I don't think the premise he seems to be going for is a valid one, that science and invention have only recently started being seriously affected by politics, religion, and money.

I can think of one or two examples off the top of my head, and I'm sure others can think of more. In Renaissance times, science was often funded by patrons, whose whims affected what got done. There's Galileo's problems. The chronometer issues in the book "Longitude." The AC/DC issues of Edison and Tesla. There was even some religious resistance to Frankin's work:

In the summer of 1753, Dr. John Lining, a physician with many scientific interests, verified Franklin's kite experiment in Charleston, South Carolina, but when he tried to install a rod on his house, the local populace objected. They thought that the rod was presumptuous—that it would interfere with the will of God—or that it might attract lightning and be dangerous.11 In April of that year, Franklin commented on that issue,

[Nollet] speaks as if he thought it Presumption in Man to propose guarding himself against Thunders of Heaven! Surely the Thunder of Heaven is no more supernatural than the Rain, Hail, or Sunshine of Heaven, against the Inconvenience of which we guard by Roofs and Shades without Scruple.

But I can now ease the Gentleman of this Apprehension; for by some late Experiments I find, that it is not Lightning from the Clouds that strikes the Earth, but Lightning from the Earth that Strikes the Clouds.