well at work in air conditioning units we turn air 90 degrees if we feel like it, this is not done simply with a 90 deg bend but with a specially constructed bed that has "parallel" fins inside to channel the air in the desired direction, providing your not trying to force air at a sharp angle and you have the pressure behind it you can change the direction without too much loss.
Note that the amount of static pressure these kind of fans can overcome is almost zero, and the air speed in an AC is probably also much higher. Put something with a relatively high impedance (eg. heat sink) in front of a high-speed fan and the air will slow down, put it in front of a low-speed fan and almost no air will get through. This is not just proportional to the air flow.
Idealy I'd cut the hole right out and short of leaving it at that put a wire fan guard on which will impede the flow much less, choose a better quality 6cm fan and put temp control on it.
Agreed. This will decrease turbulence (less noise and more air flow). Since it's a scope, EMI might be an issue, though.
Good temp control is an excellent way to reduce noise if it doesn't produce the same amount of heat all the time, as long as you can find a good place to measure the temperature. If it's blowing outward, measuring the temperature of the outgoing air might be a decent way, although finding the correct temperature may take some fiddling.
well I don't know the blowing versus sucking theory but I'd guess dust could get in anyhow (just look inside your pc)
Sucking allows you to put a dust filter in front of the fan, since the air is only entering at one point. Of course this will create extra impedance the fan has to work against.
The case vibrating from the fan possibly makes up much of the noise, there are holes all over the scope case, who knows whatthe air flow paths really are, in or out
Damping vibration can be done without impeding airflow, depending on how well it was designed, this may be an area that can be improved. Air flow paths will be completely different if you turn the fan around. Blowing at something tends to be much more focused and directional compared to sucking, so blowing in will mean more cooling for whatever is right in front of the fan, and less for the rest of the scope. I would expect the air flow to be specifically engineered around the current fan orientation (if they paid any attention to this).