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Short version:
Scientists are people.
People need money for food and shelter and transport.
Scientists need money.
Money comes from other people.
The most money comes from people who are running big & successful companies.
Big & successful companies depend on technology in order to succeed.
Technology comes from the application of scientific research & knowledge.
Big & successful companies often capitalize upon their customers being ignorant about certain things, especially things like health, nutrition, etc.
If you're feeling something now, this is conflict, and it is presenting in a form called vested interest.
The concept of vested interest is foundational in the practice of critical thinking, as it is one of the first aspects to consider when approaching a situation to determine its truth and validity.
In our brief example above, we come to recognize very swiftly that some of the main sources of funding for scientists actually comes from the same sources that want, need, you to keep buying their products and services. Namely, oil, agriculture, pharmaceuticals and silicon technology.
These are known as Big Oil, Big Ag, Big Pharma and Big Tech.
They have the most money in the world, the most power, the most influence, and the most to lose.
Notice how nothing stands against them?
Notice how, each time something new comes along that could, would, should disrupt and destabilize them, that new thing eventually gets absorbed or extinguished?
Environmental activists labelled as t*****ists, ... etc. You know what I mean.
To do the work that needs to be done, we will not be safe.
We must be using zero-trust encryption, VPNs, device-fingerprinting resistance, decentralized communication networks. Our research files must be replicated around the world and encrypted; our information releases must be anonymized, metadata scrubbed.
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