In a Protestant country, despite claims that religion does not matter, it's still a tough cultural road for Catholics.  Almost no conversation can be had that won't end quickly with Galileo or some pederast priest. Being anti-Catholic is ingrained in history.

For more than a decade, Europe has been as anti-science as can be imagined regarding genetically modified organisms —  consumer crops that have had their genetic code altered in order to make them easier to farm.

Environmental activists have frequently responded to GM crop trials by vandalizing or destroying them, while scare stories about “Frankenfoods” have been a regular staple of the British media diet. But two developments in the last month show that Europe may be joining the science community again, while California prepares to leave it:

"Earlier this week, the magazine "Mother Jones" posted a helpful little story on the question of whether the health-conscious consumer should wash organic produce. Was it necessary, the author pondered, after all “how bad could a little chemical-free dirt really be?”"

Chemical free dirt? If you are reading Science 2.0 at all, you know why that term sent Wired scribe Deborah Blum into a science fit. 

She writes, "By fostering a fictional world view of chemistry, it makes us less safe, not more; less aware of the world around us, not more. Because the only place where you might find chemical-free dirt is in the gardens of your fairy-tale imagination. And that’s not going to be all that useful back here on Earth."

Here's an episode of "Futurama" waiting to happen; a nodosaur roamed suburban Washington about 110 million years ago and evidence has just been found.

You'd think the ground near a sidewalk at the Goddard complex in Greenbelt, Maryland, home to 7,000 employees engaged in astrophysics, heliophysics and planetary science, would be pretty well covered but dinosaur tracker Ray Stanford found the 14" wide track this summer.

I like John Mackey. He is a savvy food guy who enrages the bulk of his customer base with his libertarian economic policies while they make him rich.  I can't say I share his love for Ayn Rand but I get where he is coming from.  He believes in capitalism. and he should; only in America could you sell regular food grown a little differently and convince people it makes them healthier and they should pay more.  They'd shoot you for that in Russia.

A short while ago, a member of Sierra Wave Media took a picture of about 15 dead and deformed fish. They were abnormally swollen and had 'tumor-like' lumps. 

They sent Andrew Hughan, Public Information Officer for Fish and Game in Sacramento, the photo and he responded. 

“These fish are not representative of what we hope the public identifies as a DFG planted fish. There are always deformities present in nature and in raised fish, especially in the bottom ponds of the raceways where weaker fish tend to congregate. Unfortunately Gull Lake was the recipient of such a group of fish,” he told them.

Well, sure. 

California is cursed with a need to regulate energy deregulation, so it can't do the obvious thing like let utility companies buy transmission lines or sign long-term contracts - instead, companies have to buy on the spot market but they can't pass that cost along to customers either, so in times of high energy demand, like right now, you are going to get rolling brown outs.

But we have a new $500 million clean energy plant that just came online.  No it isn't solar power, this will actually provide energy.  It's natural gas, far cleaner than coal, making it the cleanest energy source in California since the state banned nuclear power.

Among misguided positions, radiation and pesticides are only slightly behind vaccinations and genetic optimization on the anti-science hippie scale.  A 2011 analysis of the GSS showed that, along with harmless positions like that astrology is scientific, there was a big difference between the left and the right on knowledge of science issues like "Exposure to radioactivity doesn't necessarily lead to death" (67.5% left to 77% right) and "Exposure to pesticides doesn't necessarily cause cancer"(55.5% left and 66.8%) - bigger science gaps than the 9% difference between the right and left on evolution that gets all Republicans labeled 'anti-science'.

Like many, science journalist Carl Zimmer has become concerned about the ability of science to correct itself; at least on a culturally acceptable timescale brought about by instant media publication of studies.

Arsenic life is one example, though clearly the system worked.  While the article got published it was criticized quite rapidly and bloggers have caught stealth Creationist papers that peer reviewers missed too.