Prompting purely from the HN headline "Scientific Models Too Often Prove Whatever the Grant Provider Wants Proven" (to quote in case it changes), I wanted to pr

Prompting purely from the HN headline "Scientific Models Too Often Prove Whatever the Grant Provider Wants Proven" (to quote in case it changes), I wanted to provide two small anecdotes. Preface: science rarely claim to prove anything. 1) It is often the case that researchers "suspect" the result before they have formally been given a grant to investigate. This ranges from forming a hypothesis based on other experience to having stumbled upon something interesting, and then afterward making a proposal for funding to thoroughly investigate. Both of these cases might look like the scientist is proving what the grant provider wants. 2) As @age_bronze hints at, models are often built to explain or reproduce observations. Think: "all models are wrong, some models are useful". Modern science tends towards "X is understood if X can be explained". Having a model that reproduces X is the correct direction to understand X, so the observation that "Scientists tasked with understanding X tend to produce models demonstrating X" is... _shocking_?