The Intellectual and Moral Decline in Academic Research

[rangerrebew]

The Intellectual and Moral Decline in Academic Research
Jan 29, 2020Edward Archer

For most of the past century, the United States was the pre-eminent nation in science and technology. The evidence for that is beyond dispute: Since 1901, American researchers have won more Nobel prizes in medicine, chemistry, and physics than any other nation. Given our history of discovery, innovation, and success, it is not surprising that across the political landscape Americans consider the funding of scientific research to be both a source of pride and a worthy investment.

Nevertheless, in his 1961 farewell address, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned that the pursuit of government grants would have a corrupting influence on the scientific community. He feared that while American universities were “historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery,” the pursuit of taxpayer monies would become “a substitute for intellectual curiosity” and lead to “domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment…and the power of money.”

Eisenhower’s fears were well-founded and prescient.

https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2020/01/the-intellectual-and-moral-decline-in-academic-research/

[Smokin Joe]

When your research  stops being a quest for the answer, wherever the chips may fall, and becomes a steppingstone to continued funding, it is rare that the results desired by funding agencies will not affect the outcome, and if they do not, rarer still that the outcome will not affect funding. Those allocating the grant money often have a desired conclusion, and as such are not constrained by anything to fund other than what they want to hear.

It takes a commitment to the truth to resist such, something that used to be prized in the academic community but has been replaced by a neo-Lysenkoism that provides the results needed to drive agendae and impose control.