There is an important distinction between scientific openness and FOI requests. The scientific community expects you to release the information that is relevant to judging the validity of your work. FOI would apply only to government financed research and can ask for far more than the scientific community would consider relevant or necessary. Think of all the stuff you can generate that isn't necessary to justify the final paper, not to mention accounting and government paperwork. Responding to extensive requests of this kind can burn up a lot of time. Either through ignorance or malice, politically motivated fanatics can subject researchers to a lot of harassment about things that are not scientifically relevant. If governments think it is important to respond to this kind of request, they should provide funding and support for doing so.

The objectivity of Science is based on the process, not on the virtues of individual scientists. Certainly not on their politeness in (supposedly) private communication. There are, no doubt, some scientific skeptics about various aspects of climate change. This controversy shows them getting published rather than otherwise. You don't actually hear that much about these people in the media. What you hear over and over in the media are purveyors of "antiknowledge". This is a public relations technique of misleading the public about scientific or factual knowledge inconvenient to the purveyor. A prominent feature are "talking points" that sound convincing to those who haven't studied the field but are easily seen to be wrong or misconceived by anyone who is informed about the subject. (Look at "scientific creationism"). The originators of this stuff are con artists. Of course, many people who pass this stuff on are victims of the swindle rather than swindlers. Scientists SHOULD be angry at swindlers, and so should you.

Not low, nonexistent. The mouse/menu paradigm is far too cumbersome for extensive math or big documents. Knuth was right to make TeX a markup language, even if a better markup language would be possible.

Main stream media accounts on this subject are generally of low quality and misleading. See the education discussions on www.dailyhowler.com In short, I wouldn't take their word for anything.