Unit Question: How Public is scientific knowledge and what are the implications?

Today information can be easily accessed by most people, and can be easily distributed by anyone. This makes most of our information today public, where anyone, can go on the internet and see new information, information like scientific knowledge. Even though most people do not have scientific knowledge, they are still able to go and read up on it, on the internet. With the availability of freedom and accessibility today, most scientific knowledge can be shared instantly by the people who are discovering new things every day. The thing about scientific knowledge, is that it is not your every day knowledge, sometimes, certain people, or certain governments do not want certain knowledge getting out and being available for the public. Whether it may be because, it may cause distress to people, it may cause people to lose money, or because they do not want other people to know about it. Depending on the knowledge involved, there are all kinds of different implications that may make the information useful or harmful. If the information, is about how to diagnose yourself with cancer and help find early onset symptoms that may save your life, then that may be a useful thing. If it is knowledge on how to build a nuclear weapon, then, it may not be good, to make something like that public because people would start making their own nuclear bombs, or maybe other countries may use that knowledge to build one and use it against you. If the knowledge is about a certain type of food, that causes people to get very sick, then the government may not want people to know, because people would freak out, and turn to chaos. But, on the other side it can be helpful to people because it may save their lives.