Science is as much as any other endeavor subject to “peer pressure”. If your colleagues are all off chasing bizarrely named particles that probably don’t even exist, and you’re doing something useful (I’m not a particle physicist, so I’m not sure how to give a really good example), it limits your ability to talk in the faculty lounge. Fewer people are interested in your papers. It takes longer to publish. But if you jump on the bandwagon chasing the latest ‘crapton’ ... Well now. You’re one of the cool kids! And, of course, the Benjamins will follow.
In many respects, scientific research is broken. Big Foundations and Big Government had a lot to do with breaking it.
“In many respects, scientific research is broken. Big Foundations and Big Government had a lot to do with breaking it.”
Amen to that!
Most of the funding is provided by politicians, bureaucrats and activists who have taken over the foundations.
So what you end up with is 95% “political science” and 5% real science. And billions wasted.
And actually it’s worse than wasting billions, it’s destructive because it’s used to push their radical agenda.
There would be less damage done if those billions were just burned.
Eisenhower’s Farewell Address
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/farewell-radio-and-television-address-the-american-people
… Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed 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.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite...