President Donald Trump spent a great deal of his early days in the White House rolling back decisions made by his predecessor. That is the usual political stuff; President Barack Obama also did it to President George W. Bush. But there is one science policy initiative Trump has not touched so far — and shouldn't.

That beneficial policy relates to modernizing how genetic alteration of organisms is approved.

You are about to hear a huge sigh of relief from the entire science journalism community, because Alan Alda, a man who can interview E.O. Wilson and Jim Watson with ease, who hosted the terrific Scientific American Frontiers, and founded the Alan Alda Center for Communication Science at Stony Brook University, has trouble communicating.

Solar energy, with tens of billions in subsidies to keep it afloat, now employs more people than the fossil fuel alternative it is irrationally pitted against in media - coal. 

Solar panels are fine for elites, just like organic food is - but like with organic food we shouldn't manipulate data to match our belief system.

Whole Foods lies to its customers. I have no problem stating that plainly, the evidence is right on their website and if their lawyers object to that, their fraudulent house of cards will come crashing down around them. It's well-known in the science and regulatory community but is often a shock to the public. Recently, I was giving a talk and an agriculture executive handed me a print-off from the Whole Foods website, their Organic landing page. A few things were highlighted. "Can that be right?" he asked.

When "Guardians of the Galaxy" was in development, I was skeptical. When I was a kid, they were simply different Avengers, in space. Seriously, they had a Major from America, an archer, a strong guy, etc. And everyone knows Marvel had sold off the movie rights to the popular characters to prevent bankruptcy so they had only B level characters left.

But one of those B-level characters was Iron Man, and Jon Favreau, Robert Downey, Jr. and a whole team of four writers (usually a bad sign) turned in arguably the best superhero movie of all (1). And it just so happened other B-level characters made up The Avengers, and a boom was born.

For the better part of this century, the federal government has promoted the notion that only government-funded science is real science, and the private sector is the icky kind that, let's face it, the kind of people who overwhelmingly prefer to stay in academia dislike. (1)