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In addition, Ayn Rand saw the apparent dichotomy between "pure" and "applied" science as a false one, and suggested that if any principle of science could be valuable to man, then some ''private'' individual or group would be willing to fund it. Robert Stadler is a type of any scientist who fails to realize that, who thinks that private funding is somehow dishonorable merely because it ''is'' private, and who forgets that public funding can often lead to the creation of instruments of tyranny and death, because after all, the government is that institution having a monopoly on the initiation of force.
 
In addition, Ayn Rand saw the apparent dichotomy between "pure" and "applied" science as a false one, and suggested that if any principle of science could be valuable to man, then some ''private'' individual or group would be willing to fund it. Robert Stadler is a type of any scientist who fails to realize that, who thinks that private funding is somehow dishonorable merely because it ''is'' private, and who forgets that public funding can often lead to the creation of instruments of tyranny and death, because after all, the government is that institution having a monopoly on the initiation of force.
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Ayn Rand also made a minor point, and a scathing one, against scientists who try to get their way through name-dropping. In virtually any Western country, untold numbers of scientific institutions, and especially [[hospital]]s and various lecture and [[laboratory]] halls in medical schools, often sell or offer to a "prominent" physician or a member of the "generous community" the privilege of having his or her name on a building wing and his or her portrait in oil in the hallway. Indeed, many such institutions build veritable [[shrine]]s to such people. While some of these people deserve some recognition for some extraordinary service, or even for years of service, other such people win this recognition merely by paying for it. Ayn Rand perhaps sought to illustrate what would happen when an institution, ostensibly dedicated to science, might be taken over by a group of people who would ''not'' respect the owner of that name. In such a situation, all the name-dropping that the person could do would avail him nothing.
    
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[[Category:Literary Figures]]
 
[[Category:Literary Figures]]
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