In a strange way, I'm reminded of how Jack Horner's excavations of the famed Maiasaura nesting sites in Montana were almost financed by Rainier beer. According to his book _Digging Dinosaurs_, when Horner gave up on getting financing from local colleges for the digs, he thought "You know, we drink a lot of beer on site," and penned a quick letter to Rainier, pointing out that he'd be willing to make a quick blurb in any scientific papers he wrote on the dig to mention his sponsor. The deal fell through (apparently Rainier contacted the college, asking why the college wasn't financing the dig, and the college proceeded to send him a check and a terse note saying "We do not approve of outside groups funding expeditions"), but he still has a fondness for Rainier. In _Digging Dinosaurs_, one illustration of baby hadrosaur bones features a beer tab for scale...

Yes, this anecdote was funny, but what worries me is when corporate sponsorship and pressure starts affecting something as relatively politic-free as palaeontology, it's probably already way too late for the profitable sciences. When I recall the ridiculous pressure on the researchers who discovered -Utahraptor_ to name it "Spielbergosaurus" to cash in on the hype about "Jurassic Park" or the year-long delay of an article on sequencing fossil DNA from fossil weevils solely so that the article tied into similar amber hype surrounding "Jurassic Park", I can only wonder what's happening in aerospace engineering or the drug industry. It's one thing when a "Star Wars" researcher starts demanding government grants for tachyon-based weaponry, even though tachyons are still purely hypothetical (Norman Spinrad once related a tale of this sort of boondoggle), but when the pressure is on to fake data on items that will actually go into human bodies...*shudder*