Self-censoring is in my view an important, but largely ignored phenomena that should be more researched.
There is some evidence that people stay away from research that is considered controversial by the public [1]. In my own experience (biologist), a lot of biologists shun away from public debates on more controversial stuff like GMs or creatonism out of fear of being associated with the fringe-elements participating, or are scared of "loosing" their reputation.
There was a Nature survey in which 15% of 3247 scientists confessed of having changed their study-design, methodology or findings because of pressure from a funding agency [2].
More indirectly, this study checked out studies on a fat substitute from Procter & Gamble and found that "supportive authors were significantly more likely than critical or neutral authors to have financial relationships with P&G"... [3]
These are just glimpses, from my own experience I would say that the problem is larger than it's currently being described.
Edit: There is little to no research on what's happening directly with the scientists in a situation in which funding influences findings. Does the researcher self-censor out of fear of loosing funding? Is there a slightly threatening phone-call from the funding agency? No-one really knows!
In my experience, a lot of biologists avoid debates on creationism because it is not a scientific theory. Getting into a debate as a scientist would suggest there is something to discuss scientifically, there is not. Richard Dawkins voiced this publicly many times.
Furthermore, and more importantly, avoiding public debate is very different from changing the results of your research. If you are implying that some people have results that support creationism and keep it to themselves, I would like to hear more about this. I cannot even imagine how you would conduct scientific research on creationism.
Another point: you are using the word "confess" which has negative connotations. It is perfectly normal for a funding agency to voice their concerns on, e.g., the design of an experiment, if they can think of an improvement. There is nothing wrong with this, there is nothing to "confess". In some cases the agency might be altering the design to game the results. That is wrong, of course; but your phrasing is too general.
If noone really knows, than maybe nothing substantial is happening. "slightly threatening phone-call from the funding agency" sounds near paranoid. And again, your wording is way too general. For example, it would include NASA (as the funding agency) ask a laboratory that is designing a detector to make modifications to allow higher resolution in higher energies.
Actually, it's pretty well known how it can happen.
It's fairly easy for people to rationalize not publishing a null result not favorable to their funding source when null results are often not published anyway. [1] However, in aggregate, this means that studies that show unfavorable results to a funder are less likely to see publication.
There is some evidence that people stay away from research that is considered controversial by the public [1]. In my own experience (biologist), a lot of biologists shun away from public debates on more controversial stuff like GMs or creatonism out of fear of being associated with the fringe-elements participating, or are scared of "loosing" their reputation.
There was a Nature survey in which 15% of 3247 scientists confessed of having changed their study-design, methodology or findings because of pressure from a funding agency [2].
More indirectly, this study checked out studies on a fat substitute from Procter & Gamble and found that "supportive authors were significantly more likely than critical or neutral authors to have financial relationships with P&G"... [3]
These are just glimpses, from my own experience I would say that the problem is larger than it's currently being described.
Edit: There is little to no research on what's happening directly with the scientists in a situation in which funding influences findings. Does the researcher self-censor out of fear of loosing funding? Is there a slightly threatening phone-call from the funding agency? No-one really knows!
[1] http://www.examiner.com/article/government-funded-research-o...
[2] http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v435/n7043/fig_tab/4357...
[3] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1447808/?tool=pu...