At least it's an Open Specification. Apple could also work on it to make it better for everyone (like any other standards out there), but they decided to enjoy the comfort of their walled garden instead.
It depends of the physical display size and the page size of the PDF. I personally receive many PDFs that I need to reed at work and they're not available in another format.
If I can grab a Letter/A4 sized eReader that'd make those document much easier to read that on a regular computer display, otherwise the alternative would be to kill trees and print it out which would be a huge waste.
The Guardian is simply covering the story, the legwork of discovering the fraud was still done by professionals. Don't dismiss a story because you don't like the messenger.
Even though I'm not optimistic it will achieve a good result, more studies that are backed by a solid protocol that can be replicated and peer-reviewed can't hurt. Science is all about following the scientific method and proving or disproving an hypothesis with factual data, and the more data we have the better.
It's also a labour of love, where you want to give the best product you can and you truly believe in what you're working on, and when some executives are botching the release because they want to look good on paper to get their bonus while pushing unrealistic expectations then you can see how frustrating it can be when all your work goes down in flames in a matter of days.
Yet companies involved in joint ventures with state-owned Chinese firms have been asked in recent months to give internal Communist Party cells an explicit role in decision-making.
If that isn't protectionism, I don't know what that is.