++! "Scientists" are people, having all the same flaws, biases, and impure motivations found in the greater population. I certainly don't unquestioningly trust

++! "Scientists" are people, having all the same flaws, biases, and impure motivations found in the greater population. I certainly don't unquestioningly trust as 100% truth anything following "Scientists say...". Certainly not about how the climate is going to be in 10 years (awful!) unless we let the government (or the UN) control and tax what goes in and out of every bodily orifice, and every movement we make outside our home. Science by itself; ok, I'm willing to listen and pay attention with an open mind. "Science" in league with _government_ (the only agency which can legally point a gun at my head and demand my compliance to ANYTHING)? I have EXTREME skepticism in this situation. Because such alliances can easily lead to totalitarianism in the name of science. Power-hungry bureaucrats and do-gooders see "scientists" as the key to getting the population at large to give up freedoms (to have a "safer" future). And few "scientists" will walk away from millions of dollars in grant money dangled in front of their noses. And if they want to get the next grant (what else are they going to do?), don't you suppose there's just a little bias injected into the activities sponsored by the current grant? It strains credulity to think that such biases don't exist. Most commenters on HN seem to think that such biases only arise in situations where "science" is funded by private business, but I see the potential for trouble as being much higher when "science" and governments join forces. You can almost always ignore or dodge something a corporation does, but dodging the government is basically impossible. The entirely miserable track record of "scientists" who've predicted "the world will end unless we all ..." over the past century reinforces my comfort in holding a skeptical position. Basically, the (US) government today is in the business of controlling the behavior of citizens. The more ways they can control citizen behavior, the more bureaucracies there will be, and the bigger the existing bureaucracies will get. The ultimate expression of this will be "single payer" (a.k.a. 100% government controlled) health care. This will be the justification for total in-detail control of individual/personal behavior. Think I'm paranoid? Let's just see what happens...