I don't think the OP was talking about the kind of conspiracy you describe. Or maybe he was: it doesn't matter, because there's a subtler point. Scientists are

I don't think the OP was talking about the kind of conspiracy you describe. Or maybe he was: it doesn't matter, because there's a subtler point. Scientists are not somehow exempt from confirmation bias and motivated reasoning, and political biases can creep into research without anyone cackling in a smoke-filled room. Look, for example, at the current sorry state of social science research, much of which does not reproduce. Ego depletion, stereotype threat, the IAT: all "scientific" ideas that are politically convenient but fiction, and which went unquestioned for a long time because, deep down, most researchers didn't want these ideas to be wrong. That doesn't make these researchers conspirators.