The best example of science being abused is the atomic bomb. The next best example is autonomous drones which are currently being developed to surveil us and even launch weapons without human supervision. This is what science "at the service of society" can do. I love science. I read about it in my spare time, I'm an engineer, and I think people who reject evolution and climate change are fools. I think more people should understand science and choose careers in science and engineering. But it does not logically follow that government should fund, let alone control, scientific research.

Can the writer's right brain see what's wrong with the growing gap between what we spend and what we can afford?

On the positive side we scientists are smart enough to keep our passports current so we can emigrate when the level of ignorance in this country attains critical mass.

It was the publicly funded FDA that kept thalidomide, developed by a private European company, from being prescribed in the US.

A basic unity of purpose allowed government to build the infrastructure which now supports the education, transportation, and communication systems vital to commerce. Our recent failure to commit our public resources to the common good is already inhibiting our economy, and will continue to erode the full participation of all our people in it. As long as private enterprise controls the purse strings, science will be used for the profit of industry at the expense of the public good.

What part got me removed? the mindless meanderings or the return from rehab part?

I wanted to check some references before extending my reply...trans fat was also developed by private industry.

Were you engaged in mindless meanderings before or after you returned from rehab?

Is it worth mentioning that your misuse examples are Department of Defense projects, which falls under the only budget area that Ryan proposes to increase?

What's wrong is the vacuuming up and hoarding of wealth by a very few super-rich capitalists. How much basic research, education, healthcare, anti-poverty programs, environmental repair and stewardship, and green infrastructure investment could we make with the approximately 12 TRILLION dollars a few Americans have stashed in secret tax havens? The Ryan budget proposes even more tax breaks for these people. That's absurd and the very definition of injustice.

JErwin3----Both. Depending on who you ask! The "rehab" part can't get you what you didn't have before you left for repair and rebabilitarion.

Perhaps the real issue is who is funding, and therefore controlling, the government (like defense contractors)...on whether or not our government is still truly a representational democracy and still represents the public good and can act "at the service of society". Science is by far the most potent tool (sometimes weapon) ever devised. The question is who wields it, and for whom. That's what the article is exploring. In other words, privatizing science removes it further from democratic controls. For democratic controls to work, though, we need democracy, and democracy in turn absolutely requires a broadly educated populace capable of basic scientific literacy. Our democracy is poisoned by defunding and attempts to privatize education as well as scientific research. It is also poisoned by industry-funded, covert disinformation campaigns to deny global warming, for example. Just some thoughts on why science should be funded by the government, and why we must separate cash and state so that we can use science for the greater public good.

I certainly have no idea what gets comments removed, but it does seem to have gotten a bit more fickle. Both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal sites seem to be easier to negotiate. You've heard of doing things the right way, the wrong way, and the army way? Sometimes I think, now that I've lived in MA for a few years, that there should also be a corollary: imagine the wrong way to do something, think of how to make it worse, and someone at the MA General Court will endorse it.

Regrettably, there are some days I wonder if the country has already attained the "critical mass" of which JLErwin3 speaks. My subjective appraisal is that not only has general science literacy declined in this country, but just basic critical thinking/reasoning skills. Perhaps the US needs another Sputnik scare to re-engage with science.

Half of the money spent on scientific research is wasted. It is hard to know ahead of time which half, however.

"The ethical challenges of revolutionary alterations in nature must not be left to the narrowly focused experts who discover or invent them. Their narrow focus may be appropriate and necessary, but may also be disqualifying when it comes to a larger moral reckoning with the consequences of innovation." So well said! as a scientist, I can say that although we are trained to consider multiple points of view, the evidence for each, and so on, we are also trained to separate issues and study them in isolation. In addition to that, there is an understandable reluctance to bite the feeding hand. My hydrologist relative is not about to jeopardize his Exxon-Mobil stock. Nor will the cellphone app developers hesitate to 'help' us as much as they can with happy little wellness apps, and maybe trickier ones that verge on diagnosis or treatment. The situation in genetic engineering is strange and non-intuitive -- many people don't own the rights to their own DNA. And that's on top of the strangeness in conventional reproductive medicine, as illustrated by the OctoMom. Monsanto's genetic engineers are sure they are feeding the world.... We need to stay engaged with the moral issues.

I remember being asked rhetorically by a political scientist, "why does it matter if the government chooses to fund science through the Department of Defense??" vs. National Science Foundation. Somehow, I don't think the DoD is going to find a cure for cancer. Since then, I've seen first hand the sickening waste possible in DoD projects -- just in information technology projects and such. How often does a contractor 'just say no' to the project sponsor??

I'm for eliminating the waste in Department of Defense procurement programs, which I have seen first hand. The Obama administration had been making a start at this by asking the DoD to come up with its own budget cuts, and changing their procurement methods.