What if scientists weren't salesmen?

The "modern scientific method", as we understand it, consists in a combination of semi-controlled experimentation -- there is no such thing as perfect or total experimental control -- and publication and debate and criticism of the experimental results. As a result, by definition, public relations, salesmanship are essential elements of modern science. The twentieth century added the elements of "peer review" -- the suppression or publication of experimental results in scientific journals, on the basis of their approval or disapproval by already well established scientists in the field. The twentieth century also added the ultimate "certification" of scientific value, the Nobel Prizes. Alfred Nobel, a Swedish industrialist who invented dynamite, used his fortune to establish substantial cash awards in a number of fields of science to be awarded on an annual basis by the Swedish academy of sciences. Thus, the nation of Sweden acquired unusual influence in determining the direction of publicly approved scientific progress. Currently, the most high profile scientist-entrepreneur-engineer is Elon Musk. Elon spent exactly two days in Graduate School at Stanford's prestigious Physics program, when he was 24 years old. That was more than enough to convince him that the Nobel Prize winners there, in Physics, were little more than arrogant stuffed shirts. Why should he pay the slightest attention to them? They were just salesmen, after all, and not necessarily particularly good salesmen, at that! What did they have to teach him about anything? Nothing! We can see how Elon operates with his current high profile project, his "Starship". All it's ever done is blow up, most recently, doing sufficient damage that it's unlikely, for reasons of public safety, that he will ever be allowed to attempt to test it again. Nevertheless, Elon still insists that he's going to be able to establish permanent human colonies on Mars with his "Starship"! Our good friends, the scientists and engineers at NASA have taken up the challenge. The Starship was supposed to land on the Moon in a couple of years, but, since it can't even get off the ground, NASA has now given 3 billion dollars to Jeff Bezos to develop an alternate lunar lander over the next six years. That's 500 million dollars a year to land on the Moon. In 1965 alone, NASA's budget was 5 billion dollars. In 1965 dollars. So, in 1965, they were spending perhaps 150 times as much money, in real dollar terms, to get to the Moon, as they are now. That's why they landed on the Moon in 1969! They spent a bloody fortune, and got nothing whatsoever out of it, at all! So, now, they're trying to pretend that they can land on the Moon for nothing. And, nothing is exactly what we're going to get. All Jeff Bezos is going to do with his 3 billion dollars from NASA is invest it in bonds, for the interest. What does NASA get out of it? Salesmanship. The illusion that they're doing something, when they're doing nothing whatsoever. So, what if scientists weren't salesmen? What would the world be like now?