mrplunkey
New member
Looking back its such a shame that Gore was the prominent figure who decided to run with this. Forever turned it into a bullshit left vs right issue when it's about as centrist of an issue there could be.
I agree.
Politics and science have been co-mingled for a very, very long time.
Public money funds lots of science which in turn produces results that support public policy decisions. But there's huge money at stake in public policy which makes the politicization of science a very profitable effort.
You'd think peer review could fix the situation, but in some ways it makes it worse. Grant reviewers are almost always directly or indirectly supported by similar grants, and they're not going to go thermonuclear on each others' applications. Also, research is like the fashion industry, but longer-term. Once an idea becomes vogue, those guys get the research dollars which in turn fund more graduate students which in turn produce more post-docs and research professors that apply for more grants. And no researcher who has been publishing since grad school wants to recant their own research and change directions.
And no, I don't know how to fix it.