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McClatchy Bureau Chief Attacks Compulsive Centrist Disorder

McClatchy Washington bureau chief John Walcott recently received the I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence. While doing so, he called out Compulsive Centrist Disorder. Walcott's remarks: Relying on The Times, or McClatchy or any other news source, for all the truth is dumb, but it's infinitely preferable to the pernicious philosophical notions that there is no such thing as truth, that truth is relative, or that, as some journalists seem to believe, it can be found midway between the two opposing poles of any argument..... Does the truth lie halfway between say, slavery and…

Economic Realities Versus Fantasy Politics

I'm working on a post about science communication, so I'll leave you with a juicy excerpt and link to a post by Matt Taibbi where he describes the intersection of crony capitalism and economic inequality (italics mine): Here's the thing: nobody needs me or Bernie Sanders to tell them that it sucks out there and that times are tougher economically in this country than perhaps they've been for quite a long time. We've all seen the stats -- median income has declined by almost $2,500 over the past seven years, we have a zero personal savings rate in America for the first time since the Great…

More of the Coalition of the Sane Are Having Their 'Creationist Moment'

Recently, I claimned nothing in movement conservatism makes sense except in the light of creationism. One example is Paul Krugman's recent observation: It's kind of shocking if you think about it. Here we have a huge, hard-won intellectual achievement [the recognition that depressions are caused by inadequate demand], one that accounts very well for the world we actually see, and yet it's being thrown away because it doesn't go along with ideological preconceptions. Once that sort of thing starts, where does it stop? The next thing you know, the theory of evolution will get the same…

How the Republicans Are Losing Their War on Science

Chris Mooney comments on the recent attempt by movement conservatives to rebut the concept of a Republican War on Science: A new wave of conservative science punditry--epitomized by an essay by Yuval Levin in The New Atlantis entitled "Science and the Left," which was itself recently publicized by former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson in an oped in the Washington Post--demonstrably lacks such candor. Setting out to debunk the idea that there really is a "war on science" coming from the right, these writers don't bother engaging on the facts of the case at all. They don't attempt to show…

The 'Sportsification' of Political News

A loyal reader mentioned to me a while ago that political news is morphing into sports news. Consider the now-famous Chris Matthews' smackdown of rightwing radio host Kevin James. Instead of focusing on Matthews' deconstruction, instead listen to the first thirty seconds or so: How is this any different than ESPN's Jim Rome or anything on Fox Sports News? James has the same bloviating, loudmouth manner. He has no idea what he is talking about. When he wants to make a point, he just shouts louder. The only difference is that what Rome discusses--sports--doesn't matter. We don't wind up…

This Is One Charter School Experiment That I Hope Suceeds

I'm not a fan of charter schools: they typically 'cherry pick' the best students, and then claim spectacular results (if they can do so at all), while paying teachers less and expected them to work even harder. However, here's one charter school trying something that I hope works--paying teachers more: A New York City charter school set to open in 2009 in Washington Heights will test one of the most fundamental questions in education: Whether significantly higher pay for teachers is the key to improving schools. The school, which will run from fifth to eighth grades, is promising to pay…

Words Have No Meaning: The Margaret Thatcher Edition

I've often said on this blog that everything I know about movement conservatives, I learned from watching (and opposing) creationists. One major lesson is that words have no intrinsic meaning: they are simply means to manipulate people for your own goals. Well, Margaret Thatcher, an icon of anti-Communist opposition, admitted: ...the destabilisation of Eastern Europe and the breakdown of the Warsaw Pact were also not in the West's interests. She noted the huge changes happening across Eastern Europe, but she insisted that the West would not push for its decommunisation. Nor would it do…

The New 'Deather-ism': Home Nurse Visits

One of the more successful healthcare interventions has been home nurse visits to families that have recently had a child: "Optional Coverage of Nurse Home Visitation Services" certainly doesn't sound controversial. The initiative, which has existed in various forms at the state and local level for decades, would fund programs that "provide parents with knowledge of age-appropriate child development in cognitive, language, social, emotional, and motor domains...modeling, consulting, and coaching on parenting practices; [and] skills to interact with their child." Most similar programs have…

Big Sh-tpile Is Still Very...

...shitty. I don't see how the economy will substantively improve without getting rid of the zombie banks--those banks that are insolvent, that have more debts than assets. Since they are unable to make loans, they're essentially non-functioning banks. The federal government for the first time since the banking crisis erupted has decided to make banks report on a quarterly basis how much their loan portfolios are actually worth. Not the original value of the loans, but how much the underlying properties could be sold for: Check out the footnotes to Regions Financial Corp.'s latest…

Revolution Is an Idea Which Has Found Its Tweets?

With the uprising in Iran using Twitter, there's been a lot of Twitter triumphalism running amok hither and yon through the intertubez. Tom Watson has a very nice takedown, but there are two other themes worth discussing: the conduit by itself isn't revolutionary; and, a medium with 140 characters shreds the culture of political literacy required to overturn existing political orders. Stirling Newberry observes: Twitter is a pager for the Web 2.0, and useful in the same way that pagers are. By the same measure, pagers are only as useful as the people on the ends. They do not add to the…

Regarding Caveat Mutuor, I Told You So...

For a while now, I've been arguing that when it comes to lending, caveat mutuor should be a guiding principle. After all, no one held a gun to these guys heads and said, "Make me a shitty loan now!" And these guys were supposed to know how to assess housing loan risk--it's what they do. Well, I would like to think people listen to me (although I'm sure I have nothing to do with it at all). But this NY Times article suggests that people are starting to do this: A growing number of the people whose homes are in foreclosure are refusing to slink away in shame. They are fashioning a sort of…

Charles Murray Shifts Nukes the Goalposts on Charter Schools

Oy. Anyone who thinks Jews are smarter than other people, well, that's because we gave all of the stupid to Charles Murray (author of The Bell Curve). Last week, in The New York Times, Murray had an op-ed about charter schools wherein he scribbled about the failure to find differences in performance between charter and public schools: So let's not try to explain them away. Why not instead finally acknowledge that standardized test scores are a terrible way to decide whether one school is better than another? This is true whether the reform in question is vouchers, charter schools, increased…

How We Fund Scientific Research Causes the Scientist Glut

In response to my post about the scientist glut, ScienceBlogling Razib writes: But that aside, what's the point of funneling more math and physics graduates into math and physics instead of finance if they can't put bread on the table? Or is the issue narrower, specifically the difficulty of getting an academic job? Or perhaps the major dynamic is that science & engineering professions are just really bad at capturing the value they generate for the society as a whole? One of Razib's commenters hits the nail on the head: We do not need more scientists, but academic science as practiced…

Why Blogs Matter: Social Security and the News

There's a very interesting interview with William Greider about Social Security (no, really, it is worth reading). But I think part of the interview highlights why blogs and other non-traditional media forms have such power (italics mine): TL: How does this play out in day-to-day reporting? WG: My sense from the way stories are written is that unless you have the "facts" of pseudo-scientific evidence, editors don't want reporters making any observations on what they learned as reporters. This supposedly makes them more "objective," but it does the opposite. They become more one-sided in…

Holding Students Back: Good for Kids or Test Scores?

In the midst of an article about Uncommon Schools, a non-profit charter school company, we discover this interesting effect of holding back students who fail a grade: High retention rates can help to boost test scores at charter schools, at least in the short term. Students may do better on tests the second time, and retained students' scores are dropped from their cohort, so a class of students could improve its test scores over time because the lowest performers have been removed. And sometimes low performers simply leave the charter school when they find out they're going to be held back.…

Birdbooker Report 41

tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books "One cannot have too many good bird books" --Ralph Hoffmann, Birds of the Pacific States (1927). The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is edited by me and published here for your information and enjoyment. Below the fold is this week's issue of The Birdbooker Report which…

I've never known any trouble that an hour's reading didn't assuage

I was reading the words of my brilliant friend, Digital Cuttlefish, this morning (which is the middle of the night for my American friends), and ran across this gem; They were starving; they were homeless; they were dying; they were dead. There were bodies to be buried; there were children to be fed. There were broken heaps of rubble where the houses used to stand There was utter devastation; there was chaos in the land. There were frantic cries for rescue; there were howls of fear and pain There were heroes risking life and limb, with much to lose or gain. There were millions in donations--…

Birdbooker Report 63

tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books "How does one distinguish a truly civilized nation from an aggregation of barbarians? That is easy. A civilized country produces much good bird literature." --Edgar Kincaid The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is edited by me and published here for your information and…

HR 669 Survives House Subcommittee Hearing, So The Battle Continues ..

tags: HR669, pets, exotic animals, invasive species, politics Let's watch the legislative process in action: Subcommittee on Insular Affairs, Oceans and Wildlife Legislative Hearing on H.R. 669. [Archived Video]. Will anyone add this hearing footage to YouTube? For some mysterious reason, I cannot view it on my laptop and cannot find it on YouTube yet, either. A brief synopsis of the Subcommittee Hearing: The Subcommittee hearing was the first step for this bill. Chair Bordallo repeatedly stated that the committee members were there to learn and get input. When the meeting was adjorned,…

Birdbooker Report 61-62

tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books "How does one distinguish a truly civilized nation from an aggregation of barbarians? That is easy. A civilized country produces much good bird literature." --Edgar Kincaid The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is edited by me and published here for your information and…

GrrlScientist's Christmas/Holiday Feast: What Are Your Favorite Recipes?

As you know, I recently married a British nutter and relocated to Germany, where I assume we both will remain for a significant period of time. Like most newlyweds, we wish to start our own traditions for the holidays, but since our possessions have not arrived yet, we are living in a nearly empty flat. No seriously: our flat is nearly empty. For example, in Germany, when people move into their own flat, it is empty of all furnishings -- including the entire kitchen. Most Germans design and purchase their kitchen before moving in -- refrigerator, stove, range top, microwave, dishwasher,…

Thai company counts its chickens

I like stories like this. If there is a pandemic, while some places will do very badly, many places will find a way. I say "if there is a pandemic," but if you are poultry producer in southeast asia the pandemic has already happened, where it is a panzootic, a pandemic in animals (in this case birds). Thailand has one of the largest poultry export sectors in the world. When H5N1 hit Thailand, its sixth largest poultry producer, Sun Group was in trouble. Twenty-five countries in the EU, almost its sole market, put a ban on fresh chicken imports from Thailand, leaving it without customers and…

A Canadian bird flu non-case

Helen Branswell had an interesting piece about a rumor there was a human case of H5N1 in Canada, in a child. Branswell's pieces are the occasion for frequent posts here, although this is a bit awkward as it turns out she quotes us. Accurately. Which is characteristic of all her reporting and also why she has the best contacts and gets more information out of them then any other flu reporter. Everyone trusts her to report reliably. Anyway, here's the story: The power of the Internet rumour mill slammed up against a hospital in Rimouski, Que., on Wednesday, leaving doctors and administrators…

Flu vaccine safety in the under five age group

When it comes to vaccinations, a high degree of safety is one of the paramount issues. This is because even a small risk, like one in a million, when multiplied by tens of millions will produce tens or more of adverse events. The trade-off, of course, is the prevention of the disease the vaccine is directed against. Unlike a therapeutic drug, when a vaccine works, nothing happens. When there is a side effect, a previously well person becomes sick from the vaccine itself. This becomes a tricky problem in public health education. The recent scare in Israel with influenza vaccine illustrates…

The Nature list of science blogs

The world's pre-eminent scientific journal, Nature, has once again taken notice of blogs. I say "once again" because Nature has consistently been out in front in recognizing that blogging has come to science, not just science to blogging. Senior correspondent Declan Butler has his own blog and was the first science journalist in a high profile journal to call attention to blogging, which he did in dramatic fashion by penning a faux blog set in the near future describing an avian influenza pandemic. Declan has now produced a list of the top five science blogs and a supplemental list of…

Form Follows... Visual Literacy?

Last week I shared a number of recommendations of original, well-founded contemporary projects to compliment comments by Michelle Borkin and Nick Matzke on data and visualization. I had intended to share some more this week but I became preoccupied with a debate that is taking place right now—hopefully I can provide a few points of entry into this dialog. Given that this post is about meandering discourse, please note the detail from Warren Sack's prescient Conversation Map (2000) on the left. Over the last few weeks a boisterous scrum has broken out between several notable thinkers and…

A Mutation in the "Library" Bodes a Litany of Ills

When Dr. Jakub Abramson was a 14-year-old boy in the former Czechoslovakia, he asked his father what was the best place to do science. His father took the question seriously and, after some consideration, answered “the Weizmann Institute of Dr. Jakub Abramson Science.” Since that day, says Abramson, he knew he was bound for the Institute. “It’s just that the science I was interested in back then involved blowing things up,” he says. Today, Abramson is more interested in exploding the common wisdom about autoimmune diseases. His lab at the Weizmann Institute has produced two new papers –…

Capturing the High End

Perovskite (say it: pə-ˈräv-ˌskīt, -ˈräf-). It may never become a household word, and the chemical formulas (eg., CH3NH3PbI3−xClx ) are as long as the name. But if you find yourself, in the not-so-distant future, adding new-and-improved solar panels to your roof, they may well contain a perovskite layer. If they do, it will be these “wonder materials” that will make your panels cheap enough to make your investment worthwhile and efficient enough to make you feel smug when you get your electricity bill. You may ask: Aren’t solar panels dropping in price all the time? What is special…

Periodic Table of the ScienceBlogs, Part 9: Blogs R-S

Respectful Insolence Categories: Medicine, Philosophy of Science Orac is a pseudonymous surgeon/scientist, and an ardent skeptic. He holds both MD and PhD degrees, and he is board certified as a general surgeon. He's also the proprietor of the Skeptic's Circle, a blog carnival dedicated to skepticism and critical thinking. On Respectful Insolence, he blogs about surgery, biomedical research, critical thinking, Holocaust denial, and--naturally--skepticism. Retrospectacle Categories: Brain & Behavior, Academia A neuroscience PhD candidate at the University of Michigan, Shelley Batts grew…

Reading Diary: An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield

Looking over all the books I read in 2013, there's one non-fiction book that really stands out as the best. Former astronaut Chris Hadfield's memoir An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth. wasn't the deepest or most information-packed book I read last year, but it was the most entertaining and involving. And it's core message was compelling enough and it's narrative drive put it right at the top of my list. While perhaps a bit predictable in it's "science rah rah we all need to take care of the one planet that we all share" storyline that's common to this sort of popular hero autobiography,…

An update on reading and reviewing

I've been mostly on vacation for the last little while so I've fallen a bit behind on writing the book reviews I feature here on the blog fairly regularly. In fact, there might even be a few books that, ahem, have been sitting around read and unreviewed for perhaps even longer than the last month or so. I thought I'd use this post as a bit of internal incentive to actually get the damn things written. I'll take a crack at listing some books here. I'll go with those that are read but unreviewed, in process of being read (or that I intend to start very soon). I'm also listing those that are on…

The Forests Behind the Fires

Today's guest blogger is Prof. Dan Yakir. Until recently, Yakir was head of the Environmental Sciences and Energy Research Department at the Institute, and he heads the Yatir Forest research station, which monitors, among other things, carbon exchange in a man-made semi-arid pine forest. This piece comes in the wake of the worst fire in Israel's history, in which extreme drought, winds and a long fire season that depleted fire retardant supplies combined to flame a few embers into a major conflagration that burned thousands of acres of natural scrub forest.Tens of human lives were lost, many…

Happy Water, er, Earth Day: Give up Bottled Water

We live on solid ground, but the truth is, our planet is mostly covered in water. The famous writer Arthur C. Clarke noted this when he said, “How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean.” Today is Earth Day, when we celebrate the planet, and in particular the functioning ecosystem that supports all life, including our own. In recognition of Earth Day, here is a short piece about bottled water in the United States and most developed countries, with some basic facts that should help any readers still in doubt about the downsides of that industry. The Money…

Will Deepwater Horizon be the petro industry's Three Mile Island?

What happened at Three Mile Island in 1979 led to a new regulatory environment that increased the costs of building and running nuclear power reactors in the U.S. The environment was so hostile to the industry that no new reactors have been ordered since then. There are several in the planning stages, but none have been approved. The question now being debated among energy analysts is whether or not what's going on in the Gulf of Mexico at the moment will lead to similar challenges for the oil industry. Of particular interest is the precedent set this week when BP agreed to pony up $20…

Meet the USA Science & Engineering Festival Youth Advisor Board! Join our Twitter Chat Tonight!

You could call them child or teen prodigies – wunderkinds, who at remarkable young ages have already begun making their mark upon science and technology as innovators and visionaries. The USA Science & Engineering Festival not only applauds such young achievers, but is recruiting some of the best of them to serve on its new Youth Advisory Board. The achievements of these recently-appointed board members will not only help us further excite, inspire and reach out to more students during the Festival next week, but will also call attention to the impressive cadre of young talent that is on…

The NIH Returns! From Mind- Blowing 3-D Journeys Through the Body to Demonstrating Medical Science in Action

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), the world's foremost biomedical research center and the U.S. federal government's focal point for such research, is returning to the Festival as a major Sponsor and Exhibitor, bringing with it a bevy of high-caliber excitement in medical science that helped attract scores of visitors to last year's finale Expo. "After participating in 2010, there was really no question about our desire to return to the Festival," says Bruce Fuchs, Ph.D., Director, NIH Office of Science Education. "We got the chance last year to introduce some exciting new ways to…

An Interview With Brian Switek

Today, as part of our ongoing ScienceBlogger interview series, we bring you a conversation with Brian Switek (aka Future Transitional Fossil) of Laelaps. What's your name? Brian Switek What do you do when you're not blogging? I work for a university-run agriculture project and I'm currently a student at Rutgers University. When I'm not running between class and work, I'm usually can be found reading or visiting local zoos and museums. More below the fold... What is your blog called? Laelaps What's up with that name? In 1866, the vertebrate paleontologist E.D. Cope found the remains of a…

Thanks for helping get the word out!

Thanks STEM Notes for your post on the festival. Thanks National Military Family Association for getting the word out about the Festival. Thanks Air Force Association for your Tweets and helping us get the word out about the Festival. NCS will take part in the USA Science & Engineering Festival, Oct. 23 and 24, in Washington, DC. Billed as the largest celebration of science in the US, this nearly month-long celebration of science and engineering will culminate in a two-day expo on the National Mall with hundreds of organizations involved in science and engineering. Where Did All the…

What if everything you thought you knew about the genome was wrong?

For the past few months, the shake-up that began with Next Generation DNA Sequencing has been forcing me to adjust to a whole new view of things going on inside of a cell. We've been learning things these past two years that are completely changing our understanding of the genome and how it works and it's clear we're never going back to the simple view we had before. What's changed? The two most striking changes, to me at least, are the new views of the way the genome is put together and what the cell does with the information. They just don't assemble chromosomes like they used to. I used to…

Teaching science, scientifically

Many science experiments are carefully thought out. Often, the procedures we follow have been thoroughly tested. We measure everything we can at every point that we can, so that we can determine if a procedure, like isolating DNA, is working properly and if the procedure doesn't work, we can determine what went wrong. When the procedure is done, we analyze our data to determine if our experiments really gave us an answer. Then, we present our data to others, in venues like lab meetings and conferences, subjecting our work to review to the toughest critics we can find. Every act of…

White people are mutants

Razib inspired me to share some of the story behind why white people are considered derivatives. Reposted from the Classic Digital Bio. No red herrings, here! Lamason et. al. found a single gene that controls human skin color while studying pigmentation in zebra fish (1). These zebra fish had an unusual golden color that turned out to be an important clue. Lamason and collaborators found that the golden zebra fish lost their normal color because of a mutation in the slc24a5 gene. When the zebra fish have the mutant form, they produce fewer melanosomes. A short language lesson Fewer…

"I hear the cottonwoods whispering above.."

Reposted and slightly modified from Classic DigitalBio. Some people say that science takes the magic out of everyday life. Not me! I've learned some things by reading Science (1) that might give some people nightmares, especially young children. Remember that scene in "The Wizard of Oz" when the trees get ticked off and start hurling apples at poor Dorothy? Real plants do defend themselves. Those "Wizard of Oz" trees would really defend themselves by giving poor Dorothy a tummy ache Pardon me a moment while I apologize to enforcers of precise scientific language. Okay, okay, real apple trees…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Hearts Or Tails? Genetics Of Multi-chambered Heart Evolution: A new paper in the October 1 issue of G&D elucidates the genetics of heart formation in the sea squirt, and lends surprising new insight into the genetic changes that may have driven the evolution of the multi-chambered vertebrate heart. New Bird Discovered On Unexplored Colombian Mountain: A new bird to science was recently discovered on an unexplored mountain range in northern Columbia by a team supported by the BP Conservation Programme. It was named "Yariguies Brush-Finch," with the scientific name Atlapetes latinuchus…

Science educators mourn Ron Mardigian

We often see memorials written about famous scientists, but we rarely see them about the people who work in the background to help people learn the science in the first place. Ron was one of those people whose work inspired teachers and helped spark excitement in science students throughout the world. I just learned last week that Ron passed away and I'm still in a state of shock. I met Ron ten years ago at the first BIO teachers' conference. I was a conference volunteer, working on the teachers' program planning committee and representing Bio-Link. BIO 99 was the first time that the…

Careers in biotechnology, part III: Life in a bioinformatics software company

What do people do in bioinformatics software companies? tags: biotechnology careers, biotechnology, career+descriptions, bioinformatics In our old conference room, in our last office, we used to have this little card on a stand, entitled "Sun's universe of stars." Over the years, we watched several of those stars blink out, one by one. The card disappeared, too. Maybe we got tired of marking off the companies as they went, maybe we just lost the card when we moved to our present office. No matter. Over time, the bioinformatics universe got a little smaller and colder each time…

Bioinformatics for biotech students: my favorite computer programs

The bioinformatics classes that I teach use web services and web sites as much as possible, but I still find that it's helpful to have programs on our classroom computers. Here is a list of my favorite desktop programs for those of you who might want to add some bioinformatics activities to your biology courses. Why not use the Web? Before going on, I should probably explain, why we use desktop programs, we have so many things available on the web. We do use the web whenever we can. Web services are nice because you can shift the computation burden to someone else's computer. (I think this…

Are antibiotics really only made by bacteria and fungi?

After reading Kevin C.'s question in the comments on my last antibiotic post, I decided to look into this question a bit further. As far as I can tell, most of the commercially producted antibiotics are made by bacteria, fungi, and a bit chemistry (more on that in a moment). It appears, however, that compounds with antimicrobial properties are made by just about everything. Just to make things complicated, these molecules are sometimes called "antibiotics" in the literature and sometimes they're not. Many of the molecules with antimicrobial activity are short peptides- chains of amino…

Mr. Wizard gives St. Peter a science lesson

When Don Herbert died last weekend, many offered tributes to this television pioneer of science education (our contribution here). Herbert was TV's Mr. Wizard and many of us scientists-to-be loved to watch him. Maybe we should have been out playing stickball or strikeout or whatever (I became pretty proficient at strikeout later when I started dating). But instead we were inside watching grainy black and white science on TVs with tiny screens and rabbit ears (rabbit ears were part of an early form of wireless). There were many heartfelt blog pieces from the many who remembered Mr. Wizard with…

Thailand's drug problem: the US State Department

Thailand wants to provide free medicines for drugs and heart disease to its poorest citizens. That sounds good to me. Apparently my government doesn't agree: Thailand's Public Health Minister said U.S. trade officials didn't relent on their opposition to his plan to copy drugs made by companies including Abbott Laboratories and Merck & Co. after meetings in Washington. Mongkol Na Songkhla met with Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez and Deputy U.S. Trade Representative John K. Veroneau yesterday in an effort to avoid retaliation against a plan to invoke a World Trade Organization…

SARS in 2003, flu 2007 and beyond

Yesterday Canada's Campbell commission released its report on the 2003 SARS outbreak in Toronto. SARS is most infectious in the latter part of its disease course, so it isn't surprising that 45% of the victims were health care workers. Two nurses and a doctor died. SARS was a deadly occupational disease. In the 1200 plus page report, Judge Campbell and his colleagues place the blame on a broken health care system but find no individuals at fault. The Toronto Globe and Mail is disappointed. My initial reaction was irritation they saw a need for scapegoats, but as I read the column by Murray…