In his second season, John Wall is learning to lead Washington Wizards

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WASHINGTON (AP) -- Washington Wizards point guard John Wall wants to keep his main aim in sight, no matter how far away it might be at the moment.

When the No. 1 overall pick in the 2010 NBA draft inherited the end-of-row locker that used to belong to Wizards captain Antawn Jamison, the stall still held a framed photo of the gleaming Larry O'Brien Trophy. Wall decided to keep that picture in place; it stares out at him whenever he's in Washington's locker room.

"They wanted to get rid of it, and I said, 'No.' That's the goal," Wall explained, his rat-a-tat patter off the court as swift as his play is on it. "I don't touch it, though. I don't want to touch one 'til I win one."

Even Wall would concede that isn't happening this season for the Wizards, who are coming off a 23-59 record and last-place finish in the Southeast Division. They are in the early stages of rebuilding a roster that used to revolve around All-Stars Gilbert Arenas, Caron Butler and Jamison, but now is based on Wall.

"We can sneak up on some people this year, because we're smarter, and I'm smarter, and learning how to close out games and doing whatever it takes to win down the stretch," Wall said in an interview with The Associated Press. "And next year, for sure, we're going to be a team that can surprise a lot of people."

It's clear to everyone that Wall is going to be the player that leads the Wizards, wherever they go.

President Ernie Grunfeld and coach Flip Saunders, meanwhile, are holding out hope that players such as power forward Andray Blatche and center JaVale McGee can fulfill the promise each has demonstrated occasionally.

Blatche, in particular, regularly finds himself defending his effort, which is why he announced at the team's media day: "I told my teammates, 'I'm going to give y'all 100 percent every game. I'm going to die for this.' Whatever we do, we've got to change this whole atmosphere from losing, and people used to us losing, to winning."

At 25, he's older than nine other players expected to be on the roster when Washington opens its regular season next Monday.

Such youth prompted owner Ted Leonsis to use variations on the word "build" more than a dozen times during a recent half-hour news conference. As in: "I've been unabashed on what we're doing. I hope I've been honest and transparent, that we were rebuilding the team."

It all starts with Wall.

Despite dealing with injuries to his right knee and left foot, he averaged 16.4 points, 8.3 assists (tied for sixth in the NBA) and 4.6 rebounds last season, finishing second to Blake Griffin of the Los Angeles Clippers in voting for rookie of the year.

"He has such speed and quickness in the open court that you've got to get back and proverbially build a wall against Wall, so he's seeing bodies," Philadelphia 76ers coach Doug Collins said. "He'd be the equivalent to a guy who sees cracks as a running back who's got great vision. If you don't close those down, when he starts running downhill, he puts all sorts of pressure on your team."

While Wall's ball skills are unquestioned, and he spent a lot of time in the lockout-extended offseason working to improve his jumper -- he shot only 40.9 percent on field-goal attempts in 2010-11 -- he might very well have made his most significant, strides in other ways.

"Part of his development is from going and being a very gracious young person to being a person who's not afraid to take over, and I'm seeing that in the practices. He understands that it's his team," said Leonsis, who also owns the NHL's Washington Capitals and talks to Wall about the way two-time MVP Alex Ovechkin helped turn around that team.

"It's been great to see him not be shy, to understand that if he leads the pack in terms of running suicide drills, that gives him permission to yell at somebody if he thinks they're not working as hard as he is," Leonsis added.

The 21-year-old Wall agreed that he feels more comfortable chastising teammates.

He set out to figure out which players he can shout at in front of everyone else during practice and, as he put it, "What guys I've got to walk up to and talk to with a little demeanor."

His offseason improvement plan included seeking advice from more established NBA point guards such as fellow Kentucky product Rajon Rondo and Chris Paul.

It also involved spending time watching last season's games to study his body language.

Saunders remarked that Wall occasionally would "get down on himself and pout when things didn't go right," and the player wanted to fix that.

"I always try to be perfect, but you can't be," he said. "When we started losing a couple of games in a row, and how we were playing in stretches of games, I was getting frustrated. I knew we could play with those teams, with the talent we have, but just not being mature enough -- and turning the ball over and taking bad shots -- really hurt us."

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Howard Fendrich is on Twitter at http://twitter.com/HowardFendrich

Source: http://c.moreover.com/click/here.pl?r5661828988&f=378

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Economic inequality an issue for US 2012 campaign

President Barack Obama salutes as he steps off of Air Force One at Hickam Air Force Base in Friday, Dec. 23, 2011, in Honolulu. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

President Barack Obama salutes as he steps off of Air Force One at Hickam Air Force Base in Friday, Dec. 23, 2011, in Honolulu. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Fighting to win over unhappy American voters, President Barack Obama and his Republican challengers are seizing on one of the most potent issues this election season: the struggling middle class and the widening gap between rich and poor.

Highlighted by the Occupy movement and fanned by record profits on Wall Street at a time of stubborn unemployment, economic inequality is now taking center stage in the 2012 presidential campaign, emphasized by Obama and offering opportunities and risks for him and his GOP opponents as both sides battle for the allegiance of the angst-ridden electorate.

For Obama, who calls boosting middle-class opportunity "the defining issue of our time," the question is whether he can bring voters along ? while parrying GOP accusations of class warfare ? even though he's failed to solve the country's economic woes during his first term in office.

For Republicans, Obama's potential vulnerability gives them an opening, but they also must battle perceptions that their policies favor the wealthy at a time when voters support Obama's call to raise taxes on the very rich. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has already made clear he'll resist Obama's attempts to capitalize on the issue, adopting the language of Occupy Wall Street in an interview with the Washington Post this month where he called the president "a member of the 1 percent."

For both sides, the question is how to find political advantage in light of a weak economy with unemployment above 8 percent. Since Obama is expected to run for re-election with higher unemployment than any recent president even if the economy continues to show signs of improvement, he must aim to set the terms of the debate in a way that helps him and hurts the GOP ? while Republicans will be working just as hard to deny him any advantage.

The president won a year-end victory Friday with the passage of a two-month extension of a payroll tax cut that had bipartisan support in the Senate.

The measure will keep in place a 2 percentage point cut in the Social Security payroll tax ? worth about $20 a week for a typical worker making $50,000 (?38,293) a year ? and prevent almost 2 million unemployed people from losing jobless benefits averaging $300 a week.

House Republicans had unsuccessfully attempted to push for further negotiations toward a yearlong extension, which allowed Obama to argue for the two-month extension of the tax cuts and prevention of a pending tax increase. The two sides resume discussions on the payroll tax cut early next year.

Obama's campaign pressed its economic argument Friday in an op-ed by Vice President Joe Biden in The Des Moines Register where Biden, taking direct aim at Romney, wrote that the former Massachusetts governor "would actually double down on the policies that caused the greatest economic calamity since the Great Depression and accelerated a decades-long assault on the middle class."

Romney, campaigning in New Hampshire, quickly countered that it's Obama who is hurting the country and expressed astonishment that Biden would have the "chutzpah ... the delusion" to write such a piece. "This president and his policies have made it harder on the American people and on the middle class," Romney said.

It was a preview of an argument certain to carry through the 2012 race, as the Obama campaign, viewing Romney as the likely GOP nominee even before any votes have been cast, works vigorously to define him early on, and Romney does everything he can to resist.

And the dispute taps into a striking reality. After-tax income grew by 275 percent between 1979 and 2007 for the top 1 percent of the population, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found in a report this fall. But for the 20 percent of the population making the least money, income growth over the same period was only 18 percent.

Obama "is viewed as more likely to help the middle class than is the GOP, so he can capitalize on this by playing on concerns about inequality and contrasting his positions and the GOP's on issues like tax cuts for the wealthy," John Sides, political science professor at George Washington University, said by email. "However," Sides added, "it's an open question whether that strategy would enable him to overcome a weak economy and win."

Aides say Obama has long been concerned with economic inequality given his background in community organizing. But he brought the issue into much sharper focus in a speech in Osawatomie, Kan., earlier this month, where he reprised a populist message delivered in the same town by Theodore Roosevelt decades ago, and decried a growing inequality between chief executives and their workers.

"This kind of inequality ? a level that we haven't seen since the Great Depression ? hurts us all," Obama said at the time.

"This kind of gaping inequality gives lie to the promise that's at the very heart of America: that this is a place where you can make it if you try."

The issue has become a rallying cry of the Occupy Wall Street movement that's swept the country, with activists proclaiming "We are the 99 percent" ? as opposed to the "1 percent" at the top. And Obama advisers have identified this sense of inequality as the strongest current running through politics, one that they will be focusing on through Election Day.

But some polling suggests a note of caution for Obama in pressing the inequality argument. Gallup found this month that a majority of Americans don't view the country as divided into haves and have-nots. The polling also found that more people thought it was important for the government to focus on growing and expanding the economy, (82 percent) and increasing equality of opportunity (70 percent) than on reducing the income and wealth gap between the rich and poor (46 percent).

"The middle class certainly believes that it's in trouble and rightly so, because it is," said Bill Galston, a former Clinton administration domestic policy adviser now at the Brookings Institution. "But they are yet to be convinced that going after the rich will go to the heart of the problems that now afflict them."

That may suggest an opening for some GOP attacks against Obama. Romney charged in a speech in New Hampshire this month that Obama is pursuing an "entitlement society," versus the "opportunity society" that the former Massachusetts governor said he wants to offer the country. Newt Gingrich, Romney and other Republicans also regularly accuse Obama of "class warfare."

Obama senior adviser David Axelrod called such criticism the "Republican cartoon" of Obama's argument.

"In some ways the race will be different depending on who the nominee is but in some ways the same because they largely subscribe to the same economic theory" of cutting taxes for the wealthy and paring back regulations, said Axelrod. He added that Obama's speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, "was a very, very good statement of his values and vision and will help frame much of what comes in the next year."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2011-12-24-Obama-Economic%20Inequality/id-22070b166ae3474482cca17f56682bcb

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New Air Jordans cause nationwide shopping frenzy (AP)

SEATTLE ? Fights, vandalism and arrests marked the release of Nike's new Air Jordan basketball shoes as a shopping rush on stores across the country led to unrest that nearly turned into rioting.

The outbursts of chaos stretched from Washington state to Georgia as shoppers ? often waiting for hours in lines ? converged on stores Friday in pursuit of the shoes, a retro model of one of the most popular Air Jordans ever made.

In suburban Seattle, police used pepper spray on about 20 customers who started fighting at the Westfield Southcenter mall. The crowd started gathering at four stores in the mall around midnight and had grown to more than 1,000 people by 4 a.m., when the stores opened, Tukwila Officer Mike Murphy said. He said it started as fighting and pushing among people in line and escalated over the next hour.

Murphy said no injuries were reported, although some people suffered cuts or scrapes from fights. Shoppers also broke two doors, and 18-year-old man was arrested for assault after authorities say he punched an officer.

"He did not get his shoes; he went to jail," Murphy said.

The mayhem was reminiscent of the violence that broke out 20 years ago in many cities as the shoes became popular targets for thieves. It also had a decidedly Black Friday feel as huge crowds of shoppers overwhelmed stores for a must-have item.

In some areas, lines began forming several hours before businesses opened for the $180 shoes that were selling in a limited release.

As the crowds kept growing through the night, they became more unruly and ended in vandalism, violence and arrests.

A man was stabbed when a brawl broke out between several people waiting in line at a Jersey City, N.J., mall to buy the new shoes, authorities said. The 20-year-old man was expected to recover from his injuries.

In Richmond, Calif., police say crowds waiting to buy the Air Jordan 11 Retro Concords at the Hilltop Mall were turned away after a gunshot rang out around 7 a.m.

No injuries were reported, but police said a 24-year-old suspect was taken into custody. The gun apparently went off inadvertently, the Contra Costa Times reported.

Seventeen-year-old Dylan Pulver in Great Neck, N.Y., said he's been looking forward to the release of the shoes for several years, and he set out at 4:30 a.m. to get a pair. After the first store he tried was too crowded, he moved on to a second location and scored a pair.

"I probably could have used a half a size smaller, but I was just really happy to have the shoe," he said.

The frenzy over Air Jordans has been dangerous in the past. Some people were mugged or even killed for early versions of the shoe, created by Nike Inc. in 1984.

The Air Jordan has since been a consistent hit with sneaker fans, spawning a subculture of collectors willing to wait hours to buy the latest pair. Some collectors save the shoes for special occasions or never take them out of the box.

A new edition was launched each year, and release dates had to be moved to the weekends at some points to keep kids from skipping school to get a pair.

But the uproar over the shoe had died down in recent years. These latest incidents seem to be part of trend of increasing acts of violence at retailers this holiday shopping season, such as the shopper who pepper-sprayed others at a Wal-Mart in Los Angeles on Black Friday and crowds looting a clothing store in New York.

Nike issued a statement in response to the violence that said: "Consumer safety and security is of paramount importance. We encourage anyone wishing to purchase our product to do so in a respectful and safe manner."

The retro version of the Air Jordan 11 was a highly sought-after shoe because of the design and the fact that the original was released in 1996 when Jordan and the Bulls were at the height of their dominance.

Pulver said they were a "defining shoe in Jordan's career."

Other disturbances reported at stores in places like Kentucky and Nebraska ranged from shoving and threats to property damage.

In Taylor, Mich., about 100 people forced their way into a shopping center around 5:30 a.m., damaging decorations and overturning benches. Police say a 21-year-old man was arrested.

In Toledo, Ohio, police said they arrested three people after a crowd surged into a mall.

In Lithonia, Ga., at least four people were apparently arrested after customers broke down a door at a store selling the shoes. DeKalb County police said up to 20 squad cars responded.

In Northern California, two men were arrested at a Fairfield mall after crowds shoved each other to get in position for the Nikes, police said.

In Stockton, Detective Joe Silva said a person was taken into custody at Weberstown Mall on suspicion of making criminal threats involving the shoes. Police also were investigating an attempted robbery in the mall's parking lot. The victim was wrongly believed to have just purchased Air Jordans.

In Tukwila, Officer Murphy said the crowd was on the verge of a riot and would have gotten even more out of hand if the police hadn't intervened.

About 25 officers from Tukwila and surrounding areas responded. Murphy said police smelled marijuana and found alcohol containers at the scene.

"It was not a nice, orderly group of shoppers," Murphy said. "There were a lot of hostile and disorderly people."

The Southcenter mall's stores sold out of the Air Jordans, and all but about 50 people got a pair, Murphy said.

Shoppers described the scene as chaotic and at times dangerous.

Carlisa Williams said she joined the crowd at the Southcenter for the experience and ended up buying two pairs of shoes, one for her and one for her brother. But she said she'll never do anything like it again.

"I don't understand why they're so important to people," Williams told KING-TV. "They're just shoes at the end of the day. It's not worth risking your life over."

___

AP Business Reporter Sarah Skidmore contributed to this report from Portland, Ore. AP Writer Michelle Price contributed from Phoenix.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111224/ap_on_sp_ot/us_air_jordan_crowds

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Store makes Christmas tree from cellphones

HANOI, Vietnam?? Southeast Asia is closer to the equator than the North Pole, but an electronics store in Vietnam is ringing in the holidays with a 15-foot Christmas tree made from more than 2,500 unusable cellular phones.

Nguyen Trai, a store manager at Westcom Electronics in the southern city of My Tho, says 10 workers spent two weeks building the cellular Christmas tree that he hopes will raise awareness about hazardous waste and promote environmental responsibility.

The glittering, cone-shaped creation has been on display for about two weeks outside the store in southern Tien Giang Province.

Between 700 and 800 people visit daily, Trai told the Associated Press.

"Many of them have taken pictures with the tree," he said.

Cellphones are ubiquitous in Vietnam, where more than 60 percent of the population is under 30 and hordes of young people flaunt flashy electronics to mark their rising wealth even as the country struggles to contain one of Asia's highest inflation rates.

Although the majority of communist Vietnam's 87 million people are Buddhist, there is a sizable Catholic minority and an enthusiastic general embrace of all things Christmas. The country's two largest cities ? Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City ? are studded with holiday lights all winter long, with bright-eyed teens promenading in Santa hats and yuletide-themed electronic music blaring in sidewalk cafes.

Westcom Electronics plans to auction its cellphone tree next year and donate the proceeds to charity, said store manager Nguyen Trai, adding that staff members are already collecting unusable phones in hopes of erecting an even bigger Christmas "pine tree" next year.

There are tens of millions of cellphones in circulation in Vietnam, but it's impossible to know how many used phones are dumped each year because the government doesn't collect such data, said Nguyen Thanh Yen of Vietnam's Environment Administration.

Yen said he welcomed the idea of raising awareness about hazardous waste, but Westcom Electronics has violated Vietnamese law, which requires businesses to seek official permission before using hazardous waste for new purposes.

According to the United Nations Environment Programme, people working in the informal sector collect the majority of "recyclable and reusable waste" in urban areas of Vietnam.

Solid waste management is among the "major environmental burdens" in developed and developing countries across Asia, especially in megacities, the U.N. says.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45776501/ns/technology_and_science-wireless/

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Tens of thousands of protesters pressure Putin (Reuters)

MOSCOW (Reuters) ? Tens of thousands of flag-waving and chanting protesters called Saturday for a disputed parliamentary election to be rerun and an end to Vladimir Putin's rule, increasing pressure on the Russian leader as he tries to win back the presidency.

The protesters shouted "Russia without Putin" and "New elections, New elections" as one speaker after another called for an end to Putin's 12-year domination of the country at the second big opposition rally in two weeks in central Moscow.

"Do you want Putin to return to the presidency?" novelist Boris Akunin asked from a large stage. Whistling and jeering, protesters chanted: "No!"

Witnesses said at least as many people turned out as at the last big Moscow rally on December 10 to protest against alleged vote-rigging in the December 4 election won by Putin's United Russia party.

Police said at least 28,000 attended the rally on Prospekt Sakharova (Sakharov Avenue), named after Soviet-era dissident Andrei Sakharov. But one of the organizers, liberal politician Vladimir Ryzhkov, put the crowd size at 120,000. Some climbed lamp-posts or trees to get a better view.

The big turnout is likely to encourage organizers to believe they can keep up the momentum of the biggest opposition demonstrations since Putin rose to power in 1999, although the prime minister seems intent on riding out the protests.

"I see enough people to take the Kremlin and the White House (government headquarters) right now!" anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny, who has emerged as the most inspirational of the opposition leaders, said to loud cheers.

"But we are a peaceful force, we won't do it - yet. But if the crooks and thieves continue trying to deceive us and lie to us, we will take (power) ourselves. It is ours!"

The organizers did not set a date for the next protest. Russia is about to start the 10-day New Year holiday when it would be hard to attract large numbers to rallies.

PROTESTERS WAVE CONDOMS

The protesters were heartened Saturday by the Kremlin's human rights council saying a new election should be held, although it is only an advisory body whose recommendations are regularly ignored by Russia's leaders.

Many of the protesters wore white ribbons, the symbol of the protests, and others carried balloons and flags at the rally, which brought together liberals, nationalists, anarchists, environmentalists and urban youth on a bitterly cold day.

"The last protest made a huge impression and I want others to come and realize they can stand up for their right. We all know the election results and we all know how dishonest they were," said Andrei Chernyshov, a 22-year-old student.

President Dmitry Medvedev, who is stepping aside for Putin to return to the Kremlin after four years as prime minister, has promised electoral reforms to relax the Kremlin's grip on power.

But the opposition has rejected these conciliatory efforts and says Putin and Medvedev have ignored its key demand for a rerun of the poll, in which United Russia won a slim majority.

The protesters say United Russia benefited from widespread voting irregularities and international monitors said the vote was slanted in the ruling party's favor.

"The party of swindlers and thieves are the only ones who benefit from the preservation of the status quo," journalist Leonid Parfyonov said on a video message shown on a screen.

Protesters held signs saying: "For Russia without Putin."

Others waved condoms blown up like balloons, mocking Putin for saying earlier this month that he had initially mistaken the protesters' white ribbons, pinned to their chests, for condoms.

One protester carried a poster showing a doctored portrait of Putin with a condom wrapped around his head.

Dozens of police trucks lined the city's main ring road nearby and the police blocked off roads around the protest site, but they did not intervene.

There was no immediate reaction to the protests from Putin but state and other tightly controlled television channels provided coverage of the rally, without any direct mention of the criticism of the 59-year-old prime minister.

PUTIN OUT OF TOUCH?

Putin is still expected to win the presidential election in March and return to the post he held from 2000 until 2008 - the opposition is divided, has no candidate to unite it and may struggle to keep protests going in mid-winter.

But there are growing doubts that Putin will win outright in the first round of voting. Many Russians say he is out of touch and some sources close to Russia's leadership suggest he has not grasped the seriousness of the protests.

The popularity of the former KGB spy, who has remained Russia's paramount leader, has dropped since he and Medvedev announced plans in September to swap jobs next year.

Many Russians said this showed a disregard for democracy and, although some still admire Putin for restoring order after the chaos that followed the Soviet Union's collapse, others fear his return would bring political and economic stagnation.

Putin has also alienated many people by suggesting that a large number of people at the protests, which were mainly organized on social networking sites, were paid to turn up and accused the United States of encouraging them.

"I didn't go to the first demonstration. I didn't think it was worth it. But seeing the news I realized how angry I was that my vote had been stolen," said Mikhail, a 46-year-old real estate salesman who declined to give his full name.

"You can feel that things are changing among people. There is solidarity among people. We're not afraid any more."

(Writing by Timothy Heritage and Peter Millership; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/europe/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111224/wl_nm/us_russia

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Fill Out Your Address Book to Make Siri Work Better [SIRI]

Out of the box Siri can do a few common things, but it struggles when you try to get too complicated with it. GigaOM offers up a few clever address book customizations to make Siri work more naturally.

We've previously covered the basics of talking to Siri, but GigaOM takes it a step further by walking you through the steps to setting up your workplace, family members, and pronunciation. For instance, if you enter in your work address, you can make better use of the Reminders app and get a better functionality out of maps. For those of us who haven't done a lot of data entry into the Address Book, this is simple way to make Siri work in a more natural way. The bottom line is that the more Siri knows about you, the better it can do its job. Check out the full set of tips over on GigaOM.

Quick tip: Introduce yourself to Siri | GigaOM

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/OQNAOymRmcw/fill-out-your-address-book-to-make-siri-work-better

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Science & the Public: Researchers, journals asked to censor data

Bird flu findings could provide terrorists a bioweapons blueprint, NIH panel worries

Web edition : 4:26 pm

Scientists undertake research to advance knowledge. Normally, one aspect of that advancement is to find as broad an audience for the newly acquired data as possible. But what happens if medically important data could be misappropriated for ruthless purposes? That question underlies the ruckus developing over two new bird flu papers.

After reviewing the manuscripts, a federally convened panel has asked the authors of both papers to censor important details of their work. It argued that ?certain information obtained through such studies has the potential to be misused for harmful purposes.? That?s a thinly veiled reference to biowarfare. The concern is that human manipulation might transform some low-risk bug into a virus that triggers a localized epidemic ? if not a runaway global pandemic.

As a second line of defense, the panel ? and the Department of Health and Human Services ? has strongly encouraged the journals reviewing the new papers to also ensure that no dangerous details are published.

Details of the situation began to emerge on December 20 when the National Institutes of Health reported generally on the findings of an independent expert review panel that it had convened to pore over the bird flu papers that had been submitted for publication.

This panel recommended that federal officials ask the reports? authors ? and the journals that were planning to publish the research (Science and Nature) ? to withhold critical details of the experimental methodology employed. HHS (NIH?s parent agency) seconded the recommendation.

Viruses belonging to the H5N1 ? avian flu ? family are not ordinarily a big threat to mammals, including people. But the new papers described techniques that had successfully increased the infectivity of these viruses beyond their winged hosts-of-choice ? to ferrets.

NIH emphasized that the self-censorship it was requesting amounts to ?non-binding recommendations to the authors and journal editors.?

Science editor-in-chief Bruce Alberts acknowledged on December 20 that the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity had, almost three weeks earlier, verbally recommended that his journal publish an abbreviated version of the flu paper moving through its pipeline. The board argued that full publication of research details could pose security threats, Alberts noted, and that it was imperative to keep those details ?from falling into the wrong hands.?

Because Science supports a formal Statement on Scientific Publication and Security, Alberts says his editors are considering compliance ? based on yet-to-be issued details by the federal government on how ?to ensure that any information that is omitted from the publication will be provided to all those responsible scientists who request it, as part of their legitimate efforts to improve public health and safety.?

Nature?s editor-in-chief Philip Campbell said much the same thing: ?We are discussing with interested parties how, within the scenario recommended by NSABB, appropriate access to the scientific methods and data could be enabled."

The feds seem to be charting new ground: asking ? but not demanding ? that scientists and journals do the right thing. As if anyone truly knows what the right thing is and always will be.

How do scientists vet the work of others if the details are kept secret? If a select group of scientists gets access to oversee and peer review the work of germ scientists, who vets the overseers? And then who polices all of these individuals to ensure none spills the beans ? unwittingly or intentionally ? allowing crucial germ-engineering data to end up in the hands of nefarious parties? Is the solution to suddenly impose a gag rule on anyone working with germs that could be, but aren?t yet, amazingly dangerous?

There have been rules in place for decades on how to manage nuclear secrets. This system begins with not allowing anyone access to government-funded work in weapons-sensitive areas without a security clearance. (I had to have a top secret clearance once, long ago, just to work as a journalist at a national lab because there was always the risk that I might accidentally encounter sensitive materials ? which, to my knowledge, I never did.)

State-imposed secrecy has not often?been a problem with which the medical community has had to wrestle. Will garden-variety cold, flu and other infectious-disease scientists be asked to move their research to biosafety facilities? And will the findings many publish end up reading like black-box science? (You know: They studied this germ by manipulating it in some undisclosed fashion and then, voila ? its virulence substantially increased.)

Bioterrorism is scary and all too real. Few of us would challenge that all reasonable efforts must be made to limit details for weaponizing a natural agent already loose in our environment. What proves tricky is drawing the line at which aspects of science are too risky to share. An overly conservative approach risks substantially slowing down the creation of new knowledge. Too little may put free blueprints for disaster into the hands of unstable people with a dangerous political agenda.

It?s interesting that this situation didn?t rear its head sooner. But the aspect of this new episode that most disturbs me is the idea of relying on appeals to researchers? sense of morality as a way to contain the release of dual-use information: techniques and/or technology with the potential for both civilian and military applications. Morality is hard to legislate, much less police. Establishing what is ethically appropriate depends on an individual?s place in the universe ? making it frighteningly relative.

Found in: Biomedicine and Science & Society

Source: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/337081/title/Researchers,_journals_asked_to_censor_data

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