Coming up on Darwin's birthday, a lot is written about natural selection by non-biologists because opponents of evolution prefer to believe that biology stopped in 1859.  Criticizing Darwin and Natural Selection is a lot easier if you ignore the 20th and 21st centuries.

And that's okay, if the goal is a culture war rather than a science discussion, because even in Darwin's time it wasn't all balloons and ponies for Natural Selection.  It was years later that evolutionary biology got help from an understanding of genetics and Natural Selection became accepted after rigorous scientific investigation.  
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There's no question younger scientists who have only really known the Bush presidency believe that Bush was a problem in science, despite the budget increases and the fact that a lot of really terrific science got done in the last 8 years - so they may not see that a stimulus package in science under a president everyone has enthusiasm for could be setting us up for the very same funding bubble (and collapse) that occurred under Bush.

I should be able to get this Hollywood movie made in two paragraphs.  

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A likable rogue-ish historian ( Hank Campbell, only in tweed, we might describe him, Harrison Ford being a little long in the tooth for action films these days) is poring over antique tomes, including an original draft copy of  On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life when he notices a very faint trace of eraser markings on the title page.    He does some kind of magic chemical stuff (whatever - it's a movie) and discovers it is a number.    

In 2004 a University of Chicago researcher discovered something every evolutionary biologist knew had to exist - a missing link between land animals and fishes.

Dumping tires in the water to create an artificial reef sounds either inspired or crazy.  It turned out to be crazy but there was a scientific hypothesis to it.  You just had to buy into their chain of logic.

There was also a lesson.   Not everything needs to be done in a large experimental setting but the justification to go ahead and do it is always cost and the protecting the environment right now.   'You care about the environment, right?'   I can't think of a single time a question has been phrased that way that someone hasn't tried to sell me something.  And the cost savings are always framed to be immediately practical, though in the case of the artificial reef made of tires, the cost to clean up was 5000 times as much as it was supposed to save.

Morale has plummeted at the National Science Foundation, it seems, due to governmental oversight and interference from above.    The Senate Finance Committee didn't like a report they got from the NSF and are going to do something about it.

What, that sum'bitch Bush came back to haunt scientists and personally rewrite reports and ask why employees aren't doing their jobs instead of doing talk show appearances about how much he stinks?