Yes, virtually all basic research is federally funded. Does it distort science?
Nutrition is not at all easy to do as science because doing research with humans is not considered ethical by society. I think it's something we need to address, and it seems short sighted to me.
Your example is not at all convincing evidence for you rather sweeping thesis.
I see the bias most clearly in the science and studies that are not being funded and the changes that are not being promoted. Why, for example, does Al Gore focus on climate change, which is based on contested predictions of how the climate will be in 50 years, and not on eliminating the farm subsidies which make food so artificially cheap that about a third of Americans, many of them "in poverty," are obese? Could it be that addressing climate change involves increasing government power while eliminating subsidies would reduce government power?
When was the last time government paid for a study that recommended that some department or agency of the government be eliminated?
Sal Khan has videos covering all the math taught in K-12. Why don't government-funded scientists study whether thousands of math teachers can be taken off government payrolls and replaced with Khan's videos?
You can of course imagine second-order effects whereby the selection of the members of the peer-review committee is skewed by the program officers, picking panels that they think will give money to the programs they want. But if they consistently picked committee members that are out of the scientific mainstream, I think you'd hear a howl from the scientific community. I've heard plenty of complaints about the awards from people who weren't funded, but that the panels were stacked by people with predetermined ideas of what results should be obtained is not one of them.
As to your K-12 example, do you know for a fact that there are (competent) researchers who have applied for grants to conduct that study and were rejected? If not, you have no case.
If you think the government orders what research be done, you are woefully uninformed of how the vast majority of research is conducted in the US. Aside from a small number of researchers working in government facilities, research grants are awarded based on proposals from independent researchers. If no one applies to conduct a study, it won't happen no matter how much "the government" wants it to. And as far as I know, there is no government-run research facilities in the field of education.
And finally, in case you haven't noticed, Al Gore has not been affiliated with the government for a decade...
I think one of the points this article makes is that it is possible to look unconsciously for the results/proof you want. Science, especially this science, is rarely black/white. And if you are set on a specific shade of grey there is a natural positive bias towards that.
The argument is, I guess, that Federal funding is likely to favour scientists that support the shade of grey govt. wants to see. (again, a natural bias - though perhaps not so ethical...)
Not a conspiracy certainly; just a combination of slight bias and belief ending in a slightly off center result.
The problem with climate science is that to disagree with the GW theory right now means being branded a denier and a loon. So the bias shift is a emphasised.
I think that in the context of climate science, if you make a statement that you disagree with "GW theory", you are making a statement that is very close to a blanket denial. Which specific facts of the theory do you disagree with, and what is your alternative? Are you disagreeing with the IPCC number for the climate sensitivity? Or are you disagreeing with the idea that anthropogenic global warming can be true? Those are very different, the first is well within the scientific mainstream, the second is not.
No wait, all research takes place in areas that have the exact same political spin....
Wait, that's not true either... Hmm
This is pretty sad and pathetic. If you are so confident, please head over to the NSF and go through grant proposals. Let us know when you prove your case with evidence that is so obviously true to you.
>Why don't government-funded scientists study whether thousands of math teachers can be taken off government payrolls and replaced with Khan's videos?
People do study different methods of teaching. I'll think you'll find that videos are no substitute for human interaction though.
Your other commentary on various things is just rather confused, but not lacking in certainty. Congratulations on becoming a fountain of truth.
It would be pretty extraordinary if it somehow didn't, wouldn't it?
The government has its issues, but funding science is a great thing. Sure, I'd like for less money to be controlled by the pentagon. But I'd love to see even money spent on basic research.
Laissez-faire approaches tend to result in the tragedy of the commons, where the commons is some environmental factor -- fish stocks, etc. -- and science has been consistently pointing out the problems caused as a result. Therefore, to defend itself, libertarianism must discredit science.
The solution is to associate science with government; since, by libertarian definition, anything a government does is wrong, it follows that science is wrong and, by the fallacy of begging the question, libertarianism is right.
Free-market libertarians have an ideological imperative to deny any causality between activity in the pursuit of profit and environmental catastrophes.
It's no surprise that a framework based almost entirely on individual property rights is unable to protect that which is impossible to own, to say nothing of the incorrectness of treating land as partitionable property when we know the ecosystem to be a globally-connected process.
By claiming to champion rationalism, their pretenses shine through; when the scientific method reveals the impracticality of their philosophy, they attack science itself.
You know, maybe we need a less-biased source of scientific funding — how about Exxon Mobil? I'm sure they'd have enough to pay for some real independent research. Oh, actually, it looks like they've been pretty busy already: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=ExxonMobil_fundin...