Government grants for studies are as second nature as breathing, and as long as these folks are allowed to work, they pretty much trundle along in their world of chemicals, calculations and formulae that hopefully result in something for the benefit of mankind.
It appears they're just the latest to get mugged.
In a dictatorship, educators and eggheads go first.
To buck the expectations of the unelected, permanent government of bureaucrats and apparatchiks is to become a little Gallileo to the government church.
They hold the strings, they pull the strings, scientists dependent upong grant money jump. It’s been that way for decades. The nature and direction of scientific endeavor is altered by these expectations, as are the conclusions reached.
If there’s been a mugging, it’s taken a long time for the scientific “consensus” to form. Science in service to a foregone conclusion is not so much science as propaganda backed up by one-sided research.
In service to private industry, it’s well and good, and serves a productive end. In service to political ideology, however, it’s a different matter entirely.
You are being very charitable. Like all people, each has good and bad qualities. The reality though is that scientists tend to be academic liberals who think the democrats will fund them at a higher rate. The sobering truth is that with the kind of deficits that the government has spent us into, there will be less and less money for research. It's already happened, as the percentage of successful grant submissions has dropped significantly.
Also, there has been wider support for Obamacare in academic circles, including scientific circles, than in the general populace. What they will unhappily learn is that the deficits that are inevitable under Obamacare will divert more and more money away from basic research, and more into ‘health outcomes’ studies and social science. They will be very unhappy.