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“Coincidence or Cluster?”
A six-part series by Kevin Craver of the Northwest Herald (Crystal Lake, Ill.) looks into lawsuits facing two chemical companies after a cluster of brain cancer patients were discovered in a small town. Craver studied documents going back 30 years to investigate the site’s regulatory history, inspections, claims and counterclaims about pollutants and human exposure.…
Read MoreBundlers problematic for candidates
Following the news of fugitive Norman Hsu fundraising for Hillary Clinton’s campaign, a Center for Investigative Reporting investigation for Politico finds new examples of presidential candidates relying on fundraisers with questionable backgrounds. A fundraiser for Mitt Romney was recently suspended from practicing law. A backer of Barack Obama defaulted on loans. A bundler for Rudy…
Read MoreDesigned to treat addicts, ‘bupe fix’ gains popularity on streets
A three-part investigative series by The Baltimore Sun looks at the drug buprenorphine which is now being commonly prescribed to addicts to help them kick their addictions. It has shown great promise with opiate addictions by curbing withdrawal symptoms. But in plentiful supply, it is now showing up on the streets where abusers are using…
Read MoreAlleged doping aligns with boosts in stats, paychecks
Ben Poston, Derrick Nunnally and Bill Glauber of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel built a database of every player named in the Mitchell Report. The reporters analyzed statistical performance before and after the players allegedly began taking drugs and found that more than half the 90 players named in the report showed an improvement in performance…
Read MoreCheating rampant on Army exams
Bryan Bender and Kevin Baron of The Boston Globe spent five-months investigating the Army’s testing program “which verifies that soldiers have learned certain military skills and helps them amass promotion points.” Cheating had been suspected since 1999, but the Army did not acknowledge the problem until June 2007. The Globe‘s investigation learned that the Army…
Read MoreRural business loans lead to huge losses for USDA
Gilbert Gaul continued with The Washington Post‘s investigation of the USDA’s farm subsidy loan program and found many shortcomings. Small companies that go out of business often default on their loans; since the 1970s, the loan program has seen nearly $1.5 billion in losses. Gaul used individual examples of USDA loans to illustrate broader problems…
Read MoreCollege bowl system lines pockets
Brent Schrotenboer of The San Diego Union-Tribune dissected the college football bowl system to reveal the lucrative financial structure that helps explain the system’s staying power. The investigation checked IRS records for 19 current bowl games to find that net assets grew by 85 percent from 2001-2005, up from $3.4 million to $6.3 million The…
Read MoreMood-altering drugs prescribed frequently to foster kids
Gary Craig from the Rochester, N.Y., Democrat and Chronicle investigated the growing use of mood-altering prescription drugs among youth in foster care and uncovered cases of children as young as one year old being prescribed psychotropic drugs. The investigation revealed many trends in the prescribing of these drugs, and disturbing statistics about their prevalence in…
Read MoreInsiders profit from FDA’s Fast Track
A seven-month investigation by The Plain Dealer‘s Joel Rutchick and Brie Zeltner into the FDA’s Fast Track drug review program has proven benefits to investors while doing little or nothing to speed up the availability of new medical treatments, compared to expedited review options that already existed before the drug industry lobbied to create Fast…
Read MoreDanger of common chemical downplayed
In a second installment of “Chemical Fallout,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporters Susanne Rust, Meg Kissinger and Cary Spivak found that the chemical industry has funded much of the science claiming that the popular chemical bisphenol A is safe. The reporters built a database of 258 scientific studies spanning 20 years of research into the chemical…
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