A reader who is an academic scientist writes in to respond to the reader I quoted this morning as claiming that science and engineering departments are "the most overwhelmingly politicized departments at virtually every major research university." The issue: when, where, and how the academic sciences are corrupted, or at least determined, by political concerns.

In some ways, I *absolutely* agree with this correspondent. But, to return to the original question/argument (in particular as expounded in the blogosphere): politics meant left/right, conservative/liberal, and PC vs. -'ist's. As someone who has argued about "politicization", and the lack thereof in hard sciences, I was only referring to the more social (?)/traditional(?) (don't know the right word here) aspects of politics. I'd say your correspondent probably doesn't know half of what does go on. It's not so much the heresy of proving someone wrong (there is always a cachet in that). It's *what subfields* constitutes valid research, an agenda that is set by a complicated system/process that probably makes Vatican politics look simple, straightforward and transparent.

On the other hand, someone who is not actively in a science department now, only sees what makes it into the paper. How much of social science/history/literature research or scholarly activity would a scientist working for a defense contractor see? The fight as to whether Stephen King constitutes literature? The stuff that does make it into the paper is much more high profile and, to use a favorite word of many colleagues "sexy science". There are still lots of people doing lots of un-sexy work that wouldn't be seen by anyone not actively looking for it. I can list dozens of journals in my sub-discipline, that publish 1000's of pages a year, of peer-reviewed, edited, and un-controlled (by the "agenda") science.

There is also a larger point about how science works. Administrators want funding, but they can't make anyone write a grant on a specific topic. The people controlling the money make decisions about what gets funded, but not what that work finds or how its reported. And NIH, NSF, USDA, EPA, etc, the major Federal grant sources let other scientists review the grants, not necessearily the administrators aching for money. Yes, the examples of the individual researcher who didn't read their contract with the satans of industry is true. But there are legions of other workers who are honest, and who do have a moral and ethical sense, and, importantly, aren't funded by industry, and do report what they find, good or bad, up or down. Upper Administration may have sold their souls, but by and large the scientists in the trenches have not.

I think the problem lies in the need for grant money, and overhead or indirect costs, to subsidize the research mission of Universities. Thus people will work on things for which they can get money - it's a subtle form of redirection. The pressure is overwhelming to get a grant to get tenure (it's written into most tenure documents these days). That's one of the most egregious forms of politics. Can people do research without grant money? I think so, but given the regulatory climate (that's Federal regulations governing most aspects of research), it's getting harder, but it's still possible. Lots of people do, and publish good nationally recognized work.

It's not so much that you can't object to things, or develop a new idea or even prove an old one wrong. There is money for that. Its the idea of deciding what larger area of research are valuable. The Gates Foundation has just given a huge amount of money that NIH is going to administer. It's their money, and they have set a particular agenda (it actually made the news, but the call to investigators had more detail). I'm not sure why that Foundation shouldn't set their goals. I'm disappointed they're not funding my work (physiology of feeding in infants), but I'm not (nor are most of my colleagues) going to start doing the things that they do fund. There will be lots of people in those fields however, who perhaps do bend their interests to get that money. But no University can make any individual put in a proposal for something they don't want to do. I'd argue that scientific work as a national enterprise is probably less constrained, more free, and certainly wider ranging than at any time in the past. It's not perfect, but no one was ever denied tenure for publishing a specific scientific perspective. Tenure committees by and large count publications (which in the end is a reflection of effort - nearly anything can and does get published). Tenure committees by and large don't give a damn about the content of the grant, just does it reach a dollar threshold.

Think of it like a haiku: the form is rigid, limited and set, but the content, the message is a product of the unlimited imagination of the author.