adulterated by greed and politics; research that desires to increase our knowledge regardless of the repercussions. This is probably still true in astronomy because they have figured a way to turn that into obscene profiteering.
I suppose I am a cynical old man. In my career I worked for NASA, helped out with the beginnings of NOAA, am the son of a scientist mother. The changes I've witness over the years in research have not been inspiring. Funding is cut and worst research is expected to pay for itself. Researchers scramble for grants like congress critters working the lobbyists for money.
Back to my example about diabetes research; where is the work being done to determine the underlying causes of metabolic disorders? The pharmaceuticals are constantly churning out new iterations of drugs that over more hyperbole than results. Some are down right dangerous but they all have one thing in common, they make the firms billions of $s. The same is true in a lot of other medical disorders. Older drugs that are helpful in alleviating depression and other mental disorders are being abandoned for newer drugs that are often no better and often worse. Again there is a common denominator, the new drugs make billions for the companies the old drugs are cheep.
I mentioned NASA and NOAA, I also worked in product development in R&D labs. The work I did is no longer an option. Those companies are like the drug companies that no longer do much new research. What they do is to reconfigure old designs into new flashy packaging with the added bonus to them of planned obsolescence.
It is true that scientific research has never been completely uncontaminated by financial and political influence, but it was more balanced; just the same with print, audio and video news reporting. There was a time journalists did their best to be unbiased unless writing editorial or on the OpEd page. Now it's all OpEd.
You may think this is unrelated to the original topic, but it is all the same. The truth is sweep under the proverbial rug and the flimflam artists rule the broom.
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