scientific, it needs to be: methodical, systematic, well-organized, orderly, meticulous, rigorous and controlled. Furthermore, it should also consider the ethical implications before carrying out any experiments. The Nim project definitely did not consider ethics and because of this, there were consequences as we saw in the documentary, Nim started to become very aggressive and dangerous. Overall I feel that it was a cruel project that gained lots money making them continue for pleasure rather than it resembling anything of a scientific experiment.