Science, Sensation, and Democracy

Writes “Deogolwulf” at his weblog The Joy of Curmudgeonry:

Now that science has become an industry largely dependent on the supply of public money, as regulated by governments largely dependent on public demands, it is not unlikely that, given no ethos of resistance to extraneous demands, the information that this industry supplies in return for its money will be to some extent determined by those demands, and, as anyone with an ounce of discernment who has read any newspaper recently can testify, the public demands sensation — which is a demand for the significance of the information that is put before it, understandable as significant at the lowest level.