They hired a marketing company to make that flash website because they have investors that paid one million dollars for the fossil, probably because the investors saw money to be made. I would blame the investors for the hype rather than question the motives of the scientists.
The paper is published in PLoS One under CC Attribution which cancels out most of the badness of having an all-flash marketing site in my opinion.
Blog discussing their decision to publish at PLoS One: http://everyone.plos.org/2009/05/19/plos-one-introduces-darw....
Short overview and collection of links: http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2009/05/introducing_ida_-_the_....
They hired a marketing company to make that flash website because they have investors that paid one million dollars for the fossil, probably because the investors saw money to be made. I would blame the investors for the hype rather than question the motives of the scientists.
The paper is published in PLoS One under CC Attribution which cancels out most of the badness of having an all-flash marketing site in my opinion.