Does government funding corrupt scientific research?

In a perfect world, scientific research funding would be blind. That is to say, the researchers would be kept in the dark as to what agencies, whether government or private, were footing the bill. That set-up is much more conducive to honest and genuinely useful research. Alas, we live in an imperfect world, and government-funded research is just as subject to bias (in the technical as well as colloquial sense) as privately funded research. Good science is inherently apolitical, but even in the lab, there is an inherent tendency not to bite the hand that signg your paycheck.

Yes. You are right on both fronts. Any kind of funding is dependent on results. Pure science can best be served in an environment free of political posturing and corporate greed. Unfortunately if you take away the money a lot less will be accomplished in the same amount of time. Think where we would be without all the corporate and government money that has been pumped into the various DNA projects. In my opinion, donations to the various science foundations is a reasonable way of dealing with this issue.

Not necessarily. An Administration like the current one may base the issuance of a grant on the outcome of the research but they would be the first administration to do so. So normally it would not affect the research. All we have to do is make sure we do not let another despot like Bush in office. Right now the Democratic party seems to be the best choice if we want someone who actually represents the people, not their personal beliefs and their best interests (Theirs and their buddies pockets!)

I've done a bit of research using other people's money and would guess that the pressure is much greater when a private firm hires a researcher. If the money is given to a research foundation, the pressure on the scientist is less. It is only in a few instances that there is governmental pressure. The most egregious one would be whether there were WMDs in Iraq.

Weather Modification Act of 2005

HAARP testing

Operation: Cloverleaf

NASA withholds data from multimillion dollar Airport Safety Investigation on the basis that: It may dammage customer's faith in airline safety and harm business.

The laws of real science can't be corrupted. It is either proved or a theory. You can't "make" it act any different once principles are established. Junk science... (like man made global warming) is propaganda. They erect a theory and prove a portion of it and then speculate without any real results and without ruling out opposing views and science. They market it as being fact and people get wealthy from it. Thanks Al... why are so many of his "facts" in his fakumentary proved wrong?

yes