It is a miserable time for science. America has an almost non-existent climate policy, its support for basic research is flagging, and its congressmen harass individual scientists in the name of ideology. At the March for Science last Saturday, the speakers and the protesters kept coming back to the same theme: “I can’t believe I have to march for science!”

But that was often as specific as they got. Before the event, organizers said that the march was not for any one particular political goal, but in support of science in general. This was not reflected equally across the event. The protesters who came to D.C. knew who their enemy was. (His name rhymes with Ronald Yump.) But the people on stage held a glorified science-museum presentation.

“This did not begin in November,” Rush Holt, the president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a former congressman, told reporters last week. “It’s true the march idea came up in January, but it was built on a growing concern that reached a level of anxiety about the conditions under which science can thrive.”

This same tepidness also cooled the stage. Speakers encouraged attendees to vote, and they told them to call their representative in Congress. But they rarely funneled attendees to one group or another, or endorsed specific bills or policies. Far more often they reveled in their nerdiness or their shared love of science. Speakers were far more likely to praise historical Americans who took an enlightened view of science than they were to name contemporary ones who opposed it. One speaker singled out Abraham Lincoln for praise—not because he won the Civil War—but because he was so nerdy that he filed a patent.

Exxon Mobil files about 320 patents per year. It employs thousands of scientists. It devotes tens of thousands of dollars to scholarships which support women and minorities in STEM fields. An important idea in the study of geological time scales is called the “Exxon curve,” because it was discovered by Exxon scientists. Exxon also spent $8.8 million last year lobbying American lawmakers. This was actually low: In 2008, it spent $29 million to lobby for the defeat of a climate-change bill.

By any account, then, Exxon loves science. It doesn’t need convincing that science is useful and helpful—certainly, science helps Exxon’s bottom line every day. But when it comes time to shape U.S. policy, Exxon looks out for something that it loves even more than science: itself.

The problem of our political system isn’t an insufficient love of science. Sixty-seven percent of U.S. adults think scientists “should have a major role in policy decisions,” as do nearly half of self-identified conservative Republicans. When you set aside the issue of climate change, Americans of both parties do equally well on tests of basic scientific literacy.