The witches' brew that is public funding of science

Is there a causal link between violent video games and actual violence?  Is there a scientifically demonstrated link?  How can we tell if there are biases in today's system of how science is performed?  After years of research, we know nothing about the correlation between video games and violence:

When the Supreme Court struck down a California law regulating the sale of "violent" videogames to minors, they said the scientific evidence damning such games was, at best, "unpersuasive." And they're probably right: if a link between violent games and aggression does exist, it's still debatable how strongly they correlate. Even talking to scientists who have studied this doesn't clear up what's actually going on here, and that's largely due to external pressures. The media is ready to latch on to any study that indicates a conclusion, and media attention can often turn into grant money for research--and if there's anything we don't want mixing, it's science with media and money.

Both sides of the debate can go to battle armed with studies, even if the evidence on either side is weak at best. Christopher J. Ferguson of Texas A&M International University lays it out, starting with that now-infamous Supreme Court ruling. The fault doesn't isn't on one group, necessarily, but rather on the scientific status quo. Research is not the objective procedural we'd all like to hope it is; results can be interpreted to make the case for certain findings, or they can be put out of proportion. In fact, it's a confirmed phenomenon that may or may not affect research on violent games: publication bias. If data is more likely to be published--in this case, positive correlations between games and aggression--scientists may give it more weight.

So a certain study finds a correlation, or says there's one, and it's published. The media picks it up, explaining the (science-approved!) dangers of these games, and the debate gets even more polarized. But if one study finds a correlation, it's not the last word (or vice versa). Both sides of the debate can go to battle armed with studies, even if the evidence on either side is weak at best. And even with the shield of peer review, scientists aren't immune to falling into an advocacy camp. The media picks up those individual studies without looking at the big picture, more scientists drop back into corners, and the debate continues without any kind of clarity brought to the table.

If there's anything we don't want mixing, it's science with media and money.  Aye, there's the rub: scientific careers are made by precisely this mixing.  The last ingredients to toss into the cauldron are researchers with a nose for what politicians want, and a convenient hysteria leading to large grants.  Just ask Michael Mann - a very junior scientist (newly-minted PhD, in fact) whose "Hockey Stick" paper resulted in him being appointed as a lead author on the 2001 IPCC Third Assessment Report.

The paper referenced in the article above covers this, damningly:

According to moral panic theory, society begins to essentially select research that fits with the pre-existing beliefs. Science is made to act as a rationale for translating moral repugnance to moral regulation (Critcher, 2009). Essentially we might think of the opinions of scientists on an issue such as video game violence as occupying a kind of bell curve. Of course we might understand that scientists who have preexisting concerns about an issue such as video game violence may already self-select into the field (Grisso & Steinberg, 2005), creating an unintended bias within the scientific community where the scientists in a field don’t necessarily represent a plurality of opinions (Redding, 2001). Yet society itself may amplify this process through media outlets choosing to publicize only research that promotes the panic (Thompson, 2008) and government and advocacy granting agencies choosing to select which research to fund. I submit that it is much more difficult to secure grant funding by arguing that something isn’t a pressing social concern.

[Emphasis mine].  Now consider the old academic saying "publish or perish" - what should we expect the effect of public funding of science to be upon what is published in scientific journals?

The conceit of most "Progressive Intellectuals" that they are smarter and more scientific than everyone else is belied by their utter failure to consider the feedback system here.  That system is indeed highly useful for their policy prescriptions, but that utility does not confirm that they're more scientific.  On the contrary.

The late Hal Lewis touched on precisely this bubbling brew in his spectacular resignation from the American Physical Society, of which he was a fellow (and a member of 50 years):

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.

...

Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don’t think that is an issue. I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst. When Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing, and the University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, they cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise. As the old saying goes, you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing.

[Again, emphasis mine]  Politicians love using science to justify public action, because of the trust that has been built up by the scientific community over the course of many centuries.  That same scientific community looks like it is selling that trust to the highest bidder.  They have, in the space of a bare generation, debased the coin of science.  There's an old saying in economics that bad money drives out good money: that as the currency is debased, people lost trust even in good currency.

Now we're seeing that bad science done for politically-inspired grant funding drives out good science.  Trust, once lost, is terribly difficult to regain.  The fact that scientific departments world wide would sell out to politicians (of all people) makes it even worse.

POLITICS, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

 I was trained as a scientist.  This whole thing sticks in my craw.