Government and Science: A Dangerous Liaison?

Abstract

We survey the relationship between government and science (concentrating on the situation in the U.S.). We discuss the theoretical rationale for government funding, showing that it is open to serious question – its model of science as market is highly suspect, and its implications for the remedial effects of intervention do not stand up to even casual empirical scrutiny. Calling attention to the nakedness of the standard economic rationale, however, does not touch the very real political rationales, and it is the interaction of these with the understandably strong desire of scientists to be well-funded to which we direct attention. We describe various ways in which government funding can interact with scientists and scientific activity to produce the unanticipated effects that concern us.

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