Regarding Harming quality of thought, my main worry is a more subtle one:
It is not that people might end up with different priorities than they would otherwise have, but that they might end up with the same priorities but worse reasoning.
I.e. before there was a lot funding, they thought “Oh I should really think about what to work on. After thinking about it really careful, X seems most important”.
Now they think “Oh X seems important and also what I will get funded for, so I’ll look into that first. After looking into it, I agree with funders that this seems most important.”
This is still for the same X, and their conclusions are still the same. But their reasoning about X has now become worse because they investigated important claims less thoroughly.
Regarding Harming quality of thought, my main worry is a more subtle one:
It is not that people might end up with different priorities than they would otherwise have, but that they might end up with the same priorities but worse reasoning.
I.e. before there was a lot funding, they thought “Oh I should really think about what to work on. After thinking about it really careful, X seems most important”.
Now they think “Oh X seems important and also what I will get funded for, so I’ll look into that first. After looking into it, I agree with funders that this seems most important.”
This is still for the same X, and their conclusions are still the same. But their reasoning about X has now become worse because they investigated important claims less thoroughly.