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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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Something happened last night that you don't see very often - almost all of the polls were right. Nearly everyone predicted the state electoral results correctly and that, my friends, is truly rare. 
What big trends can you expect to take hold in 2013?  THE WIRED WORLD IN 2013 is a new annual trend report that covers a broad range of topics across eight sections; from science to arts, politics to medicine and culture to the environment.

I have two articles in the issue, one on science and one on environmental policy - that's right, Richard Branson and James Dyson only get one but they love Science 2.0 twice as much.

You can buy it on newsstands, get it within the Wired UK app on iTunes/Kindle/Android or buy a digital copy at this link:
A few months ago, before Monsanto and DuPont realized Proposition 37 may have been started by anti-science crackpots but it was not going away and I was one of the few critical of it, I would have predicted GMO warning labels to win by 66% - because that is the percentage of Democrats in California and while Republicans get attention in science media for being 'anti-science' due to global warming, the actual anti-science positions that are dangerous are bastions of the left.
Since it is almost the end of election season we will also see the end of the meme from Environmental Working Group and other anti-science organizations about genetically modified organisms.

Okay, we won't see the end of that at all.  If you are an advocacy group, you don't raise money by noting the positive things about science, you have to try and scare people a little.  So Union of Concerned Scientists, Greenpeace, Environmental Working Group and others accept the science consensus on global warming, because it says we are doomed, while denying the science consensus on energy and food because denying those things gives them another way to say we are doomed.

In his 2009 inaugural address, President Barack Obama promised to “restore science to its rightful place,” in addition to making the government more transparent and accountable. Millions rallied to his cause. Four years later, how has he done?

Unfortunately, not well. On a whole host of issues, Obama has placed politics before science. We will examine just three of them: vaccines, the BP oil spill, and “Cash for Clunkers.”

Obama vs. Vaccines

Nate Silver, a sports statistician, made waves when he accurately projected the results of the presidential election in 2008.  So a few days go when he predicted that President Obama was 75% likely to win when polls only showed the candidates were about even, it set atwitter those people who think statistical models of polls are meaningful.  They were vindicated, the age of scientific projections had arrived, in a baseball cap.

They thought that because they don't understands polls or statistical models.