Problems.
Scholarly disciplines exist to provide new insights and accurate information for others to use. Policymakers rely on the results of research. If the research is conducted with a fixed pre-ordained outcome designed to justify a particular policy in advance, then the very purpose of it is lost. What purports to be a new insight is really an intellectual short circuit.
We expect editorial writers and politicians to advocate; scholars should be devoted primarily to the best, unbiased information and should follow results wherever they lead. Only in that way can scholarship support a given approach. 鈥淪tudies show X鈥� only works if the studies are conducted in such a way that they leave it open at the start whether X is true. Conducted with integrity, scholarship adds something important. That is a key reason society supports scholarship.
We can trust research results if they have been subjected to vigorous criticism. If criticism is discouraged, our confidence in results will be, and should be, severely compromised. When a line of questioning is regarded as a political challenge, censorship or self-censorship will inhibit it. To the extent that a discipline has been politicized, and to the extent that its practitioners understand their role as activists, the discipline can no longer be trusted.