As someone who’s done a lot of work in the science sectors, it’s been ruined by modern capitalism for at least half a century, if not longer. In the past it did benefit at least a bit from leftover war funding and majority public investment. Most scientists do say the same.
All advances and discoveries are privatised, patented, and locked away for decades. We basically live 50 years in the past compared to what we’ve actually discovered, because thanks to copyright basically nobody can use them.
Any possible advances for the common good will struggle to get any funding or support because no profits.
What I’d argue is the biggest issue - ‘blue sky’ research (research into the unknown without a profitable end-goal) is such a high-risk high-reward strategy, and incompatible with the idea of a grant application, that no investor will opt for it. But blue sky research is how we discovered basically everything important - e.g Lasers, Quantum mechanics, DNA, Radioactivity, all came about because scientists were like “I wonder what x is about” and were given a big wad of basically entirely public (or non-profit) money to find out. This kind of arrangement is borderline non-existent now.
As someone who’s done a lot of work in the science sectors, it’s been ruined by modern capitalism for at least half a century, if not longer. In the past it did benefit at least a bit from leftover war funding and majority public investment. Most scientists do say the same.