To what extent should scientific knowledge be open to the public

This is a question that makes its round in the scientific community quite often. To answer it though, it is important to look at the different fields of science and they're progress and research in this world. In physics, the major companies like Nasa and CERN have each released all their papers on research they have done to the public. Was this a good decision? Probably. Releasing scientific knowledge to the world can awaken endless amount of curiosity and possible lead to people pursuing a science. Not only this, it gives the population an awareness of what is happening both on the earth and in the vast emptiness of space.

However, there are two main reasons as to why most secret science projects are kept secret in the first place. The first is the never ending competition between firms to see "who's the first". The second is the ethical limitations. To progress in the field of science, especially biology, one must experiment. The one catch in this though, is that in biology, one needs living subjects. Experimenting on living subjects can be a very sensitive subjects, because the grey zone between moral and immoral is fairly large meaning there will be too many people with mixed opinions.

Fields with little ethical implications like physics and possibly chemistry, should be open to the public due to the little problems it would have with everyone. Releasing this information could also help decrease false ideologies and therefore help increase more knowledge amongst the people. On the other hand, studies with strong ethical implications should be kept away from the public, until final results with as few as possible ethical implications are found.

The space between

We walk through life and expect everything we know to be granted or true. Yet, does absolute certainty exist? I personally think it does exist, but not for most cases. Us humans are certain of the fewest possible things. Mostly because we name them. We are certain that we breathe because we gave "breathing" a name. We are certain we think because we gave it a name. These few cases are the slightest of things we can be absolutely certain about.

Consider the universe. Now ask yourself how much do we actually know about it? We can conclude things and assume they happen. An example of this is Einstein's famous "General Relativity Theory". It was published decades ago, yet it is still able to predict occurrences that have only recently been discovered. We are still not even certain they exist due to the fact that we cannot test them enough to draw probable solutions.

This kind of thinking can be transferred to any topic. Are we absolutely certain forces exist? Are we absolutely certain we are not controlled by an almighty being? Simple answer is: we're not. However, we can draw conclusions which state probabilities or likelihoods of something to be reality. In addition to this, different people experience different realities and what they perceive to be absolutely certain. These all play a role in determining what is absolutely certain. I believe the only time something can be absolutely certain is if all people believe in the exact same thing and it has been proven by testing.