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Hank CampbellRSS Feed of this column.

I founded Science 2.0® in 2006 and since then it has become the world's largest independent science communications site, with over 300,000,000 direct readers and reach approaching one billion. Read More »

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Science 2.0 has gradually been colloquially Smurf'ed into meaning many different things but at its core we have always intended to reboot science for the 21st century by modernizing publication, participation, communication and collaboration.   Collaboration was always known to be the tricky part and little progress has been made but groups like Mendeley are at least making it possible to better organize research.
I suppose the recent Egypt-centric focus on food consumption had to end eventually.  The 'food pyramid' you have seen for decades, craftily negotiated by food lobbyists, is being replaced by...a pie.   First Lady Michelle Obama is on a war against obesity and she will fight over food. Pres. Obama warned us, "You do not want to be between Michelle and a tamale" and the new dietary guideline shape is the latest weapon.
Politicians do not really understand science, they are in the policy business.  And environmental activists do not understand science, they are in the advocacy business.  Both claim to love science when it suits their agenda.  When they are together, as with recent tax schemes designed to penalize carbon usage, it can be very bad.    But everyone knew this except politicians and activists, who only believe in 'the miracle of capitalism' while they are legislating the parts they don't like out of society and insisting it will flourish if they control it.
In 2006-2007, the heyday of CO2 hysteria, we noted that a large problem that we could control without wrecking the global economy (not that it mattered, the global economy was kind enough to wreck itself) was methane production. 

Methane has 23X the impact on warming as CO2 and is caused by plants and animals - as impractical as shutting down all commerce sounded to sane people not in the anti-science environmental movement, cutting down the Amazon to remove dead plants causing methane was equally silly.   
Since Science 2.0 first came online, we have been excited about the Tevatron in Illinois because, statistically, by 2011 the famous Fermi experiment in Batavia,IL would have accumulated 10 inverse femtobarns of data and that means the Higgs, if it exists, would be somewhere in there.  If it could be found.
 
The National Science Foundation is under some mainstream criticism due to budget and waste concerns highlighted by Senate watchdog Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma (see Shrimp On A Treadmill - The NSF Under Fire).

It's easy for the public and members of Congress to show faux outrage unless it is one of their pet projects but, in Coburn's defense, he goes after everyone, not just science; transportation spending waste, military spending waste, you name it and he has gone after it.    He is exactly the sort of financial 'watchdog' everyone says they want - unless he is watching their group.