After spending a good deal of time reading about government funded nutritional 'science' over the last 50 years, in which high-carb hysteria took over (making many of us much less healthy, but making certain large businesses much richer, edit: and making food price inflation appear low), it's quite easy to make a case that research institutions dependent on government grants will absolutely not want to upset the status quo, and junk science is the result.

Let's also look at how many economists said "nobody could have seen the debt crisis coming". Clearly, skepticism that would harm the elites is not welcome in respectable academic institutions.

Let's say a democratic government does 99% of what rich or connected people want it to do. (Perhaps that's marginally better than a dictatorship) But the government wants to prove 'scientifically' it's doing the right thing. So it funds nutritional scientists and economists (and I will assume climate scientists) that see the 'right things' and give the policies legitimacy.

You say conspiracy, but the supreme court would disagree - this is just 'free speech' - corporations are people too! I'm sure you've heard "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

No need to be deliberately obtuse--there are many people in industry and government who stand to benefit from carbon trading. There are also many scientists who research climate change. The two groups do not have to be intimately connected for them to benefit from each other.

Were all the loan originators at Countrywide part of a conspiracy to sell bad loans, or were they just "following the money"? Why would grant-seeking scientists be immune to the same incentives?

The OP has said that he doesn't trust scientists.

So, is he saying that scientists are part of a conspiracy.

And before calling others obtuses, read what the OP has said.