You are correct. I went to a lecture given by Matt Golembeck, who was one of the head scientists on Mars Pathfinder, back in 1997. I asked him what he thought about sending humans to Mars and he considered it a drain of money and resources that could be better spent on robot explorers.

Move to 2003, just before the MERs launched. Sqyures, while not against manned missions to Mars, also felt they would be very expensive and probably not practical for decades.

Now to 2005, in the post new NASA initiative world - now they all support manned Mars missions. Well, by all I mean in a general sense, but you know what I am saying.

I wonder if their thinking was the same as with scientists during the Apollo era: Since this may be the only game in town to explore the Moon/Mars, we better get on the political/
engineering bandwagon to grab whatever scraps of data that are dropped on the floor.

Not the way to go, and it certainly isn't proper science.