[fastaguy88]

Interesting political philosophy, but little that speaks to the pursuit of science. Universities may be bureaucratic, but those bureaucracies have almost nothing to do with scientific agendas. Likewise, grant review panels work hard to find innovative, not consensus, proposals. Again, the main thing the management does is demand more external funding, it does not set scientific direction. And, of course, Facebook, Microsoft, etc is not science- at best it is engineering.

[logicalmonster]

> Likewise, grant review panels work hard to find innovative, not consensus, proposals.

I don't want to give specific examples of research topics to avoid poisoning the well, but could you argue with a straight face that an academic that wanted to do research into some topics that could be likely to yield certain types of politically incorrect conclusions wouldn't face extreme difficulty getting funding or extreme risk to their career?

I think it's easy to see how much scientific research on certain topics could be stuck within a narrow range of opinion because people are more concerned with what gets funding or doesn't get them shunned.

[fastaguy88]

I do not know anything about grant panels outside my field of biology. But I am certain that the overwhelming majority of grant money is spent on scientific questions that have virtually no obvious political dimension. I’m sure there are grant applications that have a substantial political component, but I would be surprised if they accounted for even 5% of research funds. Social and political science receives a very small fraction of research funds, and while one might argue that allocations of health research budgets are politically shaped, viruses and oncogenes have no politics.