Another possibility is that someone's tenure committee is meeting soon. :-). I don't want to deride what looks like good primary research, but this release sm

Another possibility is that someone's tenure committee is meeting soon. :-). I don't want to deride what looks like good primary research, but this release smells of ulterior motives. (˜˜NB: I happen to live in the same province as the sponsoring institution. We've a new government that has made significant cuts to postsecondary and medical funding, and have signalled a desire to do more. I get why they might need to do stuff like this.)