Scientific activities are insufficiently productive in relationship to the time and resources invested in them, because of the hierarchical institutionalism of the scientific establishment and its elitist nature.
Science has been institutionalized along the lines of the upper class society which supports it, so that its products will perpetuate and strengthen individual, family and corporate wealth. Scientists are bought with excessive financial and social rewards. Their concerns are often limited to the self-interest of perpetuating high incomes through tenured teaching or research positions. They require power in order to intimidate or suppress work that is disdained or ideologically opposed by the national or international establishment. Often, therefore, scientists through their professional organizations or university faculties, behave as a self-contained, self-elected oligarchy or an apostolically-ordained priesthood whose episcopal synods lay down the dogmas of research and scientific truth.