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“I note that you refer to the “corporate media” but not “corporate science”. Seriously if you can criticise the way the media works you ought to be able to criticise the way scientific “opinion” works, and the system in which decisions are made regarding what actually gets researched by “scientists” and what doesn’t. (We can agree that those decisions affect scientific opinion, right?) It’s all about money and power and jobsworthery and it’s highly centralised.”
There is no such thing as corporate science. You made that up. Corporate media is very clearly defined and owned and funded by rich men and corporations. In the case of scientific research there is no such centralised funding and control. You are right in one respect, before Thatcher and Blair, science was funded to a certain degree by government funding based purely on the scientific merit of the proposed research, its utility in advancing knowledge and also eventually to be translated to practical uses such as new treatments, drugs vaccines an so on. This meant that there was a good chance of getting funding for basic research, asking questions or defining parameters which advanced our knowledge but may not have a direct commercial or monetary value. After Thatcher and Blair’s ‘reforms’ government funding for research was considerably reduced and many researchers were encourage to seek industrial sources for funding to targeted ‘translational research’. This gave priority to research that could lead to results with a commercial value that could be exploited later.
But none of these have led to ‘centralisation’ of the research itself or direct control on how the research was done or the results or of the workforce. Of course a lot of commercially funded research but not all, had clauses controlling publication and confidentiality, but a sizeable amount remains whereby the researchers have free reign to explore other subjects.
Science, like anything is as reliable as its practitioners and the various professional checks on its operation. Many of the scientific and medical journals have established a long tradition and reputation of impartiality and interpreting the science according to the methodology and the derived data. This system generally works but occasionally there are corrupt scientists that sneak falsified data, or dubious methodology past a journal which is later refuted or retracted. There is no overarching corporate control of this process and it works well. And why does it work well? Because falsified or unreproducible results in science usually die a natural death, advances that are genuine and useful are taken up and lead to more advances. It is almost a self selecting process.
But to lump science as one monolith and equate it to corporate media is an oversimplification. Having spent a lot of time describing and decrying the methods of the ‘morons’ you should have been more careful not to make the same errors that they do.