I just chose one example from the early years of science, and one modern case. Anyone can fill in countless cases of science being highly politicized in the intervening centuries.

> There are matters of degrees, and it's almost universally acknowledged to be bad, because it usually means results and emphasis have been distorted because of the politics.

No, science is generally objective, but its results have political implications. To take the pandemic as an example. Virology and epidemiology came to a clear, objective, true conclusion: social distancing and vaccination would drastically reduce the death toll of the pandemic. However, because there are people who reject social distancing (e.g., people who run businesses) and vaccination (anti-vaxxers and opportunistic politicians who see that as an issue they can push), virology and epidemiology have become politically controversial. It's also politically convenient in the United States to distract from the government's own failure to effectively respond to the pandemic by pushing conspiracy theories about the virus coming from a lab in a scary foreign country (and if you don't accept that this is a conspiracy theory, I'm sorry, but you've fallen victim to the widespread propaganda on this issue in American media over the last few years, which is 100% at odds with the conclusions that the scientific community has reached). The problem isn't with virology or epidemiology themselves. The problem is with how the society and political system respond to science.