[Gondring]

This is one of those issues that will receive proportionally less attention than it deserves. It brings up broader important issues, too. For example, what's the role of public funding for science?

Although a kneejerk reaction might be that science should be privately funded, a moment's consideration shows how important public funding has been at providing a balance to biased study as well as funding basic research that's not immediately patentable or profitable. The unintended consequences loom large on this issue.

[Uncle Ike]

" public funding has been at providing a balance to biased study "

Would that 'twere so!!

Biased gummint-funded "research" has been handed down as gospel - and been the basis for a lot of bad legislation - on subjects such as "global warming", "secondhand smoke", and virtually every sociological/psychological "study" in the past 50 years.

Sorry -- public funding of research has no better track record, in the realm of 'bias', than any other source of funding.

[Dan Evans]

Science is being used to make decisions on public policy. If we don't allow public access to the data, then scientists will become the equivalent of stone-age priests who use dire predictions that angry gods threaten the the tribe.

[RightWhale]

what's the role of public funding for science?

Like a lot of things in this mass-production mass-schooled mass-marketing society, if the enemy provides public funding to its various technology sectors and we don't, they will have a distinct military advatage. Applaud the superiority of private science all you want while trying to dig faster and deeper while enemy cruise missiles are coming from all directions.