> Any time “science” supports large corporations making a lot of money, you should look more carefully.
Near the end of this conversation piece, that point is noted:
“The CTR [Council for Tobacco Research] would say, “Publish whatever you want.” But the bias was built in to the selection of problems in the first place. And that’s a general principle that historians and philosophers need to pay more attention to: Problem selection and funding shape what kind of science gets done. One of the more general points about agnotology is that there are infinitely many things you might know, and that whatever in fact becomes known is only a tiny sliver of what might be known — infinitesimal really. What this means is that when you’re shining a light on something, almost everything else remains in the dark. And sometimes that darkness is deliberately kept dark; the darkness itself may be created, maintained, exaggerated, inflated, and reinforced, sometimes even by the very power of the light itself (think flashy fish lures or Donald Trump). I think there’s an assumption in a lot of thinking about science that there is some finite quantum of knowledge humans might acquire. Maybe we’ll never get it all, but at least we’re moving forward, vanquishing the darkness. But darkness has many friends, and often deep pockets as well. And darkness can easily grow as fast as (or faster than) the light. So it’s much more a constructive or organic metaphor that we need.”