Secret societies (science based)

Anyone ever run across or heard rumors about Science or Technology based secret societies?

Possible ideas:

1. Society working toward the advancement of technology or space exploration beyond the normal govenmental/political constraints.

2. Society working toward the goal of preserving the human race (colonization, etc).

Such an orginisation would be hampered as Science works best when more minds are looking into the same problem and there is a free flow of information. Progress happens faster as does replication and confirmation.

Last thing is if such societies exist in this day and age(I'm assuming you mean right now as there were a few societies back in tha day who worked in secrecy to avoid persecution), what would be the advantages of being secretive? If their goal is noble then it would serve their best interests to advertise to the world just what it is they are doing and recruiting more scientists and engineers to work on more problems, etc.

I doubt such societies exist.
In order to advance space exploration, you need more than minds, you need resources, which means you need money. Frankly, have you seen what engineers make, let alone scientist?

Besides that...

The only secret science societiy I know of is a fictional society which was advanced outside of its fictional content by Leo Szilard. He was a protagonis for The Open Conspiracy: a semi-secret society of scientist who discussed and controlled the political spectrum and aspects of the world and nations; a semi-secret governing body.

He thought scientist would make the best politicians becuase scientist are not concerned with material greed and their own personal agendas unlike politicians. He thought scientist were the most rational, logcial and best decision makers and therefore would make the best politicians.

Not surprisingly (for me) he was the strong voice behind the contingency to not deploy the collmination of the Manhattan project on Japan. He felt strongly that it would give too much away. There were also scientist before the Manhattan project who felt that their research and the research of others would serve the best interest of the world if it were not published.

He thought if the US were to show the world that it possesed such technology and a weapon so openly, that other countries, namely the Soviet Union at the time, would pursue their own agenda in aquiring such technology and a weapon much more ambitously than if the US were not to use the atomic bomb. Keeping such a secret would only ensure in all likelyhood a larget time frame for the US to be the only nation in possesion of such a device.