Separation of Science and State

[Brian37]

The question: Should there be any separation between science and government (synonymous to church and state)? What should the relationship between science and government be? Are there any dangers in that relationship?

Reasonably one would want a close relationship. But two points make me question this:

1. Similar to the Inquisition (the poster boy of the evils that church and state can create), you also have the evils that science and state can create (The Tuskegee syphilis experiment; water-boarding and interrogation tactics; and whatever experiments the Nazis did). 

2. Their influence on each other is less than ideal: When politicians use science for political purposes, they tend to butcher it. For example, California passed a law requiring officers to be screened using the Implicit Bias test (IAT), despite the inventors of the test being clear it is not diagnostic. And on the flip side, when science is influenced by politics, it shapes the kinds of questions scientists ask and the types of answers that emerge. The field of behavioral genetics has struggled because it is not politically correct.

 NASA is government funded. JFK started the moon race, and because of the Apollo missions, that gave rise to NASA. And even today, because of NASA, a government entity, we have vast knowledge of the universe, and we can see galaxies almost on the other side of the universe.

What you are talking about when government corrupts it, that would be Hitler, the Nazis and sick fucks like Joseph Mengele.

But even in the west, Trump's dangerous denial of science has given us 240,000 deaths so far because his followers hang on his lies and sale of denial while Trump attacks an honest doctor in Fauci.

It isn't a matter of keep science out of politics, but good leadership in using it. It is a matter of ethics, even in the private sector, you are dealing with private businesses that bastardize science and sell lies to sell a bad product that hurts people. IE, tobacco. For a long time the industry sold it as healthy and lobbied government to expand sales. Oil is the same. Scientists have known, as far back as the late 1890s burning fossil fuels would hurt our atmosphere. But forever since, big oil had sold itself as an economic boom for the world and constantly vilifies scientists whom are telling the truth that their products are making our weather more extreme as well as melting the ice caps.