Scientists are people who need to feed themselves and their families. Science does not import morality into a person. If a scientist is being paid by others they tend to do What their employer tells them olto do. Another rule in life... Anybody who gets paid to do something has an automatic conflict of interest in being unbiased about that subject....in other words all the world’s experts are not really capable of expressing independent thought on the very subjects they are expert in
I don’t see any way that money gets taken out of the equation, and so I don’t see any way that scientists suddenly become moral paragons. As you indicate, self-interest will always come into play.
The only “solution” I can see is to stop with the ridiculous “follow the science” junk. And the idea that something is “settled science”. This is a bad use of language if we’re talking about COVID, or Climate Change, or, frankly, Evolution.
There’s a guy in a lab coat. And he has an opinion. Fine. He can have an opinion. Well, I’m a schlub sitting at home, and I have an opinion too. And I should not be shouted down just because he has a lab coat and I do not.
We need to stop treating scientists and doctors as if they were “special” and infallible. They clearly are not.
I had to leave N.I.C.U. nursing when I got too old to continue in high acuity units, because N.I.C.U. nurses move on to feeders and growers getting ready to go home. That means circumcisions and pushing the vaccines. The few that ever left directly from a Level III/IV unit had to be vaccinated first. I couldn’t sit with parents, explain the vaccines, tell them they were ALL good, (still had “grandfathered” mercury in them) and then go inject their child. I could not provide parents with “informed” consent when too much is known, but hidden for expediency/money. Yellow Fever was a good vaccine. Hep. C for every baby at birth...crazy.
They don’t tell parents about the experimental circle on the PKU usually, either. Practically cheered when I saw the ending of the X-Files movie and the records warehouse. Some of us realized with HIV/Aids when an actual NAME of a disease was mentioned and that the sampling was going on, so to fill the last circle correctly. It can get messy doing them on term babies, instead of just taking blood from an artrerial line. The parents weren’t being told the results...or their doctors so follow-up could be done. I thought it was heinous not to tell the parents if their child was positive, while we were watching our doctors and nurses have to go on months of horrible treatment after accidental exposures on the job. Awful years.... The work in N.I.C.U. was so guerling, most of our nurses were out of the unit by 30. I moved “across the street” after being begged by my head nurse to help her upgrade another unit covered by our attendings, and I eased into retirement. Added years to my life, and I could see my children a little more. A lot of stuff in medicine at that level is on a “need to know” basis. Got a few too many nannies there, and people who can kill careers.