Someone explain to me...

...why this is news.

So he delayed it. So what? It got the science some publicity, which is alright with me. He didn't lie. They just kept it quiet. Discoveries in science are kept quiet all the time for financial reasons. Especially by large corporations and in the case of controversial findings.

There's no lie here. According to the paleontologist in question, Jack Horner, the names and dates are all recorded honestly in the lab notebook, which is in fact a legal document attesting to the record of discovery that can be used in court, and must be presented to substantiate published claims.

So why in HELL is NPR spending taxpayer money to hound this guy? Clearly he is an honest person. He just used his information to his advantage, and his employer's (Horner was a paid consultant on the Jurassic Park films), without altering the scientific record.

I mean honestly, do you think he would have gotten even 30 seconds on the news if he had reported the finding broadly in a shorter period of time?

Hell no he wouldn't.

I guess I just resent the hell out of the implication that delaying publication is dishonest. You see, in my game, we like to VERIFY our results by repeating the experiments before we go running our mouths off, and well, sometimes that takes longer than a year to accomplish...

But then again, this is NPR we're talking about.