Best technocratic utopia- Mars series, Kim Stanley Robinson
Oz, Canada, and Japan have their merits, but ultimately, the economic and political dimension has to be subordinated to technical progress for it to be a nation of science. You need a nation that's either so threatened (like Israel or the USSR) or so far off everyone's radar as a political threat to be allowed to focus on scientific work without worrying about physical or economic security.
The Soviets had the mirror image of it. Science was the expression of the dictatorship of the proletariat and their religion of humanity reaching its potential via selfless collective work as laid out by Marx.
They funded it lavishly, when it served the interests of the Politburo. They hoped technical progress would yield social progress. It gives folks more options of what can be done. Without any feedback loops to temper the utopianism, it did colossal economic, environmental, and physical harm.
IMO the USA has had its moments, but as always the commercial and political agendas trump technical ones. We're profoundly uneasy about scientists, engineers, and so forth because they're either foreigners, had foreign-born parents, or profoundly influenced by foreigners in some way, thus not part of the social mainstream.
Science demands total dedication to furthering the gestalt of human knowledge and technique without really thinking of personal advancement or
making a commercial killing from it or whether it serves an external agenda.
Science is seen as spooky and supposedly the province of people supremely talented, (ye olde "Mad Scientist trope) not something where you spend a lot of time and effort grinding through the basics and seeing the holes or vague spots in current theory and practice to tweak and working like mad to make it happen.
Pure science and applied science both draw on those basic principles.
The rewards aren't lots of money or respect from the general populace.
Because the practitioners are human, there's the warts and wonders of collective endeavor- groupthink, politics, and perceptions of what's sexy all color who gets promoted, who gets funded, and who gets ignored as a crank.
Sometimes an external prod (usually a war or economic/political rivalry) gets the powers-that-be to pragmatically ignore politics and go with what works best for a bit. Then, when things get comfortable, back to the status quo.
A scientific society would have all of these aspects magnified.
The point of this rant is that societies reflect their priorities. A society based on valuing scientific endeavors above all else needs to be insecure enough to keep pushing for a qualitative edge, to never be satisfied with good enough, pimping the message that science is the noblest work one can do.
Everyone vaguely interested gets praised and pushed to cultivate those abilities and contribute what they can, and being as objective as possible.
Does that mean you have a nation of really savvy, creative, and obsessive geeks always pushing for more elegant solutions trumping other possibilities?
It's all in the applications of it. YMMV may vary though.