Big Money: Setting Research Agendas

Abstract

This chapter argues that just as national interests and security concerns dominate Big Science, so do financial motives and procedures of the marketplace control the research agendas of the scientific community. Economic pressures can distort the ethos of science and direct scientists in universities as well as industrial complexes into areas of research that they wouldn’t have chosen on their own; moreover, these scientists might be forced to practice their trade in compromising ways, from keeping trade secrets to furbishing misleading data.