It seems to me that there's a useful distinction between what government does and what politicians and bureaucrats do; likewise for science (and, e.g., between what the private sector does and what CEOs do; between what religion does and what clergy do; etc.).

CEOs play (at least according to caricature) a lot of golf, but the business world does not play golf. Politicians kiss babies; the government does not kiss babies. Science advances (among other ways) by the death of scientists whose ideas fail to match more recent evidence; individual scientists don't.