Magical Realist said:
Most people on average if put into a situation of having to be hypervigilant about their own ego and reputation would probably descend into dishonesty and compromise of their own personal ethics over time. It's not just a cliche. It happens in all careers where there is a high ambition for achievement while at the same time a high demand for quick and profitable results. It's the nature of the system. Science is afterall a servant of corporate capitalist profit on the one hand and academic prestige on the other.
See, the problem is that even though you've hit on the truth, you're still looking to blame the easy target. Complaining about scientists is easy, just like complaining about cheeseburgers is easy. But in either case, the problem is "the System". Why the terrible conditions for livestock? It's not the "evil farmers", but the business model that controls food production and distribution; it is not actually about food, but, rather, money. The same with science. Maybe it would be better, for instance, to cure a disease instead of making boner pills, but the business model says otherwise. Maybe it would be better to learn about the Universe than build murder devices, but the business model says otherwise.
Here's one: How about the myth of the evil coder?
No, really, the software market sucks; it's terribly disjointed, not running on any particular standard despite having published standards, and the biggest reason your information superhighway is so quirky and unpredictable isn't the information itself, nor even the people who author the software that manipulates the information. Rather, the information and its transfer are merely pesky hoops these companies have to jump through in order to take the money in your pocket that they consider rightly theirs.
The problem is the business model.
Seriously, what does HTML 5 get you? Not much. Candy-coated templates, a few bells and whistles that merely
look a little better than their predecessors, slower results from your computer, and more opportunities to buy stuff. What does the business community get? A lot more analytics to help them figure out how to advertise opportunities to buy stuff.
So before you crucify the scientists, you might take a few minutes to consider how many capitalists you need to line up in front of the ditch. Because after those scientists are gone, the capitalists will just hire new ones to keep doing all the stuff you complain about.
I know a doctor who used to loathe pharmaceutical representatives. At one point, he wouldn't see them at all. Then he would see them, but only for five minutes on restricted terms with the bottom line being, "Leave the goods." And for a while, he used the samples to keep patients alive because the health care system held the drugs otherwise out of their financial reach.
So did the doctor sell out? Is he evil? How many doctors should we get rid of in order to make the problem of limited pharmaceutical access go away?
Or maybe we should sit down and have a chat with pharma execs?
Because the doctor is a doctor. His job is to keep people alive and healthy, and if he has to suck off big pharma in order to do so, well, I can tell you this much, he's one hell of a doctor.
Everybody wants moral perfection. It's an easy thing to demand. Actually building our society in such a fashion as to permit and encourage its pursuit is a hell of a lot harder.