For the last 30 years, scientists didn’t get grants unless they hewed to the politically correct line on global warming, then climate change (when the global warming line wasn’t working so well).
Do you think that has had any effect on all this?
Eisenhower warned us of this in his farewell speech, right after warning of the military-industrial complex. He was an incredibly prescient man.
Eisenhower should have warned us about the Political-Educational-Scientific-Media-Entertainment-Big Tech-Military-Industrial Complex!
(Of course, if he did, people would have thought he had a stroke and was emitting word-salad or speaking in tongues! Kind of what we think of Biden...)
I absolutely 100% believe that grants have been a major factor in this. One of the best books on the subject I have read, by Christopher Horner “Red Hot Lies” describes this dynamic in detail.
When access to the teat of grant money to be sucked at by scholastics is controlled by political strings, and those who don’t hew the political line are excluded from grants, then the dynamic takes on a life of its own.
Not only do the people who toe the line get the money, but those who DON’T toe the line have EVERYTHING taken away from them, even things that don’t have anything to do with the “line”. Basically, it quarantines them and makes them persona-non-grata in their field.
Only the biggest names can survive that, and even then, they only manage to survive. They don’t flourish.
You hit it spot on.