Disagreeing with status quo is given lip service, but in my particular subdiscipline, I saw trendy theories come and go. It certainly was more work to get published if your paper suggests the trend is not true (more likely to argue with referees, etc). This is common when experimental data is not available.
> You suggest how scientists will lose grants if they produce inconvenient science
Again, not a direct connection in my discipline, but trendy work is easier to get funding, and if you counter the trend, you'll have trouble getting papers published in good journals, which affects your funding.
In my time there, the common advice to new faculty members was "Do fun/risky research only after you get tenure."
I am not saying what I said in a vacuum, this came out of conversations with actual climate science researchers and scientists that I had the opportunity to meet during the course of my work in aerospace. The context was a project were we were developing various systems and payloads for both the International Space Station and, eventually, the Artemis mission to the moon.
The message was quite clear: In a politically charged environment you have to be very careful not to ruffle feathers. Anything from your career to your funding could be at stake.
No, you are not going to find google-searchable interviews with such folks, again, that would be professional suicide.
You can find information that helps understand some of the forces at play. While not a full picture, it's enough to support the plausibility of my claim. You don't have to believer me, of course. It's your prerogative.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politicization_of_science
https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/19/14258474/trump-inaugurati...
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/canadian-scien...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/17/britai...
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/358043-epa-blo...
https://www.vox.com/2015/5/15/8612113/truth-climate-change
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/battle-over-scien...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221462961...
etc.
Use google ngrams to look for "climate science". It basically doesn't occur before around 1982.