Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to live in 2022 and argue that academia isn’t influenced by capitalistic interests. This is so backwards of a viewpoint that I don’t have the time to argue further.
"influenced" is a much weaker claim than "controlled". Yes, there's a commercial influence, but does that prevent studies that are against those commercial interests from being conducted or those commercial studies from being criticised: no it doesn't.
Governments and corporations alike allocate capital towards research that they think benefits the populace or shareholders. This is measured with a dollar value, like most things in life (thank you last stage capitalism).
While the influence on certain topics might be lesser, it is definitely stronger for other topics. The vaccines are a good example of the latter, since it’s a highly profitable venture with a TAM of the entire global population. You can see this in broad daylight where Pfizer wanted to make their data public only after 75 years (1). Surely good science doesn’t need secrecy?
If this doesn’t invoke skepticism into how most research is influenced similarly, I’m not sure what to say.
(1) https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/paramount-importanc...