Seven Days is, as usual, excellent this week. Two stories of note: the latest Planner to occupy that unhappy position in Berkeley's Bureaucracy has been stabbed more than enough. He's out, and the City is screwed unless they can find someone new,

assuming that someone can be found to endure the low pay, long hours, and endless battles with development gadflies and city commissioners that is the Berkeley planner's lot.

A more interesting story is how the Chron got the goods on the Ninov Scandal at the Lab. It appears the frightened laboratory tried to bury and hush up the story.

It's perhaps the most sensational case of scientific fraud in decades. The lab has fired Ninov, and the embattled researcher has filed a grievance against his former employers. But what business does a public research institute, which gobbles up billions in government funds, have in trying to hide the truth behind a legitimate matter of scientific inquiry? "We have to maintain the confidentiality of the individual," says lab spokesperson Ron Kolb. "Because it's a personnel issue, we have to tread more lightly. This issue cannot be adjudicated in the press."

That's bullshit and everyone knows it. It's a State agency, it's taxpayer money, and there's all sorts of laws saying the whole world has a right to know when internal fraud occurs. Unasked question: how much will this undermine the Lab's credibility in its endless disputes with Berkeley neighbors over the health effects of lab research? 'We can't talk about the burst of Tritium that gave testicular cancer to half of Berkeley,' Kolb said, 'This issue cannot be adjudicated in the press.'

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