Links for 2010-01-16

  • “Education Secretary Arne Duncan pulled no punches in a high-profile address here Thursday at the annual convention of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, proposing a series of policy changes that he said could rid college sports of the “tiny minority” of bad actors that “stains” its reputation.

    Duncan, former co-captain of Harvard University’s basketball team and first-team Academic All-American, criticized the high-stakes recruiting wars that take place in sports like men’s basketball and football. He wants further rules protecting young students from college recruiters.”

  • “The year is only a couple of weeks old, but it’s already been a strange one for science news. With a steady flow of coverage on a huge range of complex subjects, it’s easy for things to go wrong, and for journalists to come up with material that doesn’t get the science right. But a few recent cases appear to involve news organizations that have gone out of their way to get a science story wrong. The news industry tends to respond badly to cases where people make up the contents of their stories–witness Jayson Blair and the fake Bush National Guard records. But, so far, the response to the recent science news-related events has been complete indifference.”