I don't find those arguments persuasive. I do want people to be able to discuss controversial things. But I just don't believe in grand conspiracies behind the scenes. Just because there are lots of liberals in social science doesn't mean academia is some unfair conspiracy overall. Let me give a couple of examples that I think run into your examples, one in physics, one in business.
A ton of modern physics theoretical research is basically math that doesn't lead to verifiable results, and this leads to very valid questions about wasting our time. I think an argument can be made that physics in this area, in a sense rejects empiricism, because people's entire careers are going to be research that can't be verified. Of course people strongly want verifiable claims. I understand that not all of physics is that way. Would you ban this area for public funding? Probably not, but I think it fits in your description.
I'd venture that business colleges have a lot more conservatives than liberals and it's probably hard to be a far leftist in business (like a practicing communist!). Just to continue on business, I think a lot research about the effectiveness of different management strategies is not well supported by research, it's more anecdotal - the research about the genius of Jack Welch, well we didn't know about all that unaccounted for financial management that lead to GE being removed from the DOW. That's not to say there there is not good scholarship, in business, I think there is.
I do strongly support verifiable research, but some areas are hard to directly verify, especially dealing with humans and society, leading to hard to evaluate results. Writings about literature, analyzing texts in different ways, well that's all pretty subjective.
A ton of modern physics theoretical research is basically math that doesn't lead to verifiable results, and this leads to very valid questions about wasting our time. I think an argument can be made that physics in this area, in a sense rejects empiricism, because people's entire careers are going to be research that can't be verified. Of course people strongly want verifiable claims. I understand that not all of physics is that way. Would you ban this area for public funding? Probably not, but I think it fits in your description. I'd venture that business colleges have a lot more conservatives than liberals and it's probably hard to be a far leftist in business (like a practicing communist!). Just to continue on business, I think a lot research about the effectiveness of different management strategies is not well supported by research, it's more anecdotal - the research about the genius of Jack Welch, well we didn't know about all that unaccounted for financial management that lead to GE being removed from the DOW. That's not to say there there is not good scholarship, in business, I think there is.
I do strongly support verifiable research, but some areas are hard to directly verify, especially dealing with humans and society, leading to hard to evaluate results. Writings about literature, analyzing texts in different ways, well that's all pretty subjective.