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Sawses t1_iylhpeg wrote

Reply to comment by Smooth_Imagination in A new study based on 22 FOI requests of over 11,000 pages found that Coca-Cola exerts direct influence on academic institutions and organizations that convene major public health conferences and events, and makes payments directly to speakers and researchers conditional on media interviews. by Meatrition

Do bear in mind that the history of science is extremely political and driven by "Big Money". All the way from philosophers like Plato and Aristotle all the way through proto-scientists like Tycho and Darwin into the 19th/20th centuries with "scientific" justifications for things like sexism and classism.

It didn't end then. Now you've got bloated bureaucratic institutions that are far more about money than about science, with no end of people willing to trade scientific rigor for better odds at tenure by pursuing the "right" lines of questioning or failing to address certain implications of their research.

That isn't to say science is an unworthy pursuit, or that modern scientists are all corrupt or that the institutions don't do a lot of good. IMO it's the highest calling a person can pursue even in the present circumstances. That doesn't make modern scientific institutions or their practitioners beyond reproach, however.

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