I would say that an interest may be "purely scientific", but if you don't consider the impact of your work then that in itself is a political stance. Your posit

I would say that an interest may be "purely scientific", but if you don't consider the impact of your work then that in itself is a political stance. Your position is that your scientific curiosity is more important than the impact of your discoveries on others. It's not a great look. Doing the work implies that a researcher has considered the impact of what they're looking at to the extent they feel it is important, and concluded that it is in line with their values to move forward. What those values are is the politics. Certainly they can make mistakes, if their intent was good but they were naive about the usage because they simply didn't grasp it, it's hard to think they're bad people. If they don't bother to consider impacts, that's a position as well... but it's not neutral.