Mostly true, with a double-whammy attached: the people with the money for the science are the drug companies who don't do work on natural ingredients because there isn't enough money in them, and the universities subsidized by the drug companies, who will pull their donations if they try (like the agricultural colleges).

In fact, many folk remedies are found to be fact-based, like digitalis for the heart, and spiderwebs as an anticoagulant. But without the work and some money being put into them, natural meds will remain the black sheep of medicine.

If some backroom scientist found a cure for cancer or even the common cold in a plant, he would be bought out or laughed into oblivion.