23andMe, Inc., a direct-to-consumer personal genetics company, is arguably the most well-funded and therefore highest profile group out there (being married to a Google co-founder will do that) and by doing a somewhat humorous new study associating traits with single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs - a type of common DNA sequence variation), they may have spurred discussion of some new ethics guidelines to help future science policy.

Frustrated in dealing with the public?   You are not alone.   It may seem to researchers that the public is either stupid or intentionally ignoring evidence but it's not that one-sided, writes Chris Mooney in the Washington Post.

Chris generally doesn't think a lot of the science IQ of Americans (and don't even get him started on Republicans!) but he recognizes something more scientists should (and most do here, thus the whole Science 2.0 thing) - making scientifically smarter people does not mean they will always agree with you.

The big war in science during this decade has not been Republicans against human embryonic stem cell research or Democrats against agriculture, it has instead been open access publishing versus subscription peer-reviewed journals.

Open access publishing of science results, freely available to all, would clearly kill subscription-based peer-reviewed journals.  Right now, those peer reviewed journals are terrifically profitable for multiple companies despite the fact that everyone is saying print is dead.   These companies add value to researchers, they say, by having a higher impact than other companies that do less marketing, etc.