@Elventine
Well.
Hhm. So, you don't have the time to find the data to support your hypothesis and don't have it to hand, yet you make sweeping statements about the flaws in science. That weakens your argument.
Funding - having re-read what I said and how you have read it I would like to modify my early statement a fraction. There is a lot of industrially funded research which is unbiased and no-one has any interest in "encouraging" it to produce a particular answer - industry wants to know the answer to "x" and one or more researchers are funded to look at x - PhD students are the cheapest option. There could be say a material science problem - how do this type of materials behave when exposed to the following range of conditions (which is what they'd meet during their service lifetime). The different materials and conditions are divided up into three year projects, various students work on the studies, reports are written, papers are published and at the end of the day the industrial sponsor has the answer on what is the service life of the various new materials and knows whether or not they want to bother to use them. All solid science, totally undramatic.
Yes a source of funding with few strings attached would be brilliant. It used to exist in the UK as SERC, but it was closed down by the government as being too expensive. I think that was a whacking big mistake as at the time in impacted on blue sky research, but I do also understand if you have a limited pot of money, you can't do everything. I am not up on current university funding as I no longer work in that area. If you want science to have a large pot of money from the government, would you Elventine, be prepared to pay higher taxes to support it?
While I was writing this, Dave has written an even better answer than the one above. Go Dave.
Well.
Hhm. So, you don't have the time to find the data to support your hypothesis and don't have it to hand, yet you make sweeping statements about the flaws in science. That weakens your argument.
Funding - having re-read what I said and how you have read it I would like to modify my early statement a fraction. There is a lot of industrially funded research which is unbiased and no-one has any interest in "encouraging" it to produce a particular answer - industry wants to know the answer to "x" and one or more researchers are funded to look at x - PhD students are the cheapest option. There could be say a material science problem - how do this type of materials behave when exposed to the following range of conditions (which is what they'd meet during their service lifetime). The different materials and conditions are divided up into three year projects, various students work on the studies, reports are written, papers are published and at the end of the day the industrial sponsor has the answer on what is the service life of the various new materials and knows whether or not they want to bother to use them. All solid science, totally undramatic.
No. Most scientists and most companies when they pay for research are looking for what is really happening. Yes, there are times when data is suppressed completely, or results are cherry picked, or conclusions are written that totally exaggerate the data. However other scientists can spot that. They can repeat the experiments and say "hang on, that didn't work for me". The system may not be perfect, or always act promptly, but there are lots of instances in flawed and deliberately skewed research being spotted and publicised. You have already provided links to that happening. Scientists found the flaws in the science. That is the system working.The fact is that as you said - most scientific research is done by and paid for by companies and people with invested interests in certain results and so hire people with invested interests in certain results. To make sure of getting those results. This is part of the biased that is fundamental to science.
Yes a source of funding with few strings attached would be brilliant. It used to exist in the UK as SERC, but it was closed down by the government as being too expensive. I think that was a whacking big mistake as at the time in impacted on blue sky research, but I do also understand if you have a limited pot of money, you can't do everything. I am not up on current university funding as I no longer work in that area. If you want science to have a large pot of money from the government, would you Elventine, be prepared to pay higher taxes to support it?
While I was writing this, Dave has written an even better answer than the one above. Go Dave.