You have no clue what you're talking about. Scientists are not bought with high salaries (although many academics make well north of $150K / year, far more than the meager $60K you think is so common). But they absolutely know what they have to say in order to keep their jobs. If you're a research scientist, it is absolutely critical that your work be published in “prestigious” academic journals like Nature, Science Advances, or PNAS and perceived by your peers as being important enough to contribute to the “body of knowledge” on a given subject. If your work is seen as being important, it will be cited. The more your work is cited by other scientists, the higher your H-index will be. The higher your H-index, the better your chances are of climbing the letter to success (e.g., academic tenure or being the director of university programs / centers). And the more you get published, the more the media will cover your newly published research. That opens the door to a lot of new opportunities including being asked to serve on governmental / intergovernmental panels and getting more funding for research projects. It also puts you on the shortlist for earning accolades from “prestigious” scientific organizations such as the American Geophysical Union (AGU). That is the entire apparatus of academia. There is a reason “publish or perish” is their slogan. However, research (e.g., field studies, modeling, etc.) requires a lot of money. Many journals also have fees for both submission and publication, and they are on the order of several thousand dollars. Some scientists even employ assistants who require a salary. Time is money. Labor isn't free. That's precisely why research scientists' and academics' pet projects are bankrolled by taxpayer-funded research grants, which are often awarded in the total of tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Every single year Congress appropriates a budget for research and development (R&D), and that money flows through agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) to fund specific research agendas. Climate scientists' careers depend on Congress being convinced enough that “human-caused climate change” is a serious enough issue to justify having a large science budget. In other words, politicians with specific policy goals in mind are in charge of where R&D money goes for scientific research. Funding agencies like the NSF then grants with very specific guidelines that applicants must adhere to in order to be awarded grant money. For instance, a research grant might ask scientists to examine how greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions increase fire risk in California. If you instead propose to investigate how poor forest management policies (e.g., decades of fire suppression and lack of prescribed burning and mechanical thinning) increase fire risk, your proposal will be dismissed, and you'll be denied the grant. Even if by some miracle you get the grant, it's unlikely that your research will pass through the “peer review” process because peer reviewers and the editors of journals themselves are biased. “Peer reviewers” are usually academics, and their careers also depend on the continuation of Congressional funding. Worse yet, many of these “peer reviewers” don't want their own findings to be challenged. It is becoming increasingly difficult for new research to be accepted for publication in peer-reviewed journals that in any way runs counternarrative to the orthodoxy that mankind’s industrialization is causing an “existential climate crisis.” The government has deep pockets (deeper than any oil company) and to pretend O&G companies are the only ones with bias is an exercise for mental midgets.