[RoosterRedux]

Science went off the rails back in the 1970's when the government, foundations, and corporations started funding research to prove a predetermined result and cut off funding for research that was based on the scientific method (i.e., an unbiased, empirical search for the truth).

If scientific research doesn't follow the evidence wherever it leads, regardless of the outcome, it isn't science.

[Brooklyn Attitude]

“Science went off the rails back in the 1970’s...”

It may have started going off the rails in the 70’s but 50 years later it’s become the flaming black mushroom cloud of toxic death seen in Palestine Ohio.

[KarlInOhio]

Science went off the rails back in the 1970's when the government, foundations, and corporations started funding research to prove a predetermined result and cut off funding for research that was based on the scientific method (i.e., an unbiased, empirical search for the truth).

This was warned about many years ago. From President Eisenhower's farewell address:

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.