It's kind of sad that we need a war against a formidable foe, or the threat of one, to inspire creativity and growth. The biggest leaps and bounds in technology happened in the Cold War and during WWII.
Nonetheless, the notion of scholarly pursuit has been commoditized, and is nothing more than a line on a balance sheet.
I draw your attention to the Holy Grail of medical research: "Evidence-based medicine". It's a lofty ideal, but like Communism it fails pretty hard when all faith is placed in it. Studies require power to be considered strong, and strong evidence wins out over weak, with the assumption that a highly-powered study is generalizable to the population in question. The problem is that to power a study so highly requires obscene amounts of money, and most of the money comes from corporations whose first obligation is to profit, not to science. The results of these highly-powered studies cannot be reproduced unless one has the money to do so, which most scientists do not. If a corporation were to repeat an even more highly powered similar study, it would be mired in the bias of shareholder influence. Therefore, one of the basic principles of scientific theory - reproducibility - is not met.
Unfortunately, we have all worked with students and teachers who proclaim evidence based medicine as if it is the Second Coming (or first if you're down with the Tanakh), without being critical of the entire concept of EBM. To question EBM is to question sound medicine, and makes one a pariah. These people don't understand that quoting the DREAM, or COPE, or AWESOME trials is just advertising. Heck, the names of the trials are unscientific brand names hidden behind the ruse of acronyms.
We should not abandon the ideal of EBM, but we should recognize its significant limitations.
