Politicizing Science

I was recently reading an article in which the author references the “War on Science”
He advocates not only correcting this situation but radically altering the structure of the system to ensure it can never happen again. His proposal is that scientists should devote a lot of effort to re-educating the public to hold correct views, so that funding will remain constant and steady. Read it here.
This is a bad idea because it puts into place a feedback loop between scientists and politicians that is likely to corrupt both. Scientists would then need to convince the public that their science is the most important. Politicians would use this public opinion to get elected and then vote funds for the scientist allies. The scientists now are incentivized to overdramatize their findings and suppress ones that contradict that image. This already occurs somewhat as they fight for grants but the added politicization would merely exacerbate the problem.
As this relationship stabilized something akin to a state church would have formed. The government supports the church which has the task of teaching the public the ‘truth’. Curiously ‘the truth’ never condemns the rulers. If scientists worked “to win over the hearts and minds of the American public” it would be similar to the state church just substitute Science for ‘the truth’. I capitalize to distinguish the word as synonym for ‘the truth’ with its meaning as a system of inquiry and comparing hypothesis against repeatable experiments (preferable) and observational data. Historically Science has progressed amid is controversy and disagreement. Bad theories were generally replaced by newer better ones. Scientists doubling as politicians would be under a lot of pressure to conform to ‘consensus’ or risk funding cuts and marginalization. That is bad science.
As an example let us suppose an advocate of String Theory (Which has cool multiple curled up dimensions. I think it is a load of rubbish because it hasn’t made any successful predictions and if observed data contradicts this theory one merely has fiddle with its parameters and it is again in agreement.) Now suppose as part of our scientific re-education a supporter of string theory goes on Oprah. He is charming and good at describing his theory. Everyone then sees just how cool string theory is. A politician adopts extra funding for string theory as one of his planks and is elected. University departments now only want to hire people who want to work in string theory (the believers) because that’s where the grants are. If you doubt it is hard to find a job and you end up with either a less prestigious post or go work for industry. In any case your voice in the community is much decreased or nil. Rinse and repeat. Soon we have uniform consensus that String Theory is the word without actually having to refute pesky counterarguments. Dissenters are attacked by their fellow scientists and politicians because it is profitable for both that the feedback loop remain undisturbed.
The danger to the scientific community is real. There are numerous historical examples of vibrant scientific communities progressing and then ossifying while going through the same motions as their predecessors but merely cycling through the same old tired theories. Consider the early Greeks. Consider the flowering of Arab science. Contrast that with their later stagnation and ossification. Consider the Chinese, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, and the Maya, on and on.

We have a more or less functioning scientific community today. We must be careful politicizing it lest it not always be so.