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“Is this suggesting that the public funders influence the outcome of research?”

The funders decide what gets funded.

One example, from Stanford,

“ Stanford University receives hundreds of millions of dollars of funding from the NIH, without which researchers would not have the resources to conduct many worthwhile experiments and studies. NIH funding also confers prestige and status within the scientific community. At Stanford, it is very difficult for a biomedical researcher in her department to earn tenure without landing a major NIH grant. The attack by Collins and Fauci sent a clear signal to other scientists that the GBD was a heretical document.”

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/sta...