The IRE office will be closed from December 25th to January 5th.
Extra Extra
State-run home for disabled hired unlicensed medical directors
Clark Kauffman of the The Des Moines Register reports that a state-run home for profoundly disabled children and adults has employed nine unlicensed psychologists and two successive, unlicensed medical directors. State records show the medical directors — both of whom are gynecologists — were paid a total of $127,424 without either of them ever obtaining…
Read MoreEnforcement of vaccination law lax at day cares
Following up on a recent investigation of vaccination enforcement in schools, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that hundreds of local day care centers also routinely violate a state law that prohibits admitting children without required shots. The newspaper also found health officials and child care licensing regulators were confused about what the law actually says and…
Read MoreThe taking of NASA’s secrets
BusinessWeek’s Keith Epstein and Ben Elgin disclose detailed evidence that hackers and foreign operatives have been penetrating NASA computers for years, robbing the nation’s military and scientific institutions — along with the defense industry that serves them — of secret information on satellites, rocket engines, launch systems, and even the Space Shuttle. As part of…
Read MoreSoldiers say they were ordered to shred sensitive files
In October, Mark Benjamin of Salon.com questioned the U.S. Army’s report attributing the deaths of Pfc. Albert Nelson and Pfc. Robert Suarez to enemy action after finding evidence suggesting that the men died from friendly fire. Now three soldiers say they were ordered to shred boxes of documents containing private information about Nelson and Suarez…
Read MoreNYU campus crime reports are misleading
A report by Marc Beja and Adam Playford of Washington Square News (at New York University) brings to light issues with NYU’s reporting of campus crime statistics. Due to how the school defines campus addresses, only three of NYU’s 21 undergraduate dorms qualify as on-campus. “The tightly confined Clery map covers the buildings immediately around…
Read MoreWeb provides outlet for watchdog reporting
Watchdog journalism and investigative reporting are finding an outlet on the Internet, according to a report by Richard Pérez-Peña of The New York Times. “As America’s newspapers shrink and shed staff, and broadcast news outlets sink in the ratings, a new kind of Web-based news operation has arisen in several cities, forcing the papers to…
Read MoreSome hospitals fail to contain MRSA outbreaks
The Seattle Times published the first part of a series revealing failures by Washington hospitals to control the spread of drug-resistant staph infections known as MRSA. Washington state hospitals are not obligated to track infection rates, but The Times analysis of millions of documents “revealed 672 previously undisclosed deaths attributable to the infection.” State and…
Read MoreBPA leached from microwave-safe products when heated
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel’s Susanne Rust and Meg Kissinger, as part of their ongoing series Chemical Fallout, found that products labeled as “microwave safe” release toxic doses of the chemical bisphenol A when heated. The newspaper had a University of Missouri laboratory test 10 products to see if the chemical bisphenol A leached out of containers when…
Read MoreCost of Army aviation accidents top $16 billion
An analysis of data from the Army Combat Readiness/Safety Center revealed that aviation accidents and incidents have cost the U.S. Army approximately $16.2 billion over the past 12 years, according to Michael Fabey of Aviation Week. The most expensive single-event accident cost the Army about $62.4 million, but the average cost per accident or incident…
Read MoreNatural gas drilling may be harming U.S. drinking water supply
Abrahm Lustgarten of ProPublica reports that natural gas drilling in the United States may be endangering water supplies. A sample of water from a well in Sublette County, Wyo. found benzene — a chemical linked to aplastic anemia and leukemia — at a level 1,500 times higher than what is safe for human consumption. “Sublette…
Read More