by Throughout global history, we have seen monarchies, democracies, republics, dictatorships, and a combination of any of the prior. Alongside these forms of governments we have seen different distributions of scientific information. Some governments only show their citizens what they want them to know and some governments leave everything to the peoples’ judgement. But what distribution of information is the most beneficial to a society?
Certain governments have historically censored information given to their citizens to control their opinions. This can be done through silencing people who speak out, scaring scientists into keeping controversial discoveries hidden, and just not letting certain information dissimilate. Some examples of this was the Soviet Union handling the Chernobyl accident. In an attempt to hide a fatal mistake they silenced the scientists explaining the dangers of radiation and how bad the nuclear plant explosion will affect the Chernobyl residents. Aa a result the residents lived in ignorance to the radioactive ash raining from the sky and many of them got sick. It was not their fault this happened but instead the governments, because it prevented access to valuable information for too long.
In contrast with the over censoring of information, there are governments that allow all information, whether true of false to be shared. These are governments like the US, UK, most of western Europe. When people are allowed to interpret what they want the way they want, the general public will be in good shape. They will be left to interpret whether certain information is true or false. Anti-vaxers are a good example of interpreting wrong information; nevertheless, they are a negligible percentage of the population and have no effect on the over health of the public. On the other hand, a certain situation win which the data is inconvenient or controversial and the outliers can create a problem is the Covid-19 pandemic. To handle specifically a pandemic, the whole country must unite and practice all the hygiene techniques such as wearing masks and avoiding contact. The setback of democratic intellectual freedom lies in the fact that not everybody will do this because they believe it to be ineffective due to false or unproven information, hence disrupting the whole effort. When people can interpret what they find, how they want, most people will be smart about it and try to do the best with this information. So in the democratic free governments we have seen, the health and advancement of the public is in the hands of the public.
When a government censors information, the civilians are left only with the knowledge the government officials think they should have. However, say there is a theoretical government that works like a dictatorship, but run by educated and altruistic scientists. They would censor information distributed to the public, but the information given would be the most useful and relevant. This of course would be a utopian society, and is exactly why it has never existed before in history, but according to theory would be better for societal advancement and health than any of the previous examples. Overall though, true freedom to interpret information from all sources in actual practice has shown to be the most beneficial to society.