Yes, if the people researching it aren't subject to pressures that humans are normally subject to. If have any desires beyond 1/2, then there's a conflict of in

Yes, if the people researching it aren't subject to pressures that humans are normally subject to. If have any desires beyond 1/2, then there's a conflict of interest. For example, if you need money to eat. Or, if you want to solve a concrete problem/discover things, and believe that if you got funding you could do so. Or if getting tenure would mean you get to solve more concrete problems, and fudging one paper would let you do that. It's not possible to avoid conflicts of interest categorically. It is possible to manage the impact of them. For example, the peer review process makes it harder (but not impossible) for a lone researcher to publish inaccurate findings. The question isn't whether there's a conflict of interest in the research, the question is whether the system publishes solid research despite the conflicts of interest.