“Science has and is prostituting itself. Scientific results are determined before the research begins by whoever is financing it.”
Yes it has. Years ago I was doing research on clay chemistry mineralogy relative to lattice distances in different saline concentrations of KCl. This may seem esoteric but it has real world applications in bore hole stability when drilling an oil well. Many many weeks in the lab and with an X-Ray diffraction machine was entailed. The whole premise of my original research was wrong. I did not fudge the numbers to make it right. It was just plain damn wrong. I did discover something new and unique that was worthy of publication. I was in my last year of Geology and just wanted to get out and back to the oilfield and make money again. I did not publish as that is not an easy task and would have probably meant one more semester in school.
Some years later this same research was published by another geologist that duplicated what I had done. He did it all on his own and deserves full credit for it.
That is the way real science is done. YOU DO NOT LIE AND IF WRONG SAY IT SO OTHERS DO NOT MAKE THE SAME ERROR!
Then it was useful. Edison tried over 10,000 different filament for his lightbulb before he hit on the one that lasted long enough to be economically viable. Some worked better than others. . . Some flashed out instantly and became the basis for flashbulbs for later flash photography. . . But Edison famously said "I now know thousands of ways how not to do it!"
Incidentally, Edison really did not invent the Electric light bulb; that was actually invented more than thirty years before. It was just not economically viable as a product as the bulbs were quite expensive, were fairly dim, and lasted only a few hours. Edison, like Steve Jobs at Apple who did not truly invent the portable music player or the Smartphone, merely improved the concept into viable products that were usable by everyone. . . But the public perception is they’ll be remembered as the inventors.