By Katia Riddle A sizeable share of funding for science comes through philanthropy, which comes under little scrutiny. Jeffrey Epstein used this fact to cultivate scientists and launder his reputation, experts say. Hanna Barczyk for NPR hide caption When the Epstein files were released earlier this year, Scott Aaronson was surprised to find his own name in them. "This was something that I'd completely forgotten about," says Aaronson, "until I saw that I'm in the Epstein files like, 26 times." Aaronson, a computer scientist, never met or associated with Jeffrey Epstein. He was working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2010 when a proxy for Epstein reached out to him about potentially funding a research project. At the time, Aaronson had never heard of Jeffrey Epstein, and he forwarded the query to a person he knew to be a good judge of character: his mom. "My mom sent an email that said, 'Be careful of getting sucked into this slime machine,'" recounts Aaronson.…