Looks like Mycle Schneider, the lead author, is a founding member of WISE-Paris, which is the French branch of the anti-nuclear group WISE, which he directed from 1983 to 2003. [wikipedia]
Yes, as it establishes the potential bias of the article author. If this article was written by typically a pro-nuclear author it would be much more noteworthy.
Predictably, it didn't bring up the costs (though of course the first comment on HN did) but it tried to play the "environmentalist who has seen the light" angle pretty hard.
It's actually kind of weird how many articles like this do get submitted to hacker news. Link says "it's safe & making a comeback", comments say "it's just not economic and no" <- this has happened quite a few times.
Noting an author's biases/motives, like agarttha did, is useful. It's not the same as asserting that a conclusion is logically false because of the biases of the person who argued it.
In this case I thought it was rather obvious what the author's bias was and he doesnt't try to hide it.
It might be useful if they tried to conceal it. E.g tried to present themselves as an objective researcher at a think tank that takes money from general dynamics/lockheed or a journalist who clearly hastily rewrote a press release.
Broken clock shows the right time twice a day. Biased people being correct is an exception, not the rule. We should be suspicious of people with know biases.
Is it bias when you have an opinion and share it? The article can contain some of the reasons he's anti-nuclear, instead of the other way around, where his bias causes him to write the article.
>Not disputing, but in the interests of full disclosure, the presenter is (per YT About):
>* Professor David Ruzic
>* Abel Bliss Professor of Engineering
>* Department of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering
>* University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Professors usually don't gain these qualifications because they started out anti-nuclear.
Something must have reversed his opinion somewhere along the line, no doubt he has greater domain expertise than all but a few others sharing similar deep knowledge.
