The line for scientific research should never be drawn, not ever.
Look what happened in the arab world when the ruling class at the time around 500 AD decided that questioning the unknown is encroaching on gods doorstep, essentially drawing a line in the sand and saying "no more research, what you don't know now, you never will, cause it doesn't suit our needs".

How many nobel laureates are from the mid-east ?

1...and he shares it with a british fellow.

Seriously, there should never be any kind of discussion where drawing a line in the sand is ever a consideration for research, ever.

CERN invented the internet, they invented MRI, they invented the concentrated x-ray for blasting cancer sites, they invented super conductors, as Brian mentioned, they've also come up with a new method of cooling, they've even invented and built a brand new parallel internet with massive capacity and the ability to have distributed processing / applications running over it (google "The GRID - CERN"), they invented the integrated circuit, the transistor (and as a result, PLENTY of other complex digital structures)...

ALL of those technologies came as a result of EXPLORATION DRIVEN SCIENCE, where noone doing the research at the time had any kind of insight as to what might come of it.

You cant simply sit there and claim that exploration driven science should be stopped because it costs too much, AND you cant foresee its benefits, that's just a failing on your imagination, not on the scientific process.

As much as I admire the older chap for his position within the british academia, it is people with attitudes like him that enable the idiots of this world to hang shit on people with a passion for understanding how it all works.

Once you start saying "maybe thats a bit too far", you open the door for a lot more, just look at what Bush has done to the credibility of scientific reporting by essentially removing the ability for the scientists to report their findings without running it through the "washington filter" first....a disaster.

Borders are BS to begin with. People don't choose where they are born or the natural/political/sociological circumstances in the country they happen to live. This whole "I'm gonna draw a line in the sand and you better not cross it" thing is so arbitrary and unnatural that it cannot last if we want a peaceful and free world.

-Karl

I used to live/work on a small isolated island and there was a sea otter living in a crack above the waterline. These critters are amazing. One dawn the twelve (yes, twelve) resident cats were stalking the otter from three directions. She kept munching her oyster until the flanking cats crossed her invisible 'line in the sand'. The noise that came out of the otter was SO LOUD and surprising...I dropped my beer. Imagine walking past an elderly lady and having an air-raid klaxon suddenly go off.

Great tune too.

Yeah, I know it sounds silly, but there are a few grammatical mistakes -- like confusing "its" with "it's" -- which are subtle enough to eventually slip into common usage if someone doesn't take a stand to correct them. Sure, languages evolve, but there is a line in the sand here -- "it's" isn't a matter of style, but a rule of grammar.

I probably sound like a priggish fool... *sigh* I guess I'm okay with that if it means anyone who reads this thinks twice about using "it's" in their writing!

I used to think it was a tenuous rule, but I believe the complete opposite after a few months of Sifting (especially with the increasing number of Astroturfers etc). I believe the rule is needed, and requires enforcing in all instances (no matter who or when it was posted...Hint to the couple other Sifters I know of).

Their needs to be a distinct line in the sand; as the Submission warning says: 'do not submit self-promotion of any kind' - surely any self-submission is self-promotion to both the Sift and original host? If there's a video which can't be found any where on the providers, then it can be uploaded by the Sifter and submitted by another (or vice-versa, sharing the community gains).