When it comes to the political divide in America, the key difference in science is that academia has mostly Democrats while private sector scientists are mostly Republicans. There are big tents in a two-party system so a liberal New York cop will have nothing in common with a San Francisco progressive but they will both vote Democrat and this big tent philosophy covers science as well. Republicans are considered deniers of climate change and evolution while Democrats deny vaccines and agriculture, and the rest of the tent has to endure them.

Environmental Working Group, a litigation group devoted to food and chemical issues, is most famous for publishing its annual "Dirty Dozen" list to promote publicly available pesticide residues on food. While neglecting to mention that their organic industry clients are not tested separately.

In the early days of the environmental war on agriculture, activists claimed they were not against the science itself, they were anti-corporate. They didn't want a company in charge of the food supply.

The argument resonated with a lot of people, including university scholars, so when the opportunity to solve the vitamin A deficiency issue in the developing world became available with genetic engineering, it was an independent group of scholars that developed a GMO rice with higher levels of beta-carotene. They made this Golden Rice available for free.

A new analysis used Alaska Department of Fish and Game data and fish estimates from 2007 to 2016 to quantify the number and value of Pacific salmon harvested from streams, rivers, and lakes in Alaska. They estimate that it's 48,000,000 fish per year, and that is without  the recreational fishing catch and local communities where it's a food staple. The value is $88,000,000 per year.

While $88 million is a fine industry it speaks poorly about those who protest farming and hunting while claiming to care about nature. Good luck going to a fancy restaurant without having a server note that the salmon you might order was wild.

Intelligence Squared recently had a debate on nuclear energy kicked off by Bill Nye, the famous Science Guy, and moderated by John Donvan.

On the pro-nuclear side were Daniel Poneman, Deputy Secretary of Energy under President Obama, and Kirsty Gogan, co-founder of Energy for Humanity, while on the anti-science side was Gregory Jaczko, Obama's chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission(NRC), and Arjun Makhijani, President of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research.(1)

What was missing? An actual nuclear physicist.

Would you have a debate on vaccine safety without a doctor? A debate on climate change without a climate scientist? When it comes to nuclear energy, everyone is such an expert actual expertise seems to be irrelevant. 

If you have never heard of the Journal of International Psychology, you are not alone.