Was That Science Speaking, Or Mainly Just Darwin Dollars and Materialist Money?

A fundamental principle of realistic socioeconomics is: Big Money controls narratives.  We see a fictional example of how that works in the popular TV show Succession.  The show is about an old father (Logan Roy) who is a billionaire in control of a vast media empire. The father has four adult children, most of them eager to gain control of his media empire when the father dies. The character of Logan Roy may have been suggested by the example of the media baron Rupert Murdoch, who had a vast influence on the narratives of US elections. In episode 26 of Succession,  "What It Takes," the father and his adult children sit around and talk about whether they will pretty much decide who is going to be the next President of the United States, by throwing their media empire's support behind some longshot candidate. Logan Roy decides to back the candidate (Jeryd Mencken), who much later in the series is elected as the US President. 

The fictional series suggests that the Roy family's billions are in control of narratives that pretty much control the results of the US election. The show is fiction, but it sounds fairly realistic. Big Money controls narratives.  Such a principle holds true not merely in the world of politics, but in the world of science. 

We tend to think of the narratives we read in science articles and science books as being controlled by professors. But another way to look at the matter is to look at the money that fuels such professors and their books and articles and research. Earlier I published a pyramid diagram showing how science-related narratives are controlled by a tiny elite. The diagram is below:

It now dawns on me that this diagram is incomplete, because it fails to point out how much of an effect Big Money has on the narratives. Below is an enhanced version of the diagram mentioning the influence of such Big Money:

The huge pool of money controlling the narratives about human origins and the human mind and human brain and countless other topics consists of several huge concentrations of capital and cash flow:

(1) University endowments.  According to the wikipedia.org article here, the total endowments of US universities and colleges has been estimated at 807 billion dollars.  Harvard has an endowment of 49 billion dollars, and Yale has an endowment of 41 billion dollars, with several other Ivy League universities each having endowments of more than 20 billion dollars.  Science departments are only part of the business of universities, so we can't count all of this money as Darwin Dollars or Materialist Money. But we can count a significant fraction of this money as Darwin Dollars or Materialist Money. 

(2) Tuition payments.  Colleges and universities do not fund themselves purely by using up their endowments.  Such institutions are also funded by student tuition payments. A significant fraction of tuition payments effectively act as Darwin Dollars and Materialist Money.  Ironically, many who disagree with the teachings of Darwinism and materialism are forced to fund the propagation of such teachings, because they have to contribute high tuition payments that are used to fund such teachings. 

(3) Biotech and pharmaceutical corporate capital. To account for all of the Darwin Dollars and Materialist Money, we must also count the market capitalization of biotech companies and pharmaceutical companies. This is an amount even greater than the total endowments of US universities and colleges. The page here states, "The Biotechnology industry has a total of 693 stocks, with a combined market cap of $1,346.99 billion and total revenue of $119.86 billion."  Why should we count a significant fraction of such money as part of the Darwin Dollars and Materialist Money? Because companies such as pharmaceutical companies and biotech companies have a huge financial stake in people believing in erroneous notions such as the idea that the brain is the source of the human mind and the storage place of human memories, so that they can sell pills and devices based on such ideas.

(4) Government contributions.  Darwinist claims and materialist claims are part of the curriculum taught in the biology classes and  psychology classes taught in public high schools in the United States, which are government funded. Public high schools in the US get hundreds of billions of dollars in government funding, mostly through local governments. A significant fraction of that money may be counted as Darwin Dollars and Materialist Money.  There is also the huge amount of money that state governments and the US federal government gives to universities and colleges, both in the form of direct grants and research grants. A significant fraction of this may be considered Darwin Dollars and Materialist Money.  A large fraction of universities these days have requirements that students must earn a certain fraction of their credits by taking science classes. Because it is well-known that college physics courses and college chemistry courses are some of the hardest courses to take, such a requirement effectively amounts to a requirement that every student take a biology course or a psychology course in which he is indoctrinated in the tenets of Darwinism and materialism. 

(5) Media corporations capital and contributions.  Nowadays information flows labeled as "science news" are part of a huge publication industry centered around clickbait. Very many web sites contain headlines with sensational-sounding headlines, often headlines boasting about some "epic breakthrough" or "stunning new insight" or "great leap forward." Clicking on the headline will take you to a page with ads, and whoever is running the website will profit from such ads.  Media companies contribute much money to run such sites, that tend to uncritically pass on the most dubious claims of Darwinism and materialism. Similarly, the publication of scientific papers (often involving shoddy irreproducible research dealing with brains and fossils) is a big for-profit industry. Very many corporate outflows and various types of media corporate capital may be considered as part of the Darwin Dollars and Materialist Money. 

The next time you hear the implausible claims of Darwinism and materialism being made (such as claims that you are just an accumulation of random mutations, and that your mind is just some by-product of chemical reactions in your brain) ask yourself: was that science facts speaking, or mainly just Big Money talking? In our society Big Money has almost unlimited power to control narratives.  

All those Harvard billions don't guarantee quality, because in today's news we have an article in which people are accusing a Harvard professor of being a "snake oil salesman" by claiming without good evidence that some supplement sold by some company he co-owns will reverse aging.  It seems that multiple Harvard professors have long been involved in hyping and overselling dubious products they have a financial stake in.  The diagram below illustrates some of the financial conflicts of interest that cast a great question mark on the objectivity of claims by neuroscientists, psychologists and geneticists. Read here for an explanation of some of the squares.