Financial conflicts of interest are today exceedingly common in research and have to be considered as the real source of the ethical research problems. Government and professional organisations have proposed guidelines for managing ethical problems and the teaching of ethics has been promoted by universities, but all with no evident influence on the practice of science. This paper goes back to the origin of the so-called linear model for R&D to find the economic and social conditions that shaped the science as a profession in essential conflict according the Merton’s Criteria. As a consequence according to the Author there is no other way to increase the ethical standards in science than a radical revolution in the economic and political management of the Scientific Research based in a clear-cut distinction between basic and industrial research on one side and between scientist and engineer on the other
