I used to do scientific research for a living (actual, wet-lab biochemistry/cell biology/molecular biology), so this topic is somewhat near and dear to me. I retired early in disgust due to the corporatization of academic research that occurred. I watched in dismay as clerks and corporate zipper-lickers were given tenured faculty positions while qualified, honest scientists were struggling to get funding for real problems and couldn't get funded for projects that would show the harm that would be/was being done by many corporate products.

A good friend of mine had his career ruined for pointing out in Science that the rodents chosen to test various chemicals that are routinely released by the corporate sector for xenoestrogen effects were a strain that is one million fold less sensitive to estrogen than wild-type rodents. The chemical industry had worked with the EPA to rig the game so that they could avoid any liability from the harm their products were causing. How dare Jimmy pull back the curtain!

I'm not sure which is the chicken and which is the egg, but our culture has turned its back on science and our academic scientific community has broken trust with our nation by allowing itself to be corrupted by private money. Of course, it is hard to resist the urge to do Monsanto's bidding when the federal government has dried up the public research funds source. Add in the scientific ignorance of the typical American and we are headed towards what happened to Islam in the 12th century. (For those non-history buffs, from the ninth century to the twelfth century the center of the scientific world was Baghdad. At that point, the leaders of the Muslim faith decided that science was a tool of the devil, much as many our our leaders, religious and otherwise, have seemingly decided, and the Middle East entered the Dark Ages, from which it has not yet emerged.)

For those who claim that common sense is the answer to our problems, I am reminded of a Richard Feynman quote. He said something to the effect that common sense is nothing more than the sum total of our accumulated biases. Let's not forget that common sense would seem to dictate a flat Earth.