anything goes?

From Joseph Bottum in First Things...

The last line of the New York Times editorial reads:

When the N.I.H. sets the rules for federally financed research, the main criterion should be whether a proposal has high scientific merit.”

This, of course, is simply repeating President Obama’s embrace of a politics-free science.

Yuval Levin is having none of it: “But science policy is not just a matter of science. Like all policy, it calls for a balancing of priorities and concerns, and it requires a judgment of needs and values that in a democracy we trust to our elected officials. In science policy, science informs, but politics governs, and rightly so.”

Or more putting it more directly: The editorialists of the NY Times are, in essence, arguing that anything goes-- the means are justified by the ends.