Redlight,
I think our biggest difference is that you trust government and I do not. I trust the marketplace...let me explain.
If the govnerment controls anything (scientific information, energy, education, etc) completely, then there is no counterbalance. So you have to trust them. However, the government is composed of people you don't know. Why would you trust them to be honest, public-spirited people over the long haul. They won't becuase they're humans. They're gonna try to get promoted and make money and, if unchecked, will do so without considering the needs of the people. I submit the public education system as exhibit one, and I can do that, because I'm a public school teacher.
Government bureacrats aren't elected. They are responsible to no one. They just perpetuate, and no one can drive them out of business.
Now, look at the market. Capitalists are, as a rule, ambitious risk-takers (unlike govt. bureaucrats and politicians, who are ambitious, but not risk-takers), motivated by something we all undertand: money. Since what they want is money, they must please consumers, and therefore the market has a built-in check. What they produce must work, or else people won't buy it. It can't be too expensive, either, or consumers will buy it from somebody else who makes it cheaper. So, the need to provide products that work at a reasonably low cost is what drives the greedy, type A assholes the Left hates so much. The beauty of this system is that you don't have to be a nice guy or an ethical guy or anything to provide a service....you must please the market. In the scientific sense, this means that corporate scientists can lie in the short term, and they do, but sooner or later someone will find them out, sue them, and a competitor will make them pay. This is assuming there is no monopoly. In some cases there is, and that's always bad, because there is no threat of replacement.
Now, the guys I want in charge of doing important things are they guys I control. I exert control over the capitalists...they need my money. The government bureucrats just need my tax money, and I don't get to say no.
In the case of government science, there is a bit of a check...you don't get funded if you don't scare the public, because the funding comes to you via representatives of the people...So, your study had better say that something is poisonous or racist or dangerous or harmful to nature or something, or else public interest dries up, and with it, your job.
Government science does have a useful regulatory function to keep unscrupulous corporate types from polluting and killing too many people. It does not have a constructive role in research science except in partnership with private scientists. In the global warming case, no such balance exists, and we unavoidably get junk science.
If the EPA stuck to catching polluters and stayed out of researching global warming hoaxes, we'd all be better off.
