Hence government and industry have considerable influence in deciding which questions are asked. The terrain of scientific knowledge is thus skewed by their interests. As a result, contemporary science, while mostly true, is not unbiased. There are mechanisms designed to minimize this institutional bias. However, if the peer reviewers share the same institutional interests, these interests will still influence the direction of research.
Agricultural science provides a good example.
It is funded largely by corporations that manufacture fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides and other agricultural chemicals. The result is an extensive knowledge of the effects of these chemicals on plant and animal productivity. But because their large-scale ecological effects have been of less interest to their manufacturers, research on their environmental impacts has lagged. Conversely, since it is not in the interest of chemical corporations to encourage methods that dispense with their products, there is a very much smaller body of scientific knowledge on organic or self-reliant agriculture.