Google’s Tablet versus Apple’s iPad: Open versus Closed? — Apple’s decision to veto Flash represents a philosophical difference between the two companies – Google would never intentionally “break” the web. But Apple has a vision for their devices, and if they don’t like how something is built, it won’t run on their hardware. Flash may only be the first casualty in this war. This means any future company developing new web standards or software will either have to work with Apple – as Microsoft did with their Silverlight runtime – or deal with the potential consequences of losing access to millions of mobile users.

Med schools not responding to ghostwriting scandals — The open access journal PLoS Medicine has been at the forefront of a closely related issue: full disclosure. In 2009, it was on the winning side of a suit that helped reveal the extent of ghostwriting in the biomedical literature. The practice, in which pharmaceutical companies pay for the production of a medical research article without the activity being disclosed, can distort the scientific record. Now, the journal has published a new study that indicates few of the top medical schools have any policy in place to govern ghostwriting among their faculty.