In my opinion science should be about Truth, the rest should be left to people and their leaders. Truth being central to the process of science is what makes science unique and allows for societies to accumulate knowledge.
I think currently is all of them, until we figure it all out. The costs of obesity overweight benefits of convenience of above mentioned things. (You can argue about adenoviruses -- I've got two shots of the adenovirus based vaccine).
When I've tried to predict social unrest or market volatility from the news, I've found, than news actually trailing important events and are useless for any sorts of prediction.
Of course, but you are not actually owning those commodities, then. You are not buying them and this is the point -- with bitcoin you are really in control.
Gold is (relatively) easy to store, transfer, hard to obtain, really limited supply -- the qualities that make commodity good money. Uselessness of gold is actually useful here -- transactions with it does not distort markets. Imagine if we used coffee beans as "gold" -- then changes in monetary velocity would impact consumers, who would be forced to stash it.
It is really useful for some applications, and I think it is especially useful for keeping fiat money in check. Now, I can deflect from fiat (at some costs, obviously).
Sadly, scientists are actually not so bright (those who are usually go to the industry or driven out by envious peers, academia is a poisonous swamp), but some of them are also narcissists, prone to have "pet theories" vulnerable to fashion and so on.
I'm scientist myself, but lucky enough to have other means to live, so I can do science (and I publish at a good rate) on my own accord.
Well, some countries before tried to have a collective ownership of productive assets and it hasn't really worked out: it misaligns incentives all the way down.