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"We don’t want the historic parts particularly — other people do," he said. "Because it’s expensive. ... If someone’s willing to pay to keep it up and fund it, fine, we’ll try to work with that."
'They’ve been sitting there for two years with water running through them'
Farr said the council already changed and enhanced the historic designation grant process in a way that would raise the amount available for the Gore Park buildings to the $1.1 million. The Royal Connaught project also benefited from that change, Farr said.
Council was "very generous to help the issue along by changing that previous condition," he said. "I think that speaks volumes."
Blanchard toured city officials through the buildings when he first bought them in 2000.
"We bought the buildings knowing they were a tear-down. Everybody knew that," he said. "Then we nursed it on for another 12 or 14 years. They’ve been sitting there for two years with water running through them."
Blanchard said the buildings are full of mould and unsafe to send his staff into. When he thinks back, he said, "We should’ve demolished it immediately."
Blanchard said he was grateful to hear about Farr's intention to extend the grant deadline. But he laughed at questions about how soon he might try to restore the facades and comply with the city's historic designation rules.
"They gave us a demolition permit to rip it down!" Blanchard said. "So, I mean, it’s a little schizophrenic."
Averil Macdonald, the chair of shale gas lobby group UK Onshore Oil and Gas, recently made some highly controversial statements about how she believes gender impacts a person’s feelings about fracking.
During an interview with The Times of London, Macdonald argued that men are generally more in favor of fracking–the controversial drilling technique used to mine shale gas–because they’re influenced by an “awful lot of facts.”
Macdonald may not be wrong that gender plays a role in how fracking is viewed; a University of Nottingham survey found recently that, out of a pool of approximately 7,000 participants, women were less likely to approve of fracking than men or to correctly identify shale gas as the fossil fuel produced by the process.
A board member of Women in Science and Engineering, an organization dedicated to encouraging women to enter STEM fields, Macdonald says that women’s judgement is clouded by our emotions and dedication to family. Speaking to The Times, she argued that women compensate for their lack of formal scientific education by instead trusting their “gut reaction”:
Frequently the women haven’t had very much in the way of a science education because they may well have dropped science at 16. That is just a fact. Women do tend not to have continued with science. Not only do [they] show more of a concern about fracking, they also know that they don’t know and they don’t understand. They are concerned because they don’t want to be taking [something] on trust. And that’s actually entirely reasonable. But women, for whatever reason, have not been persuaded by the facts. More facts are not going to make any difference. What we have got to do is understand the gut reaction, the feel. The dialogue is more important than the dissemination of facts. Women are always concerned about threats to their family more than men. We are naturally protective of our children. I would similarly be concerned but I read the literature and I feel comfortable that I understand. What I hope is that I can make the women who are concerned comfortable that the myths they are worried about are myths.
Macdonald went on to say that more high-level female executives are needed in the shale industry, and that the ten executives who interviewed her for her current position were all men.
According to The Telegraph, she’s currently spearheading a campaign to convince women of the benefits of fracking.
(via The Independent)
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It’s presidential election season, so it’s obligatory for all candidates to talk about jobs. You have already heard a lot about jobs being lost to China and Mexico (a strong concern of Donald Trump), jobs being outsourced to low-wage countries or moved to tax havens (so-called “tax inversions” are a Hillary Clinton bugaboo), or jobs eliminated because of Obamacare or high minimum wages (a favorite Ted Cruz line).
You won’t hear many of the points below, however, either because they are too positive, too subtle to capture in a sound bite, or too long-term to worry about now. But if you want the truth about American jobs, you may want to keep reading rather than tuning into a presidential debate or stump speech.
Times Are Good
It’s hardly a bad time for jobs overall—official unemployment is at the lowest rate since 2008, and applications for unemployment insurance were at the lowest level since 1973. You won’t hear that from the Republican candidates, of course—the news is much too sanguine. If there’s a problem, it is with low labor force participation, which has dropped several percentage points over the last decade. As testimony before a Joint Economic Committee suggests, there are a variety of reasons for this, although an aging population is clearly part of the issue.
The Lack of Middle Class Jobs
Growing inequality is another big issue—the hallmark of Bernie Sanders’ campaign, and an issue that is occasionally even mentioned by Republican candidates. An overall lack of jobs is less of a problem for our economy, however, than the shortage of well-paying, middle class jobs.
Many of the new jobs in the US over the last decade or two have been low-end service jobs—feeding, selling to, and taking care of our fellow Americans. These jobs don’t generally produce a lot of revenue or grow much in productivity, so it’s difficult for businesses to pay high wages to workers who perform them. And that situation isn’t going to change much no matter who is president. As a New York Times article points out, our economy is a service economy, and it’s been going in that direction for several decades now.
Free Trade Isn’t the Problem
There is little doubt that some of our well-paying manufacturing jobs have gone to places like Mexico and China. But recent trade deals aren’t the problem, capitalism is. For several centuries now, manufacturing has moved to places where it’s done most cheaply and effectively. And for most industries, that place hasn’t been the U.S. for a while.
Donald Trump’s bluster notwithstanding, it seems highly unlikely that any president could change this much. As a society we don’t generally like to tell businesspeople where they can produce stuff, and we don’t like paying high tariffs for stuff made elsewhere. Corporate moves to low-tax countries do some damage to our tax base, but they don’t tend to involve many jobs.
Automation Is Good
Ironically, our best hope for bringing manufacturing jobs home is automation. Also ironically, the same is true for outsourced service jobs. Since the U.S. is one of the world’s leaders in automation technologies, we’ve got some chance of bringing jobs home if we have the best automation capabilities and the people who are best at working with automation technologies.
In factories, this means technologists who can install, maintain, and optimize robots, CAD/CAM, and flexible manufacturing cells. In services, it means working with tools like robotic process automation and cognitive technologies that can do work previously outsourced to low-wage countries. Whether in factories or offices, all those automation machines need people to configure, install, and tend them. Because most of the actual work is done by machines, there won’t be huge numbers of jobs that will come home this way, but there will be some.
Information Technology is a Drag
Information technology hasn’t eliminated a lot of jobs, but it is keeping some from growing. Take bank tellers, for example. Contrary to what President Obama said in a 2014 interview, automated teller machines haven’t led to many fewer jobs in that field. Mr. Obama may not run into them when he needs cash, but the number of bank tellers in the U.S. has remained pretty constant since 1980, when ATMs really took off. Of course, the U.S. has grown a lot in population since 1980, but the number of tellers hasn’t. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that the number of tellers will decline about 8% over the next decade—not a precipitous decline, but certainly not a growth occupation either.
The Service Sector Slowdown
In the future, many lower-level service jobs are going to stop growing—if not decline—because of technology. There are already some pretty capable technologies that automate truck and taxi driving, hamburger ordering and preparation, lawn mowing, and so forth. They’ll get better and cheaper over time. Human workers will get more expensive. If I were in one of these fields, I’d learn how to sell, install, or fix these machines.
Professionals Should Be Wary
The same is true for many professional jobs. There are already smart machines that can do some of the key tasks of lawyers, doctors, marketers, journalists, and even scientists. Not all of the incumbents of these knowledge work roles will lose their jobs, but some will. If you don’t want to be one of the losers, again, your best bet is to make sure you know how to work alongside these machines and add value to them.
The lessons from all this are pretty clear. If you’re voting for your preferred candidate because you believe they can reverse the economic trends of the last several decades, you might want to reconsider your choice or your reason for it. You may also want to think about whether you want your candidate to bring about more jobs or less inequality. The policies that lead to these objectives are different (though they are both quite difficult to achieve), and candidates tend to emphasize one or the other.
Whether you prefer lower unemployment or higher incomes, helping Americans get more college degrees is still a good idea, although it probably won’t be the boon that it’s been in the past. And if you want to be assured of a job over the next few decades, learn how to work closely with smart machines and to do something they can’t.
Thomas H. Davenport is a Distinguished Professor at Babson College and a Fellow of the MIT Initiative on the Digital. With Julia Kirby, he is the author of Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and Losers in the Age of Smart Machines (Harper Business, 2016).
I didn't think I would be writing about this, but, then again, I seem to say that fairly frequently. Be that as it may, on Friday I wrote about a letter sent to Lee Goldman, MD, the Dean of the Faculties of Health Sciences and Medicine at Columbia University complaining about Dr. Mehmet Oz's promotion of pseudoscience on his television show, which reaches millions. When I wrote my post, my first reaction was somewhat supportive, but with reservations. However, as I read your comments and thought about it some more, I started having second thoughts. Then, over the weekend, I had a rather prolonged exchange on Twitter during breaks in the action at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Meeting in Philadelphia, which I'm attending now. The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that this letter, written by Dr. Henry I. Miller of the Hoover Institution, and signed by several doctors with ties to the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), was an incredibly bad idea. This evolution in my thinking was helped along by other developments over the weekend.
I'll explain. I also might regret having continued my commentary, but, then, when did that ever stop me before? (Actually, you'll never know when, if, or how many times that's ever happened.)
In my post, I also described my discomfort with Dr. Miller and the signatories of his letter. For instance, the Hoover Institution isn't exactly known for its promotion of good science, given its history of denialism with respect to human-caused global climate change. Then, of course, I'm not exactly a big fan of ACSH, either. It's frequently on the right side of science, but seemingly only when that position aligns with industry positions. It's the reason why I didn't accept an offer to be on the board of scientific advisors of ACSH a few years ago.
Before I go on further, in the interests of full disclosure, I must confess my own issues with the approach Dr. Miller and his cosignatories took. As many of you know, there have been several attempts by quacks and antivaccinationists over the years to make trouble for me at my place of work. Not too long ago, a patient of Stanislaw Burzynski complained to my dean about my posts deconstructing her testimonial that she has been telling as "evidence" that Burzynski cured her of advanced breast cancer. As odd as it seems given how vociferously critical I have been of Dr. Oz's promotion of quackery on his TV show (remember, I'm the one who coined the term "America's quack" to describe him), I must admit that seeing Miller make trouble for Oz at his job over his extracurricular activities rubbed me the wrong way. True, I suppressed my distaste when I wrote my post last Friday, so powerful is my dislike for Dr. Oz and what he does on his TV show. But it didn't stay suppressed for very long. It has been argued that with Oz it's different, because Oz promotes quackery while I promote (or at least like to think I promote) good science and medicine, but even if that's true I can't help but remember that a key purpose of a letter to a person's employer is intimidation into silence or, in Oz's case given his popularity and the security of his position, to cause embarrassment and to provoke a response.
Now here's the problem. Regardless of whether I think it's a good idea or not or simply an attempt at bullying to write a letter like this, and even though Miller's letter was correct from a scientific standpoint about Dr. Oz, if you're going to write a letter like this it's generally a good idea to know what your goal is in doing so. What, exactly, is it you're trying to accomplish by writing a letter like this? Is it to get Dr. Oz fired? That's never going to happen, given that Dr. Oz has tenure and, unfortunately, it would take a hell of a lot before a university would try to remove a tenured professor. Indeed, as I've sarcastically mentioned, given that Dr. Oz is the director of the "integrative medicine" program at Columbia, promoting the "integration" quackery with science-based medicine is basically a big part of his job description! In a real world, that wouldn't be the case and what Oz does would be a problem, but, thanks to quackademia, it's no longer shameful to do that; whole divisions and departments in various academic medical centers are devoted to it. Oh, sure, quackademics like Oz wouldn't accept that characterization of what they do as valid, but I would counter that, other than featuring psychics like John Edward or Theresa Caputo on his show, what Oz does on his show is not really much different in terms of message than what he probably at Columbia: Promote acupuncture, naturopathy, homeopathy, and traditional Chinese medicine, among other things. Again, surely Dr. Miller must know this. so I assume that his goal was not to actually get Dr. Oz fired. Indeed, Columbia issued a statement supporting Oz on the grounds of academic freedom very rapidly, and, even in the unlikely event that Columbia were to fire Dr. Oz over his show, it would remove one of the likely strongest restraints that keeps Dr. Oz from going even deeper into the woo.
So what was Dr. Miller's goal?
Obviously, it was to create embarrassing publicity for Dr. Oz and Columbia University. After all, if Dr. Miller were really looking to cause problems for Dr. Oz he should have at least mentioned that Dr. Oz did a "made for TV" clinical trial he dubbed the "Green Coffee Bean Project" without bothering to obtain institutional review board (IRB) approval, something that is a direct violation of Columbia University and New York Presbyterian Hospital's (NYP) Human Subject Research Protection Program, which explicitly requires IRB approval for any clinical trial done by any Columbia University faculty member and NYP-affiliated faculty regardless of regardless of the location where the research is done. Now, as I pointed out, there is a slight gray area here, because clearly Oz's dubious green coffee bean clinical trial was not federally funded, but institutions that receive federal funding are required to abide by the Common Rule, which requires IRB approval of all human subjects research. Miller was either unaware of this issue, didn't realize that this was really the only "in" skeptics have to get Columbia to pay attention, or didn't care about it because what he really cares about is Oz's attack on GMOs. Mentioning that Oz conducted a dubious clinical trial for TV that was not approved by the Columbia/NYP IRB would have been a far more damning thing to mention with respect to possibly forcing Columbia to do more than issue a brief statement full of bromides about "academic freedom" than his pointed mention that Dr. Oz trashed GMOs on one of his shows.
In any case, as thoughtlessly as Miller and the ACSH acted, they did managed to get a fair amount of national press coverage, and the ACSH is virtually giddy over the press reaction:
Although, for years, Oz has been criticized in countless blogs and opinion pieces, which have appeared on a wide variety of websites, this is the first time that a coordinated effort to expose Oz for who he really is has generated a massive and unified response. It also puts Columbia University in the position where they have to either take action or defend their actions, or lack thereof. ACSH’s Dr. Josh Bloom, a long time, vocal critic of Dr. Oz said, “Every once in while the right thing happens. This is one of those times. The line between ‘doctor’ Oz and ‘TV personality’ Oz has been blurred for a long time, leading many American’s to equate the two, and, in doing so perpetuating the ‘fame equals credibility’ myth. Dr. Miller’s letter has done much to dismantle this myth. It is well past the time that people finally learn the difference between real medicine and entertainment.”
Um. No. Dr. Miller's letter created a momentary press kerfuffle that is fading. One little letter to Dr. Oz's dean is not going to "dismantle" the myth that "fame equals credibility." To claim otherwise is the height of hubris. In fact, if there was a recent event that did more to tarnish the Dr. Oz brand, it was Senator Claire McCaskill's magnificent roasting of Dr. Oz in front of her Senate panel over his breathless promotion of various dietary supplements as the latest, greatest weight loss miracle ever. Then, late last year, the British Medical Journal published a study that showed that half of what Oz recommends on his show has either no or little evidence to support it. Indeed, if you want to see how far Dr. Oz's star has fallen, just witness what happened last November, when Dr. Oz's social media team asked Twitter to ask him questions under the hashtag #OzsInBox and Twitter went wild mocking him for his promotion of quackery.
In fact, part of the reason I've come to conclude that Dr. Miller's letter was a spectacularly bad idea is that it appears ready to backfire on him. That's because one thing Miller accomplished without a doubt is to piss off Dr. Oz. (No doubt that was intended.) Don't get me wrong. I'm all for pissing off Dr. Oz over the TV snake oil peddler he's become, but, I wonder, did Miller stop to think what the consequences might be if he actually succeeded in publicly embarrassing Dr. Oz in the national media without a clear idea of what his endgame would be? I don't think so, and Dr. Oz is in the process of responding. First, Dr. Oz released this statement on Facebook:
I bring the public information that will help them on their path to be their best selves. We provide multiple points of view, including mine which is offered without conflict of interest. That doesn't sit well with certain agendas which distort the facts. For example, I do not claim that GMO foods are dangerous, but believe that they should be labeled like they are in most countries around the world. I will address this on the show next week.
Basically, you can see where this is going. Dr. Miller is a huge booster of GMOs, having served as the founding director of the FDA Office of Biotechnology, and you can bet that it didn't pass unnoticed that what provoked Miller to write his letter was not so much Dr. Oz's promotion of quackery but rather a specific fear mongering segment on The Dr. Oz Show about GMOs, in particular the non-browning apple. Not suprisingly, in his response, Dr. Oz is painting himself as not being anti-GMO but only "pro-information." What will Oz say in his show next week? I think there's a good hint in the insinuations in his brief statement above.
While Dr. Oz is, for the moment, predictably taking the high road, his admirers and fellow travelers, equally predictably, were not. Predictably, they were attacking Miller and his cosignatories as industry shills. The batshit crazy version of this shill gambit comes from—who else?—Mike Adams, in a pair of posts, entitled Vicious attack on Dr. Oz actually waged by biotech mafia; plot to destroy Oz launched after episode on glyphosate toxicity went viral and Mainstream media FAIL: Sleazebag doctors attacking Doctor Oz have histories of criminal fraud and ties to Monsanto's "Discredit Bureau". Indeed, if you want to see a textbook example of an ad hominem attack, look no further than to Adams' repeating allegations against John Entine that he physically abused his wife, which, even if true (and I haven't been able to find any source other than Mike Adams to back up this claim, although the court documents look authentic), has nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not his arguments about GMOs are correct from a scientific standpoint.
Mike Adams was, as far as I could tell, first out of the gate with the shill argument, and, Mikey being Mikey, he turned the crazy up to 11. However, there are people who are much more in control of their impulses and whose business model doesn't depend on being as incredibly outrageous and incendiary in his rhetoric as Mikey's does. For instance:
It is important for physicians who invoke their medical degrees while endorsing products to make their allegiances and financial ties very transparent — and Dr. Oz deserves to be held to this standard. But by that standard, Dr. Miller and other self-described “distinguished physicians” on this letter also have some explaining to do. Miller, whose employer, the Hoover Institution, is often described as a “Republican-leaning” or “conservative” think tank, has interests of his own. A molecular biologist by training, Miller spent 15 years at the FDA before his fellowship at Hoover; throughout both jobs, he has been a consistent and ardent promoter of genetically engineered foods (or GMOs — the “O” standing for “organism”). And in his advocacy, Miller is positively prolific. A quick web search reveals dozens upon dozens of articles and opinion columns touting the benefits of GMOs to consumers, developing economies and agribusiness — and a seemingly equal number attacking those that warn about the possible risks of what are sometimes called “Frankenfoods.” Miller was a leading voice in opposition to California’s Prop. 37, the 2012 ballot initiative seeking clear labeling of products containing GMOs, and, in the 1990s, was an equally prominent voice in a tobacco industry-backed campaign to discredit the science linking cigarette use and cancer.
You get the idea.
The same meme is showing up in even mainstream media accounts. For instance, in this segment Bob Arnott, former NBC Chief Medical Correspondent echoes the very same "shill" argument, saying that all ten signatories have "industry ties" and that the industry is "furious that he's [Dr. Oz] has taken on genetically modified crops" and described the letter signatories as "industry henchmen who are after Dr. Oz." He even mentioned that the current acting president of the ACSH, Gilbert Ross, spent time in prison for Medicaid fraud. Heck, Arnot even accused ACSH and Miller of astroturfing. True, he does say that Dr. Oz peddles misinformation that would be like a "Brian Williams scandal" if it were on network TV and unfavorably compares Dr. Oz with Sanjay Gupta on CNN, but his attack on Miller and company is devastating.
And, yes, this is the way that Dr. Oz is going to go, as shown in this story on CNN Money (appropriately enough). Dr. Oz is planning to devote a full episode, probably Thursday's, to a response to the accusations of quackery. In other words, he's taking advantage of the letter to gin up his ratings, and his attacks will resemble, no doubt, a toned down version of Mike Adams' attacks. No, he won't mention domestic violence, but you can bet that he'll mention Dr. Ross' conviction for Medicaid fraud and Dr. Miller's past advocacy. You'll be amused at the rationale:
The special episode "is the last thing we want to do," a person associated with the show said on Sunday. But Oz and his representatives have concluded that it is necessary because of the "intimidation" they perceive from the doctors.
Nonsense. Dr. Oz's producers see a chance to take advantage of the publicity and to strike back at the same time. Dr. Miller threw his best punch, and now Dr. Oz is going to punch back:
Oz won't just read the one-paragraph statement he issued last Friday. Instead, he'll devote the majority of the episode to his response. "We plan to show America who these authors are, because discussion of health topics should be free of intimidation," a spokesman for the show said. The details, including the Thursday air date, are subject to change. The episode will be taped on Tuesday or Wednesday.
Can Miller take what Oz dishes out? Probably. Does it matter? Probably not. Is Miller's message about Dr. Oz's promotion of quackery and pseudoscience going to get lost in the counterattack that will paint him and his cosignatories as industry shills seeking revenge on Dr. Oz for having questioned whether GMOs are safe? Almost certainly.
In fact, I'll go even further and suggest that Miller's letter, after the initial embarrassment it caused Dr. Oz, is probably now seen by him and his producers as a godsend that gives them the pretext to counterattack and to tar all the physicians—not just Dr. Miller and company, but other bloggers, me, and all the rest of us who have been criticizing Dr. Oz for the last five years over his promotion of quackery and pseudoscience—as being industry shills of some kind and to make it stick in the public mind. I'm sure he'll find a way to go after Julia Belluz over at Vox.com as well, given that her excellent article on the making of Dr. Oz as a quack (my interpretation) was published the same week as Miller's letter. That's the narrative Dr. Miller has handed to Dr. Oz on a silver platter.
I tend to be a bit conservative in my preferred tactics taking on pseudoscience like that promoted by Dr. Oz, tending to prefer countering his misinformation and supporting activities like Ben Mazer's careful documentation of patients who have been harmed by Dr. Oz's medical advice. More recently, Ben has been working to persuade the AMA to issue a public statement that "reiterates the importance of evidence and transparency to the profession" while asking the AMA "to craft guidelines on how doctors can ethically use the media to help the public" and "to issue a report on what disciplinary pathways might be available for doctors who continue to spread bogus medical information in the media."
I'm not opposed to splashy PR moves in general. I just think that they should be smart and thought through, with a definite goal in mind other than stirring up trouble. Dr. Miller's little publicity stunt failed this test on every level, and, worse, could wind up backfiring spectacularly, leaving the rest of us who care about all the quackery Dr. Oz spreads, not just his fear mongering about GMOs, to deal with the consequences.
3D Systems abandons its Cube printers, but DRM means you can't buy filament from anyone else
3D printing giant 3D Systems has experienced a terrible year and a change in leadership, and seems to be backing away from consumer products, meaning that it's orphaned its Cube home 3D printers.
But the Cube was born dead, because it was born with DRM. It only accepts filament -- its 3D equivalent to inkjet ink -- that comes in a package that's been cryptographically signed by the manufacturer. Thanks to laws like the US DMCA, the European Union Copyright Directive and Canada's Bill C-11, it's a crime to defeat this measure and load third-party filament into your printer. That means that once the existing stock of Cube filament is gone, there will be no legal way to keep using your Cube printer.
The US Copyright Office did grant a three-year, expiring exception allowing 3D printer owners to jailbreak their devices, but it has so many conditions as to be unusable, and it also doesn't grant an exception for the tools necessary to jailbreak your printer. So even if you satisfy the criteria, you still have to make your own jailbreaking tool from scratch.
Michael Weinberg points out that 3DS can do two things to make up for their stupid DRM strategy:
Since the Cube is designed to only accept printing filament made by 3D Systems, as part of winding down the Cube - and as an act of good faith to Cube owners - 3D Systems should explicitly open the doors to third party filament. This can take the form of two simple public commitments. First, 3D Systems can promise not to sue any Cube users who use non-3D Systems filament for the Cube. Second, 3D Systems can promise not to sue anyone who wants to make and sell filament that will work with the Cube. Doing both requires circumventing the verification chip that 3D Systems includes in its filament today.
Free the Cube [Michael Weinberg]
Everybody knows mock drafts aren’t real. They are fun, but they are “mocks” meant as, hopefully, educated guesses. What, though, if they were real? A number of team sites around SB Nation are looking at what would have happened since 2010 if teams just went by the final mock drafts of ESPN analysts Mel Kiper Jr. and Todd McShay.
So, let’s join the party. Which players would the Giants have selected since 2010 had they just followed the advice of Kiper and McShay in Round 1? Would they have done better? Worse? What impact might those choices have had.
Let’s go year-by-year.
2010
Giants (15th overall): DE Jason Pierre-Paul
Kiper: OLB Sean Weatherspoon
McShay: MLB Rolando McClain
I think it’s pretty clear that the Giants ended up with the best player. Weatherspoon was a talented player who went 19th overall to the Atlanta Falcons, four picks after the Giants took Pierre-Paul. He has been an injury-prone disappointment, though, playing in only 65 of 96 potential regular-season games (44 starts). He has missed more than half the season twice due to injuries. McClain? Please. A 2013 “retirement.” Two drug suspensions in the past two seasons. He may never play again.
2011
Giants (19th overall): CB Prince Amukamara
Kiper: OT Anthony Castonzo
McShay: RB Mark Ingram
This one is really interesting. Amukamara was a good but not great player for the Giants, but played in only 55 of 80 games. Castonzo has been a six-year starter at left tackle for the Indianapolis Colts. Ingram has averaged 4.4 yards rushing throughout his career and is coming off a career-best season in which he gained 1,043 yards for the New Orleans Saints and averaged 5.1 yards per carry. It’s pretty easy to argue that both Castonzo and Ingram have had better careers than Amukamara, and are currently more important players.
2012
Giants (32nd overall): RB David Wilson
Kiper: TE Coby Fleener
McShay: OT Jonathan Martin
Sadly, injury wrecked Wilson’s career after just 21 games. Could, Fleener, who has 233 career receptions and four straight seasons of at least 50 catches, have been the tight end the Giants have been searching for all these years? What happened to Jonathan Martin in Miami was unfortunate, but he only played three seasons in the league. In the end, seems pretty clear Kiper had the best idea here. Both Fleener and Martin were available when the Giants picked Wilson.
2013
Giants (19th overall): OL Justin Pugh
Kiper: CB D.J. Hayden
McShay: DE Bjoern Werner
Given these three choices, pretty clear the Giants got this one right. Pugh has been a solid player for the Giants and was their best lineman in 2016 before injuring a knee. Hayden has just 25 career starts, only two in 2016. Werner had a non-descript career with just 6.5 sacks in three seasons, did not play in 2016, and has announced his retirement.
2014
Giants (12th overall): WR Odell Beckham Jr.
Kiper: OL Zack Martin

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