Let's lay it out:

a) The man is being attacked on pure speculation with the purported proof coming at cost from a drug dealer; and
b) The man is being attacked because he isn't vociferously denying the allegations which we all know he could do until he was blue in the face and the media would just say he's lying.

To which one can only say ... SERIOUSLY?!!

No, what has happened here is an unattractive, overweight, outspoken man is being bullied (writ large) just like the fat kid in the school yard. End of story.

A prediction: since the mayor is normally outspoken, his silence is very odd and should be taken as a warning by the paper. The silence means he goes in to the coming lawsuit against the newspaper with no record of having abused his position as mayor to slander the newspaper. Let's hope he sues them in to bankruptcy.

Consider just these two points:

• 1) look at the article 'sources' ... and bear in mind that government subsidized cbc.ca is hardly a beacon of truth; and
• 2) what major functioning corporation allows the media unfettered access to any of its employees?

In the first case, comments from unions and disgruntled employees in newspapers in affected small towns are exceedingly biased. In the second case, a challenge: pose as a media representative, call up a random someone in any Forbes company, and ask them for an on camera interview. 99.99% chance you will be directed to the company Public Relations Dept. And that is what the Government of Canada is requesting its scientists to do. Period. Hardly muzzling.

The fact is, the Government is behaving like a proper business. They are being accountable and that includes making sure that those in positions of responsibility are aware of what their staff are doing. They have to be accountable. Why? Because the citizens of Canada, and the Opposition parties, stridently insist on it.

Besides, at the pay rates of government scientists, they should be generating a lot more research and spending less time fretting about whether they stroke their egos with a press interview. Do this research: number of papers per year published by a Canadian Defence Scientist @ $120K/yr versus an Assistant Professor at say University of Toronto, U Waterloo, or Memorial University (choose any Uni really, Assist profs are not making $120K/yr). It becomes apparent that having government do science is inefficient and expensive.

As for shutting down research areas: if industry or academia are doing research in an area, the government should rightfully ask why it should be involved as well. The Government shouldn't be participating in science, it should be encouraging industry and academia to pursue it. And it does although, sadly, here in Canada industry and academia don't really do research unless there's government money sent their way.

... the Europeans did a better job forecasting Hurricane Sandy. Oh. Didn't know that. But hey when they make a movie of it, I'm sure they will present as fact that the American system was the most awesome thing and NWS was right on the money with typical awesome American ingenuity .... sorry, 'Argo' flashback.

What's published is biased by the editorial bias of the media (print or otherwise).

It would have been good to round out the study with the publication biases including third party backing. For example, review the vision/mission statements of the publications, the editorial boards, the funding history of the research of those board members, and the affiliation of the published authors with the editorial board. An author may be published as he was an admired student of a board member and happens to agree with the board member's POV which was heavily influenced by financial backing from institutions seeking to profit from anthropogenic climate change.

Remember: anthropogenic means humans caused climate change and 'they' would have you believe that by extension, humans can correct it: profit!

... hopefully?

Linux, apache, gcc, etc. are highest quality low-level tech tools. They were created by people who wanted them and knew intimately what was needed and how to make it happen. UNFORTUNATELY, the people who know intimately what is needed in word processing, graphics manipulation, etc. generally do not have the skills required to create such tools. The OSS equivalents are low-level tech interpretations that cannot compete meaningfully with the commercial products that are created by spending lots of time and money bringing together low-level tech people and uber _users_ to spiral develop a useful product.

OSS can only really fully meet the needs of programmers/hackers. For the rest, it is a low quality alternative.

Discuss =)

Didn't think so. Only thing this is, is small. It doesn't do anything like a fly.

the mice died and were dissected to see the effect on the metastases, that is, long before anything could determined about the radiation effects. So, still a lot of work to be done about how safe this is.

Also from the article: the treatment does NOT work on the PRIMARY TUMOR. That's important. It likely means an indefinite number of repeat treatments need to follow because the primary tumor is still active. So the treatment might be able to stop the spread of, but not the root of, the cancer. (see comment on safety)

Really? What utter nonsense. Not only can they afford it, they can also write off a large portion of the cost on taxes. This is just more evidence of the resistance of the practicing medical profession (not the research side) to taking up and keeping abreast of technology.

Interesting aside: Medical research is currently centred around controlled studies. Imagine the possibilities if medical research could access the potential data of 100's of millions of day-to-day patient doctor interactions. "Potential data" because currently medical practioners seemingly overwhelmingly refuse to make any progress in data collection.

Tens of millions? Equally relevant news: _two_ rabbits have been run over in our neighbourhood in as many weeks.

Rather than trying to play god, why not just keep people away from the reefs? That will eliminate one problem: physical damage, overfishing, etc.

Use the money to address root causes of environmental damage; fund alternative energy sources, alternatives to dangerous chemicals used in industry because they are cheaper, raising the profile of environmental issues in the public eye.

Robot repair of reefs will only let people keep on doing what they are doing. It will hide the problem.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and the beholder that sees beauty in this boat is:

a) a fisherman;
b) a tug captain; or
c) a researcher.

Which of the above is likely to have 10 million plus to sink in to a vessel that would then need to be remodeled (+$$$) to either fish, do tug work, or do research?

BTW, she started life in 1973 as an ocean-going tug and was converted (for $millions) to a yacht. No question that she is likely an awesomely tough and seaworthy vessel, much more so than any other yacht out there today.

How about Javascript and run in the browser or on the cloud instead? There's nothing commenting on why Java was chosen but it seems a very surprising decision to come out of a computer science department ... or maybe not. Are academics really keeping pace with technology or the public interaction with technology?

There is a kind of funny unspoken assumption going on here; the _work_ is not being judged on its own merit.

Read the comments here and it becomes apparent that _careers_ in academia rest not on _what_ you published, but _where_ you published. But if the concern is good science, no worries.

It depends, therefore, on what you use the publications for. If you are looking for articles relevant to your field, get everything you can and then judge it on its own merits. Poor quality articles will stand out if you know your field, regardless of who published them. But if you publish simply to be recognized by people who likely won't read your papers, that is by recruiters, then you have to play the game as it exists.

So it's really a question of what the publications are used for.

... note this interesting /. article: http://science.slashdot.org/story/13/04/08/2325234/fake-academic-journals-are-a-very-real-problem

So really, you need big-publishing if only to keep it all real.