How Money Corrodes Science

A lot of text has been written about how money has corroded politics.  And, at some level, I suppose a lot of that is true.  But relatively little has been written about how money has corroded science.  The public seems to think that money for science is a wonderful thing, and more money will buy more and better science.  Some of us closer to the field see a lot of examples of how that might not be so.  This article does a pretty good job of explaining how excessive funding of science has created an ever growing monster that needs ever larger and larger funds to produce less and less. Some of the better quotes:

All else being equal, if you pay for something bad, you will get more of it. If you punish something good, you will get less of it. These basic rules of economics apply as much to junk science and scientific integrity as they do to junk food and political candor.

Gresham's Law: Bad Money drives out the good.

According to a report in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, nearly two-thirds of the experimental results published in peer-reviewed journals could not be reproduced in Bayer's labs. The latest special issue of Science is devoted to the growing problem of irreproducibility.

I may have to revise Fritz's First Law upward (again).

Fame goes to those that publish first, not necessarily those that do the best, most thorough, or most reproducible science. Grants go to those with the most fame. The work of PIs who publish novel work in prestigious journals may be peer-reviewed, but it is rarely replicated by their fellow PIs.

 Overall, the piece is pretty harsh, but harsh may be needed to make headway.