Funding of science by way of government has produced many good results but it has also politicized science and the politicization of science is harmfulto the scientific process. It provides a source of funding for research making it easier for research to be funded allowing some research to be done that probably could not get funded other wise.
Sadly science has become too dependent on government grants to the point where 90% of scientific research is funded by government. Getting funding from a given source requires that you appease that source. Getting government funding requires appeasing government officials. While grant requests are peer reviewed but the money altimetry comes from politicians which has a chilling affect on science since some areas of research are funded while others are not. About 1 in 10 unsolicited grant applications are approved so some legitimate research is rejected. Furthermore some paradigms are favored by government over competing ones. For example research in to manned caused global warming gets funded while opposing research does not get funded.
The reason for this is that politics is about acquiring and holding on to power not knowledge and as a result politicians are often not really interested is the science but sending money to their districts and pushing a political agenda.
Science needs to reduce its dependence on government funding. Priority needs to be given to private funding which can take several forms, foundations, universities, and other nonprofit organizations and for profit organizations while these are already used to some degree, private funding should be encouraged more. It is less corrupting because there is more than one source of funding. This does not mean that Government funding should be eliminated just reduced. Science should be as independent of government as possible to reduce these problems.
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