http://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2013/01/08/science_has_always_b...
The mythology of the super-rational, completely impartial scientist is promoted by scientists - but it has probably done more harm than good.
Good science requires passion, it requires arguments and it requires a desire to beat out other people. The notion that scientists are instead modern-day versions of Spock from "Star Trek", dispassionately analyzing data and uncovering the secrets of nature, is in defiance of what we know about actual scientists who do breakthrough work.
It also leads to claims that this overarching, Ayn Rand-ian objectivity about science make science irrationally influenced by the thing that influences most people; money. Invariably, when data disagrees with results by people who view science as another world view, the question turns to 'who funded them?' Now, that question has value. Scientists routinely disclose anything that might be a conflict of interest, but to imply that funding source means that the scientists are told what data to produce is silly - did the scientists funded during the George Bush administration produce work inferior to the work of scientists during the Obama administration? Are scientists at Exxon less ethical than scientists at East Anglia University?
In reality, money has always been the driving force in science and that is no different today. Since World War II, the US government has taken increased control of research and government funds the work of scientists whose work they happen to like. Corporations do the exact same thing. But neither the government funding agencies or corporations are editing reports, with some notable exceptions on both sides. If money was not a factor, very little science would ever be done. Darwin couldn't go on his voyage for free. Even Mendel had to work as an un-credentialed substitute teacher while he discovered that whole genetics thing.
Danish science historian Peter C. Kjærgaard, a professor of evolutionary studies at Aarhus University, wrote a paper showing that the influence of funding is nothing new. As an example, he did a fascinating analysis of the intricate economic, scientific and political interests that all conflicted and cooperated, based on their interests, that resulted in the discovery of the world’s first dinosaur nest in the Gobi Desert in the 1920s.
It started with an American search for a 'missing link' and all of the motivations and needs and input from academics, private sector and amateur researchers that go into narrowing down such a place. But it ended up with the world's first dinosaur egg.
Looking for a missing link and finding an egg is obviously an incredibly expensive failure; except it wasn't. The publicity they got from finding a dinosaur egg led to funding to continue their work - if the researchers had originally sneered at funding, they certainly would not have gotten it and if the results had been spun as an expensive failure in mass media, that would have ended things in a wave of Congressional hearings and politicians posturing for newspaper columnists.
There's nothing wrong with government control of science, and there is certainly nothing wrong with accountability. Some scientists may regard any criticism of the National Science Foundation's wasteful spending on pseudoscience as an attack on science itself but it's really just the opposite.
