I think you're thinking that I'm saying something like "well, if we've never made it to the moon, it sounds preposterous to think we ever will." It sounds like you think developing a politics-less way of funding scientific research is a matter of working on something to produce a new system. Please let me know if that is in fact your perspective.

It is not mine. To me, the idea of not having politics be involved in science sounds as absurd as... well lets assume we're friends and imagine that you, I, and a mutual friend of ours planned to play lazor tag together. We go to pick her up and she says that she can't join us because she has food poisoning and can't come. As we are driving from her house to the lazor tag place, you say that biology shouldn't interfere with plans with your friends. Now, you just mean that it sucks that she has food poisoning and you wish that this sort of thing didn't happen occasionally. But your statement is slightly more absolute than that: biology, being fundamental to the human condition, is always involved in plans made among humans. Complex metabolic, biomechanical, and neurological processes are an inherent part of a lazor tag outing. I claim that politics is fundamental to the human condition.

I claim that much like food poisoning happens occasionally, so does pettiness and favoritism. That does not mean that it is pointless to keep one's meats either freezing or cooked. That does not make it pointless to use separate cutting boards for meat and vegetables. Healthier biology is possible to achieve and so is healthier politics. But it is still politics.

My saying "politics is always involved" may now seem pedantic, so here is why it is meaningful and important: If you adopt an attitude that attempts to simply avoid politics, you will likely avoid studying and paying attention to politics and group dynamics. On a pragmatic level, this will serve you poorly. But on a more idealistic level, this will serve your cause poorly because you will abandon the opportunity to create healthy politics. What does healthy politics look like? That is a subject for whole essays and whole lifetimes of study, but I suspect you can recognize a social system with healthy politics by its high degree of trust.