Michael Crichton on Power and Science – The Unwritten Law of Research

"Perhaps the following current example can best illustrate this point. We do not live in the clerical age, where lay people and clergy fought each other; nor do we live in the state-political age, when state officials and the people fought over democracy. The free growth area in the scientific age lies in a new pair of tensions, namely between research and knowledge. This pair of conflicts is still largely unclear. We scholars all disguise ourselves as researchers, just as the old clergy behaved like saints in order to hold back the division between clergy and people. This does not change the fact that today the danger of the sciences becoming ossified is looming large. Scholars are competent and therefore completely incapable of loving the overthrow of their virtue. They are science officials, and they always oppose amateurs. But since research is as much a part of science as the Holy Spirit is part of the Church, there is a great deal of pseudo-research competing with the progress of free research; and only the former is conscientiously supported by official bodies and foundations, because only this appears worthy of support to the professional officials of science. Such harmful research acts according to the principle: Wash my fur, but don't get me wet. It researches cancer according to Pasteur's outdated ideas, as if it were rabies. It examines religion according to Wellhausen's ideas, but because it bases its research on ancient authority, it is extensively funded. As long as scholars and researchers both remain poor, genuine research has prospects. That was the case until 1900. Today, the prognosis for research is deteriorating because grateful peoples are generously funding “science.” Thus, power is shifting to the side of the knowledgeable, against the researchers. Our doctor factories and Rockefeller fellows are eloquent witnesses to this." Eugen Rosenstock