No public business of any kind could possibly be done at any time without the acquiescence of the Circumlocution Office. Its finger was in the largest public pie, and in the smallest public tart. It was equally impossible to do the plainest right and to undo the plainest wrong without the express authority of the Circumlocution Office. If another Gunpowder Plot had been discovered half an hour before the lighting of the match, nobody would have been justified in saving the parliament until there had been half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence, on the part of the Circumlocution Office.

This glorious establishment had been early in the field, when the one sublime principle involving the difficult art of governing a country, was first distinctly revealed to statesmen. It had been foremost to study that bright revelation and to carry its shining influence through the whole of the official proceedings. Whatever was required to be done, the Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public departments in the art of perceiving--HOW NOT TO DO IT.

Through this delicate perception, through the tact with which it invariably seized it, and through the genius with which it always acted on it, the Circumlocution Office had risen to overtop all the public departments; and the public condition had risen to be--what it was.

It is true that How not to do it was the great study and object of all public departments and professional politicians all round the Circumlocution Office. It is true that every new premier and every new government, coming in because they had upheld a certain thing as necessary to be done, were no sooner come in than they applied their utmost faculties to discovering How not to do it. It is true that from the moment when a general election was over, every returned man who had been raving on hustings because it hadn't been done, and who had been asking the friends of the honourable gentleman in the opposite interest on pain of impeachment to tell him why it hadn't been done, and who had been asserting that it must be done, and who had been pledging himself that it should be done, began to devise, How it was not to be done. It is true that the debates of both Houses of Parliament the whole session through, uniformly tended to the protracted deliberation, How not to do it. It is true that the royal speech at the opening of such session virtually said, My lords and gentlemen, you have a considerable stroke of work to do, and you will please to retire to your respective chambers, and discuss, How not to do it. It is true that the royal speech, at the close of such session, virtually said, My lords and gentlemen, you have through several laborious months been considering with great loyalty and patriotism, How not to do it, and you have found out; and with the blessing of Providence upon the harvest (natural, not political), I now dismiss you. All this is true, but the Circumlocution Office went beyond it.

Because the Circumlocution Office went on mechanically, every day, keeping this wonderful, all-sufficient wheel of statesmanship, How not to do it, in motion. Because the Circumlocution Office was down upon any ill-advised public servant who was going to do it, or who appeared to be by any surprising accident in remote danger of doing it, with a minute, and a memorandum, and a letter of instructions that extinguished him. It was this spirit of national efficiency in the Circumlocution Office that had gradually led to its having something to do with everything. Mechanicians, natural philosophers, soldiers, sailors, petitioners, memorialists, people with grievances, people who wanted to prevent grievances, people who wanted to redress grievances, jobbing people, jobbed people, people who couldn't get rewarded for merit, and people who couldn't get punished for demerit, were all indiscriminately tucked up under the foolscap paper of the Circumlocution Office.

I thought of the Circumlocution Office this morning while reading this Guardian story about how the UK government is defining away academic standards in order to plump up its success rates--and is doing so at great cost to kids:

Pupils from deprived backgrounds are being conned into thinking they can advance in life by a system that hands out "worthless" qualifications, Harrow school's headteacher said today.

State schools risk producing students like "those girls in the first round of the X Factor" who tell the judges they want to be the next Britney Spears but cannot sing a note, Barnaby Lenon said.

Bright children from poor backgrounds are being short-changed by those who lead them to believe that "high grades in soft subjects" and going to "any old university to read any subject" were the route to prosperity, he told a conference of leading private and state school headteachers.

Meanwhile, at independent schools, pupils were being encouraged to take the toughest subjects, such as sciences and modern languages, and many were doing qualifications seen as more rigorous than regular GCSEs and A-levels, such as International GCSEs and the International Baccalaureate.

"Let us not deceive our children, especially children from poorer homes, with worthless qualifications, so they become like the citizens of Weimar Germany or Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe, carrying their certificates around in a wheelbarrow," Lenon said.

Michael Gove, the shadow education secretary, backed Lenon. Media studies had seen a big increase in popularity in state schools, simply because it boosted their position in the league tables, he told the conference of the 100 Group discussing social mobility.

"More children who were eligible for free school meals sat GCSEs in media studies than in physics, chemistry and biology combined," Gove said.

The Tories are planning a return to more academically driven schooling, including setting by ability and traditional subject-based classes, if elected this year. At the moment, the only subjects students are required to take at GCSE are English and maths, after the requirement for them to study a language was dropped in 2004.

Earlier this week a report by CiLT, the national centre for languages, said language learning was in danger of becoming a "twilight" subject taken only by pupils prepared to stay on after school.

Last summer, just 41% of pupils from comprehensives took a language GCSE, compared with 81% of pupils in private schools. Last week research revealed that increasing numbers of independent schools are shunning GCSEs and A-levels to offer exams they believe are more academically testing, raising fears of a widening gulf between state and private schools.

Lenon said he believed that the UK's standard of education fell when CSE and O-level exams were abandoned in favour of GCSEs. "The road to social mobility is not a downhill stretch on an empty motorway, it is an agonisingly steep path up a mountain whose summit is never quite in view," he said.

Until recently, most programs like this were aimed at affluent, overachieving students -- a way to keep them challenged and give them a head start on college work. But the goal is quite different at SandHoke, which enrolls only students whose parents do not have college degrees.

Here, and at North Carolina's other 70 early-college schools, the goal is to keep at-risk students in school by eliminating the divide between high school and college.

"We don't want the kids who will do well if you drop them in Timbuktu," said Lakisha Rice, the principal. "We want the ones who need our kind of small setting."

Results have been impressive. Not all students at North Carolina's early-college high schools earn two full years of college credit before they graduate -- but few drop out.

"Last year, half our early-college high schools had zero dropouts, and that's just unprecedented for North Carolina, where only 62 percent of our high school students graduate after four years," said Tony Habit, president of the North Carolina New Schools Project, the nonprofit group spearheading the state's high school reform.

In addition, North Carolina's early-college high school students are getting slightly better grades in their college courses than their older classmates.

While North Carolina leads the way in early-college high schools, the model is spreading in California, New York, Texas and elsewhere, where such schools are seen as a promising approach to reducing the high school dropout rate and increasing the share of degree holders -- two major goals of the Obama administration.

More than 200 of the schools are part of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's Early College High School Initiative, and dozens of others, scattered throughout the nation, have sprung up as projects of individual school districts.

"As a nation, we just can't afford to have students spending four years or more getting through high school, when we all know senior year is a waste," said Hilary Pennington of the Gates Foundation, "then having this swirl between high school and college, when a lot more students get lost, then a two-year degree that takes three or four years, if the student ever completes it at all."

Most of the early college high schools are on college campuses, but some stand alone. Some are four years, some five. Most serve a low-income student body that is largely black or Latino. But all are small, and all offer free college credits as part of the high school program.

"In 27 years as a college president, this is just about the most exciting thing I’ve been involved in," said Rick Dempsey, the president of Sandhills. "We picked these kids out of eighth grade, kids who were academically representative at a school with very low performance. We didn't cherry-pick them. Their performance has been so startling that you see what high expectations can do."

"The first year, I didn't like it, because my friends at the regular high school were having pep rallies and actual fun, while I had all this homework," one student says. "But when I look back at my middle school friends, I see how many of them got pregnant or do drugs or dropped out. And now I'm excited, because I'm a year ahead."

That's a dangerous combination--and I'd say the same thing if the finding were that college makes people more conservative without making them more knowledgeable about civics. Strengthening political leanings without deepening awareness about what those leanings mean, how they have been shaped by the course of American history, or how they fit into our governmental structure is a mechanism for producing ideologues, not informed, engaged, thoughtful, and independent citizens.

The full report is here. Its major findings are: 1) "While College fails to Adequately Transmit Civic Knowledge, It Influences Opinion on Polarizing Social Issues;" 2) "Compared to College, Civic Knowledge exerts a Broader and more Diverse Influence on the American mind;" and 3) "Civic Knowledge Increases a Person's Regard for America's Ideals and free Institutions." The study also has some interesting findings on beliefs most college teachers share.

More specifics: College grads are more likely to favor same-sex marriage and abortion on demand and less likely to "believe anyone can succeed in America with hard work and perseverance;" "favor teacher-led prayer in public schools;" and "believe the Bible is the Word of God." (Yes, I know -- the survey might have been stronger if it had not mixed apples and oranges by treating matters of opinion--which can be influenced by argument and facts--and matters of faith as if they were equivalent. They aren't. Onward.) The survey found that people who know more about civics are more likely to agree "that a person's evaluation of a nation improves with his understanding of it," that "prosperity depends on entrepreneurs and free markets," and "that the Ten Commandments remain relevant," while being "less likely to agree that legislatures should subsidize a college in proportion to its students learning about America," "that the free market brings about full employment," and "that the Bible is the Word of God." People with more civic knowledge are also "less likely to agree with the proposition that America corrupts otherwise good people," and "less likely to agree with the proposition that the Founding documents are obsolete." They are more likely to agree "that prosperity depends on entrepreneurs and free markets, and less likely to agree that global capitalism produces few winners and many losers, and that government regulation does more good than harm." They are also "less likely to agree that the Ten Commandments are irrelevant today."

On college teachers: More likely to agree that "America corrupts otherwise good people," that "the Ten Commandments are irrelevant
today," that "raising the minimum wage decreases employment," that "educators should instill more doubt in students and reject certainty," and that "homeschooling families neglect their community obligations." They are more likely to disagree that "legislators should subsidize a college in proportion to its students learning about America."

I wish the survey had assessed college teachers' knowledge of American history and civics.

The potential criminality of the Climategate scandal is exactly the issue that is being investigated by authorities in Britain. The British Parliament has convened hearings to investigate East Anglia University and the Climate Research Unit to uncover unethical and illegal activities. As more information is revealed, the whole Climategate affair begins to take on the makings of a good mystery novel. Like any good mystery or crime plot, the web of involvement is widespread.

But in order for a reader to be drawn in, the author must establish the motive and opportunity for the crime to be believable. To understand Climategate, we must start at the center of the web. At the center is the now-discredited Dr. Phil Jones of East Anglia University and the work he orchestrated at the Climate Research Unit (CRU). This is exactly where the British Parliament has started its investigation for possible criminal wrongdoing.

The British investigation, headed up by Phil Willis, M.P., focuses on four areas: data manipulation, data suppression, violations of the Freedom of Information Act, and data integrity. Clearly, the recently uncovered e-mails will play a big role in this investigation. A new thread in this web has appeared recently concerning a separate investigation conducted by the European Law Enforcement Organization Cooperation (aka Europol). Investigators have found evidence of a complex carbon-trading scam on the European Climate Exchange. Just three short weeks ago, three British subjects were arrested in an apparent scam worth billions of dollars. Much of the criminal activity alleged involves tax evasion.

Trading on the European Climate Exchange is open to the world market, but the carbon credits only involve the European Union (EU) nations giving brokers the ability to hide trading activities in other countries and avoid paying taxes. This is known as a Carousel Fraud. Curiously, this thread of tax avoidance is also spun into the tangled web of e-mails from East Anglia University. In one of the e-mails dated 6 March 1996, two members of the Jones Gang, Stepan Shiyatov and Dr. Kieth Briffa, discuss how to avoid paying taxes in Russia:

Also, it is important for us if you can transfer the ADVANCE money on the personal accounts which we gave you earlier and the sum for one occasion transfer (for example, during one day) will not be more than 10,000 USD. Only in this case we can avoid big taxes and use money for our work as much as possible.

This is not an isolated e-mail concerning money. On 7 October 1997, Andrew Kerr of the World Wild Life Fund (WWF) sent an e-mail to essentially the entire global network of the Jones Gang expressing grave concerns that Kyoto would be a "flop" and fretted about the possible economic impact it might have:

It would also be very useful if progressive business groups would express their horror at the new economic opportunities which will be foregone if Kyoto is a flop.

The question is, why would the WWF be interested in "new economic opportunities" if the Kyoto Accord were to fail? Aren't they supposed to save panda bears? As they say in Washington, "follow the money." One of the major benefactors of the WWF is the global banking giant HSBC Holdings plc. HSBC is a major trader on the European Climate Exchange. The public stance on climate was voiced by Stephen Green, a Group Chairman at HSBC:

Finding the solutions to climate change requires a concerted international effort involving governments, NGOs, intergovernmental institutions, the public and, of course, the business community. The HSBC Climate Partnership is an example of how different types of organizations can work together and has already been a catalyst for change in how we do business.

"A catalyst for change in how we do business"? Is that a way of saying market manipulation? By "involving" all of these "communities," is this a collaborative effort or a conspiracy? Is the WWF a member of these "communities"? The question must be asked whether the WWF is a tool of market manipulation?

With $31 billion in carbon credits being traded on the European Climate Exchange, there is certainly an incentive to commit fraud. These trades are dominated by banks like HSBC and energy companies like British Petroleum (another benefactor to the WWF). But how is an opportunity for fraud established? Unlike other commodities, like wheat or coffee, you can't ship a boxcar-load of carbon dioxide to the purchaser. The trades are done strictly on paper. The intangible nature of carbon credits provides the perfect opportunity for international fraud.

The American press and authorities are strikingly behind the curve on a scandal of almost unimaginably massive dimensions--and as the Michael Mann news this week reveals, there is a strong will to denial within academe and the media.

That's how Joanne Jacobs characterizes the Obama administration's refusal to consider reauthorizing the DC voucher program. She's building off University of Arkansas education professor Jay P. Green's new City Journal piece, "So Much for the Evidence," which is closely aligned in tone--and far more detailed and hence damning--than the Washington Post staff editorial I linked to yesterday.

Here's Green:

In a major education address last March, President Obama declared that his administration would "use only one test when deciding what ideas to support with your precious tax dollars: it's not whether an idea is liberal or conservative, but whether it works." Unfortunately, the test that seems to guide the Obama administration's education priorities is not whether a policy works, but whether it serves a political constituency. Nothing illustrates this disregard for evidence better than the administration's treatment of two federally funded programs: the D.C. voucher program, which it is helping to kill, and Head Start, on which it has bestowed billions more dollars. If the administration actually made its funding decisions based on results, its positions would be just the opposite.

How do we know that the D.C. voucher program works? Take a look at the rigorously designed studies released by the Obama administration itself. Last April, the Department of Education put out its official evaluation of the voucher program. The evaluation, which used a gold-standard, random-assignment research design, found that after three years, D.C. students who won the lottery to attend a private school with a voucher significantly outperformed students who lost the lottery. The gap between voucher and control students was the equivalent of about five months of extra instruction in reading. Rather than embracing what manifestly worked, however, the administration stood by as Congress worked to phase out the D.C. voucher program. "Big picture, I don't see vouchers as being the answer," Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told the Washington Post. They're certainly not the answer that the pathologically anti-voucher teachers' unions wanted him to embrace.

Meanwhile, the administration fully supports the government-operated Head Start preschool program, despite excellent evidence that the program doesn't work. Obama has said that Head Start is "the first pillar of reforming our schools . . . [and] that's why the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that I signed into law invests $5 billion in growing Early Head Start and Head Start." He might have added that this would come on top of the more than $100 billion that taxpayers have spent on Head Start since 1965. But the Department of Health and Human Services' official evaluation of Head Start, released last week, confirms what several earlier studies have found: kids get no lasting benefits from participating in the program. By the end of kindergarten and first grade, students who had been in Head Start are no further ahead academically or behaviorally than students who lost the lottery to enter the program.

The way the administration released the two reports also spoke volumes. The D.C. voucher study was released after a key congressional vote that declined to reauthorize the program--and the study came out on a Friday, without an official press release to draw attention to it. The Head Start findings, on the other hand, were not released on a Friday and came with a press release--but the release contained false claims from administration officials about the program's effectiveness. It quoted Assistant Secretary for Children and Families Carmen Nazario saying that "Head Start has been changing lives for the better since its inception" and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius declaring that "research clearly shows that Head Start positively impacts the school readiness of low-income children"--even as the study showed that Head Start had done no such things. Again, the ideological priority to expand union-backed federal programs trumped an official evaluation, conducted, as with the D.C. voucher study, using a gold-standard, random-assignment research design.

If the administration really wants to show that it's guided by evidence and not ideology, it might consider changing its policy positions when solid evidence contradicts them. Empirical evidence shows that D.C. vouchers work; that program should be expanded, not killed. The evidence also shows that Head Start is a long-running failure; that program should be wound down, not funded with new billions. Even diverting a few hundred million from Head Start into a reauthorized D.C. voucher program would go some way toward restoring the administration's credibility.

On the subject of Obama's words coming back to bite him: I am reminded of a recent Jon Stewart sketch on the how the President needs to learn to make promises in such a way that no one can ever say he's not keeping them.

Meanwhile, the mainstream media is full of headlines such as the Philadelphia Inquirer 's misleading "Penn State climatologist cleared of misconduct" and the New York Times's similarly incomplete "Researcher on Climate Is Cleared in Inquiry." And Mann has declared victory: "Three of the four allegations have been dismissed completely," he told the NYT. "Even though no evidence to substantiate the fourth allegation was found, the University administrators thought it best to convene a separate committee of distinguished scientists to resolve any remaining questions about academic procedures. This is very much the vindication I expected since I am confident I have done nothing wrong."

Senator Imhofe is calling for an independent investigation "to reassure the American people that their tax dollars are supporting objective scientific research rather than political agendas." Imhofe, the NYT notes, is a climate change skeptic--and some might argue that it's his own agenda that is leading him to call for an independent investigation. But so what if it is? Independent investigations are the gold standard, and Penn State is hardly conducting one. Nor, arguably, could it ever rise above the level of conflict of interest--Mann, who has received over half a million dollars in stimulus funds for his research, is not the only PSU scientist who studies climate change or receives federal grant money, and many millions are at stake.

SENS. JOSEPH I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) haven't given up on their bid to save the federally funded voucher program that allows low-income families in the District to send their children to private schools. We would like to see them succeed, but it's clear that President Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress have already written the epilogue to this worthy program. Their disregard for how vouchers have helped children is so complete that it seems that the best chance, perhaps the only chance, for the program's survival is for local officials to step in.

The latest evidence of the administration washing its hands of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program is seen in the 2011 budget proposal it unveiled this week. It targets $9 million for the program but specifies that this will be "the final request" for federal funding. Administration officials say that the money, combined with unspent reserves, is sufficient to fulfill the president's promise that students currently in the program will be able to graduate from high school. That's disputed by the nonprofit that runs the program, which estimates that at least an additional $7 million is needed, along with a legislative commitment requiring the program's continuation for families currently enrolled.

Adding to the uncertainty is the disappointing decision by the Washington Scholarship Fund to drop its administration of the program. No one -- not administration officials or those with the scholarship fund -- could tell us what will happen to the approximately 1,300 students if there is no one to handle their scholarships. Indeed, one has to wonder whether the administration is banking on the possibility that students will drop out of the program. What easier way to get rid of this pesky program that's so despised by the teachers unions and other traditional allies of the Democrats? It's troubling that an administration that supposedly prides itself on supporting "what works" is so willing to pull the plug on a program that, according to a rigorous scientific study, has proven to be effective.

The best solution, of course, is the one sought by a bipartisan coalition lead by Mr. Lieberman for Congress to reauthorize the program. He is set to announce plans Thursday to offer the reauthorization as an amendment to legislation moving in the Senate, and he's hoping for help from Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), majority whip and chairman of the subcommittee that funds the program. Mr. Durbin gave lip service to his possible support but has been content for Congress to let the program go down the tubes.

Indeed, at one point, Mr. Durbin pretty much dared local officials to take over the program if they thought it was so important. The program is important to low-income families who see it as their children's only path to a good education. If the president and Congress won't see that, then we hope that Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and the D.C. Council will.

A couple of weeks ago, in a post on this subject, I suggested that the folks opposing the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program lacked conscience. That attracted some very engaged knuckle-rapping from several commenters (at least two of whom are academics, and one of whom works in DC). How dare I do that!! And how self-discrediting I am to suggest that something besides pure motives animates the administration and Congress! My critics reminded me there are all sorts of good reasons to oppose a program like the DCOSP, and that the Washington folks who won't keep it alive are most probably in possession of them.

Well, I thought about that, and they are of course right. The thing about conscience is that it's not an internal moral arbiter of right and wrong (or, very rarely is it that). Mostly, it's the little thing inside us that starts buzzing when we need to rationalize our wrong-doing--or even define it away. Very few of us is capable of objective moral self-assessment--and of the recognition of major moral failings, and the humble work of change, that inevitably entails. We're very good at pointing out the failings of others--but we would not be able to live with ourselves if we were fully in touch (I mean fully in touch) with our own.

We might dabble in self-awareness, we might even make humility a personal value. But we still have big fat blind spots--and those are just as much the work of conscience as the proverbial twinges of awareness that conscience is said to deliver. We think of conscience as the thing that makes us feel guilty and ashamed when we are in the wrong--and that can make us do right. And it is that. But perhaps even more often, conscience is that thing that allows us to live with (even be blind to) the terrible things we do, think, and say.

To say "My conscience is clear" is to say nothing objectively about right and wrong--about real harm or damage one might have done. We can have a clear conscience and be totally in the wrong, blithely oblivious to the suffering we are causing or the principles we are violating. We are wired that way, I suspect, as a matter of basic survival. And so it is, I suspect, with President Obama, his administration, and the Congressional Democrats who, in the words of the Post, are so "willing to pull the plug" on an "effective" but "pesky" program that they "despise." They feel good about their choice--or are at least enjoying a nice, lotus-eating oblivion about the consequences of their choice for the lived lives of people with far fewer options in life than they have.

Years ago, I did some volunteer work for FIRE. It was an opportunity to look closely at their tactics for making colleges and universities eliminate their speech codes and treat people fairly. Their working motto was Justice Brandeis' comment that "Sunlight is the best disinfectant." The idea was that schools won't defend in public what they willingly do in private--and that they can essentially be shamed into doing the right thing when appeals to the law, their reason, and, yes, their conscience, don't work (shame being the attack on pride, rather than conscience per se). It's been a remarkably successful strategy for FIRE. And I find myself wondering whether we'll see a similar strategy in this increasingly desperate fight to keep the DCOSP alive.

UPDATE: In other news, Milwaukee reports that students receiving vouchers are 18 percent more likely to graduate from high school. The city's voucher program--which has endured major opposition from the unions since its inception--now supports 21,000 kids. Rock on, kids.

The Guardian's investigation into the emails stolen from the University of East Anglia reveals how climate scientists acted to keep research papers they did not like out of academic journals. One UEA scientist, Dr Keith Briffa, wrote to a colleague to ask him for help rejecting a paper from a journal which he edited. "Confidentially I now need a hard, and if required, extensive case for rejecting." The request apparently broke the convention that the review process should be independent and anonymous. Briffa was not able to comment because of an ongoing independent review into the stolen emails.

In another email, sent in March 2003, the leading US climate scientist Prof Michael Mann suggested ostracising a journal for publishing a paper that attacked his work.

"I think we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues … to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal." Mann denies any attempt to "stifle legitimate sceptical views".

The emails also reveal that one of the most influential data sets in climate science – the "hockey stick" graph of temperature over the past 1,000 years – was controversial not just with sceptics but among climate scientists themselves. "I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story [in the forthcoming IPCC report], but in reality the situation is not quite so simple," wrote Briffa in September 1999.

There is more on this here:

The head of the CRU, Professor Phil Jones, as a top expert in his field, was regularly asked to review papers and he sometimes wrote critical reviews that may have had the effect of blackballing papers criticising his work.

Here is how it worked in one case.

A key component in the story of 20th-century warming is data from sparse weather stations in Siberia. This huge area appears to have seen exceptional warming of up to 2C in the past century. But in such a remote region, actual data is sparse. So how reliable is that data, and do scientists interpret it correctly?

In March 2004, Jones wrote to Professor Michael Mann, a leading climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University, saying that he had "recently rejected two papers [one for the Journal of Geophysical Research and one for Geophysical Research Letters] from people saying CRU has it wrong over Siberia. Went to town in both reviews, hopefully successfully. If either appears I will be very surprised".

Critics of Jones such as the prominent sceptical Stephen McIntyre, who runs the Climate Audit blog have long accused him of preventing critical research from having an airing. McIntyre wrote on his web site in December: "CRU's policies of obstructing critical articles in the peer-reviewed literature and withholding data from critics have unfortunately placed issues into play that might otherwise have been settled long ago." He also says obstructing publication undermine claims that all is well in scientific peer review.

Dr Myles Allen, a climate modeller at the University of Oxford and Professor Hans von Storch, a climate scientist at the Institute for Coastal Research, in Geesthacht, Germany signed a joint column in Nature when the email hacking story broke, in which they said that "no grounds have arisen to doubt the validity of the thermometer-based temperature record since it began in about 1850." But that argument is harder to make if such evidence, flawed though it might be, is actively being kept out of the journals.

in July 2004, Jones wrote an email to Mann about two papers recently published in Climate Research – the Soon and Balunias paper and another he identified as by "MM". This was almost certainly a paper from the Canadian economist Ross McKitrick and Michaels that returned to an old sceptics' theme. It claimed to find urbanisation dominating global warming trends on land. Jones called it "garbage".

More damagingly, he added in an email to Mann with the subject line "HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL": "I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin [Trenberth] and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer review literature is!"

This has, rightly, become one of the most famous of the emails. And for once, it means what it seems to mean. Jones and Trenberth, of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, had recently become joint lead authors for a key chapter in the next IPCC assessment report, called AR4.

They had considerable power over what went into those chapters, and to have ruled them out in such a manner would have been a clear abuse of the IPCC process.

A panel of Penn State faculty and staff concluded the inquiry of Penn State meteorology professor Michael Mann this weekend and is slated to release its "Climategate" findings later in the week, university officials said.

The end of the two-month inquiry marks a major point in the worldwide climate debate. Penn State's inquiry began after hundreds of illegally obtained e-mails were leaked last November from a private server in the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England, containing comments critics say suggest Mann and his colleagues may have distorted climate change evidence.

The inquiry's findings will determine if the university will further investigate Mann's work. Penn State President Graham Spanier addressed the inquiry and the panel's work during the Board of Trustees meeting on Jan. 22.

"I know they've taken the time and spent hundreds of hours studying documents and interviewing people and looking at issues from all sides," Spanier said.

But conservative groups are already mobilizing to respond to the university's findings. Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) -- a Penn State student group working to "advance the principles of individual and economic freedom, limited government and traditional values" -- has taken an interest in the Mann inquiry.

On Feb. 12, YAF will host a demonstration in front of the HUB to protest what the group feels is a violation of academic integrity, YAF member Samuel Settle said. The 9-12 Project of Central PA, a conservative group, will join the demonstration.

Settle (sophomore-political science and history) said the university's handling of the inquiry unsettles him.

"What the university has done is they've taken three Penn State employees and assigned them to deciding whether or not Mann violated university policy," he said. "That's an awful lot of power in the hands of three with no external oversight."

As for the question of oversight and accountability--it's a big one. It's the lack thereof that has produced this mess, after all. And for what it's worth, Steve McIntyre--who was among the first to raise questions about the validity of the science being done by Mann and friends--reports that "They didn't contact me. ... Nor have any [Climate Audit] readers notified me that they've been contacted by the Penn State inquiry. I wonder who they interviewed. I wonder what they meant about 'looking at issues from all sides.'" McIntyre goes on to offer a list of questions he hopes the Penn State report addresses.

UPDATE: Penn State has announced that it will proceed with an investigation of Mann for research misconduct:

The recommended investigation will focus on determining if Mann 'engaged in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting or reporting research or other scholarly activities.'

[...]

In the investigatory phase, as in the inquiry phase, the committee will not address the science of global climate change, a matter more appropriately left to the profession. The committee is charged with looking at the ethical behavior of the scientist and determining whether he violated professional standards in the course of his work.

The investigatory committee will consist of five tenured full professor faculty members who will assess the evidence in the case and make a determination on Mann's conduct.

Read the full report here.

From The Guardian:

Scientists sometimes like to portray what they do as divorced from the everyday jealousies, rivalries and tribalism of human relationships. What makes science special is that data and results that can be replicated are what matters and the scientific truth will out in the end.

But a close reading of the emails hacked from the University of East Anglia in November exposes the real process of everyday science in lurid detail.

Many of the emails reveal strenuous efforts by the mainstream climate scientists to do what outside observers would regard as censoring their critics. And the correspondence raises awkward questions about the effectiveness of peer review – the supposed gold standard of scientific merit – and the operation of the UN's top climate body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The scientists involved disagree. They say they were engaged not in suppressing dissent but in upholding scientific standards by keeping bad science out of peer-reviewed journals. Either way, when passing judgment on papers that directly attack their own work, they were mired in conflicts of interest that would not be allowed in most professions.

Similar rumblings are afoot in the realm of stem cell research. From BBC News:

Stem cell experts say they believe a small group of scientists is effectively vetoing high quality science from publication in journals.

In some cases they say it might be done to deliberately stifle research that is in competition with their own.

It has also emerged that 14 leading stem cell researchers have written an open letter to journal editors in order to highlight their dissatisfaction.

Billions of pounds of public money is spent on funding stem cell research.

Without ethical peer review processes in place there is no such thing as free inquiry, and there is no meaningful argument for the scholarly independence secured by the concept academic freedom. As I have said too many times to count on this blog, academic freedom is not a system of rights; it is a system of reciprocal duties and privileges that together comprise a standard of professionalism for academics. To the extent that professors are not ensuring their own ethical behavior--within disciplines and within institutions--they are helping to kill academic freedom and tenure.

UPDATE: Britain's Wellcome Trust--a major research funder--is arguing that "Expert referees who validate scientific findings should have their reports published to make science more transparent and accountable." Love it. And I'd gladly see that expanded beyond the sciences. Sunlight, as FIRE loves to say, is the best disinfectant.

Question (from "Lydia"): I teach a course (call it "Hittites and Kurds") at a local community college. My department supervisor's wife, "Superette," is enrolled in it this semester. She got a D on her first test. They're all essay tests, so there's some subjectivity, but she obviously hadn't studied and didn't know the material, so I felt that was the grade she deserved. (In general, the class did very poorly, and there were many D's.)

Now the students have turned in their first two-page writing assignment, and I planned to read Superette's essay carefully, with judicious comments and corrections, knowing that her husband would read my remarks. However, by the time I got to the second paragraph, I knew—without a doubt—that she hadn't written it. Her husband ("Dr. Supe") had. It's smooth, eloquent, professional, and way beyond the scope of a first-year student, especially one who got a D on her first test and has never correctly answered anything in class. My course has been canceled for next semester, due to budget cuts, so this won't directly affect my future at the college, but I would like to get a good letter of recommendation from Dr. Supe. What should I do?

Answer: Ms. Mentor imagines you on a white steed, pennants flying, galloping off to right all wrongs and singlehandedly saving academic integrity—by falling on your own sword.

Ms. Mentor trusts your assessment that Superette did not write her paper. Faculty members often find it ridiculously easy to recognize borrowed essays. They're much better written than the student's regular output, and often with off-the-wall curlicues ("akin to Madame Blavatsky's esotericism"). They erupt into high-toned academic discourse ("hegemony," "hybridity"). They never misuse "its" and "it's." They even use "whom" correctly.

The problem is what to do about it.

Was it indeed written by Dr. Supe, for instance? What would it take to prove that? If the paper was simply lifted from the Web ("the paradise of plagiarism"), it will be findable through such sites as Turnitin.com. If it's lifted from a published source, you can give Google.com one of the odder sentences and be wafted to the original.

If Dr. Supe wrote it, you could devote hours to teaching yourself a stylistic analysis program (such as ManyEyes, WordTree, Word Stat, or Digital Research Tools) to show that Superette's new syntax and diction are too much like his to be coincidental. And then you could turn them both in to whatever campus board handles academic dishonesty. Superette would fail the paper or maybe the course; Dr. Supe would be furious; and who would be punished?

And that's the problem, much as Ms. Mentor would like to plump for moral purity over all. The world of academe, like the real world, is not always ready for righteousness. You're not apt to get a good recommendation from Dr. Supe ("She taught my cheatin' wife a lesson. Oh, goody."). He may, in fact, decline to write one at all ("conflict of interest" or "I don't have time for this nonsense"). Or he might write a scathing one. He's unlikely to write that you showed impeccable honesty and decency and are a credit to your profession, and that Hittites and Kurds everywhere would be proud of you.

You can survive, or you can be a martyr.

So what should the poor, benighted adjunct who caught the chair's wife plagiarizing do? It may be that she can't do anything without jeopardizing her career. But it is also the case that schools can and should be working harder to tackle plagiarism and other ethical lapses--and that means that they should have clear procedures and policies for reporting same and for ensuring that no one shoots the messenger, especially if that messenger lacks the protections of tenure. And those policies should actually be enforced. Cheating is increasingly common among students--and many of those students are on their way to becoming professors. Hamilton cites a 2002-04 study that found that 56% of business grad students, 50% of physical sciences grad students, 43% of arts grad students, and 39% of humanities and social science grad students admitted to one more more significant cheating events within the past year. This is the big picture within which Ms. Mentor's advice takes shape.

Imagine a campus that took plagiarism seriously (many don't--I've known more than one person who tried to pursue a plagiarism case and encountered absolute lack of support at the department and college levels; you don't have to be catching the boss's wife to be pressured to look the other way). Imagine that this same campus also took professional ethics seriously--offering training for grad students, and continuing education for faculty. Imagine that the school cultivated a local culture in which adhering to the highest standards of integrity was a matter of pride--and mutual responsibility. Imagine what that would mean for the quality of research produced and also for the morale of departments and colleges. Imagine, too, that this pride translated into classrooms where hard work and honest effort were rewarded--and where plagiarism, cheating, and slacking were not. Imagine what that would mean for learning--not just about subject matter and skills, but also about what it feels like to work hard, to be honest, and to bank your future on your merits, rather than on your ability to game the system. Imagine that.

The past few years have seen an outpouring of books and reports deploring Americans' civic ignorance, with titles like Just How Stupid Are We?, The Dumbest Generation, The Age of American Unreason, and Tuned Out: Why Americans Under 40 Don't Follow the News. This is a problem that everyone seems to complain about but no one tries to solve through any coordinated, nationwide effort.

National organizations have recently been formed, including the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching's Political Engagement Project, and Campus Compact and its Research University Civic Engagement Network. These organizations have published important interdisciplinary books, such as Educating for Democracy, by Anne Colby et al. (Jossey-Bass, 2007), and Civic Engagement in Higher Education, by Barbara Jacoby et al. (Jossey-Bass, 2009).

Many campus programs have also been exemplary, as surveyed in Charles Muscatine's Fixing College Education (University of Virginia Press, 2009). In The Assault on Reason (Penguin Press, 2007), Al Gore praised the American Political Science Association for starting a Task Force on Civic Education. That should prompt similar task forces in the Modern Language Association (my discipline) and other professional associations, along with a unifying interdisciplinary organization for secondary and postsecondary education, a National Commission on Civic Education. Liberal and conservative educators and politicians should collaborate in hammering out their differences on what should constitute a core curriculum for civic literacy. We can hope for sponsorship in this effort by both conservative and liberal foundations, as well as for support from the U.S. Department of Education and National Endowment for the Humanities.

One way to prompt deliberation here is to spin E.D. Hirsch's much-debated agenda for what every American needs to know to be culturally literate: What does every American need to know to be a civically literate, critically conscious, responsible citizen? And, as a corollary, what role should the humanities play in a renewal of education for civic literacy?

My agenda would give priority to the factual knowledge and analytic skills that students need to make reasoned judgments about the partisan screaming matches and special-interest prop aganda that permeate political disputes. One source for such knowledge and skills can be the disciplines of critical thinking and argumentative rhetoric. Unfortunately, few high schools or colleges require courses with that focus, which was also shamefully ignored by No Child Left Behind.

We have all by necessity been thinking a lot lately about one particular branch of civic literacy: economic knowledge. How many among us understand how or why our personal economic fates—mortgages, retirement pensions, and our colleges' financing and endowments—are captive to booms and busts in the stock market and the occult realm of national and international high finance? In the prophetic words of the "corporate cosmology" revealed by the arch-capitalist Arthur Jensen in Paddy Chayefsky's 1976 film, Network, "The totality of life on this planet" is now determined by "one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars."

What a tragic gulf lies between most citizens' understanding of economic forces and their power over each of our daily lives and livelihoods. And what an enormous hole there is, in both K-12 and college curricula, in teaching about those forces as an integral part of general education. I am not talking about courses in formal economics, but in thinking critically about the rhetoric of economic issues at the everyday level of political debates and news and opinion—although those studies would identify oversimplifications at that level that could certainly be pursued in economics classes.

The term "core curriculum" has sadly become a culture-war wedge issue, with conservatives pre-empting it in the cause of Eurocentric tradition and American patriotism, thus provoking intransigent opposition from progressive champions of cultural pluralism and identity politics. Surely, however, we should urge the opposing sides to seek common ground in a core curriculum for critical citizenship that transcends—or encompasses—ideological partisanship.

My own immodest proposal models a core curriculum that centrally includes critical thinking about, and analysis and practice of, public rhetoric, at the local, national, and international levels. Far from being a radical proposal, it is a conservative one in returning to something like the 18th-century rhetoric-based curriculum in American education.

That curriculum, as the historian of rhetoric S. Michael Halloran describes it, "address[ed] students as political beings, as members of a body politic in which they have a responsibility to form judgments and influence the judgments of others on public issues." Halloran and other historians have lamented the modern diffusion of studies in forensics, literature, composition, and other humanistic fields, as a result of the hegemony of disciplines and departments oriented toward specialized faculty research, which have become the tail that wags the curricular dog. Those forces and a depressing array of others have caused the study of political rhetoric to fall between the cracks of most current curricula, almost to the disappearing point.

So let's envision how a revived curriculum for civic literacy might be embodied in a sequence of undergraduate courses that would supplement, not supplant, basic courses in history, government, literature, and other humanist staples. These could be interdisciplinary offerings, with at least a partial component of English studies. Within English, they would follow, not replace, first-year writing—which in recent decades has focused on generating students' personal writing rather than critical analyses of readings or public rhetoric—and a second term in critical thinking and written and oral argumentative rhetoric.

The following headings correspond to chapters in my textbook for such a second-term course, but my own and other instructors' experience in using the book is that for any single course or textbook to "cover" what really demands a full curriculum is an impossible expectation. So I will break that material down, more appropriately, into four courses:

Course 1: Thinking Critically About Political and Economic Rhetoric. This would begin with a survey of semantic issues in defining terms like left wing, right wing, liberal, conservative, radical, moderate, freedom, democracy, patriotism, capitalism, socialism, communism, Marxism, fascism, and plutocracy. It would explore their denotative complexity and the ways in which they are oversimplified or connotatively slanted in public usage.

Study would then focus on defining ideological differences between and within the left and right, nationally and internationally, and on understanding the relativity of political viewpoints on the spectrum from left to right. For example, The New York Times is liberal in relation to Fox News but conservative in relation to The Nation; the Democratic Party is liberal in relation to the Republicans but conservative in relation to European social-democratic parties. Principles of argumentative rhetoric would then be applied to "reading the news" on political and economic issues in a range of journalistic and scholarly sources and from a variety of ideological viewpoints, with emphasis on identifying the predictable patterns of partisan rhetoric in opposing sources.

Course 2: Thinking Critically About Mass Media. Key questions would include: Do the media give people what they want, or condition what they want? Are news media objective and neutral, and should they be? The debate over liberal versus conservative bias in media would be approached through weighing the diverse influences of employees (editors, producers, writers, newscasters, performers); owners, executives, and advertisers; external pressure groups; and audiences. Research on the cognitive effects of mass culture would be applied to such issues as the impact of electronic media on reading, writing, and political consciousness. Implicit political ideology in news and entertainment media would be studied through images of corporations, workers, and unions; the rich, poor, and middle class; gender roles, ethnic minorities, and gays; military forces and war; and immigrants, foreigners, other parts of the world, and Americans' international presence. A final topic of study would be how the Internet has altered all of those issues.

Course 3: Propaganda Analysis and Deception Detection. Study here would begin with problems in defining and evaluating prop aganda. A survey of its sources would include government and the military, political parties, lobbies, advertising, public relations, foundations, and sponsored research in think tanks and elsewhere. The role of special interests, conflicts of interest, and special pleading in political and economic rhetoric would be examined, along with propagators' frequent resort to deceptive modes of argument or outright lying—especially with statistics. This course (or another entire one) would include topics in critical consumer education: reading the fine print in contracts, like those for student loans, credit cards, rental agreements, and mortgages; examining health and environmental issues in consumer products; and seeking out the often hidden facts of the production and marketing of food and pharmaceuticals.

Course 4: Civic Literacy in Practice. This would connect these academic studies with service learning, community or national activism, or work in government or community organizations, journalism, and elsewhere.

Two possible objections:

"What you are proposing is that English and other humanities courses take on the impossible burden of remediation for the failures of the entire American education system in civic literacy."

You betcha. It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it, and I don't see any likelier disciplines jumping into the breach, especially ones with courses that are conventionally general education and breadth requirements. (Some communication and speech departments are in schools of liberal arts, but others are not; many offer courses in political rhetoric and media criticism, but those are mostly advanced ones for majors.) An ideal solution would be for these to be offered as interdisciplinary core courses, in which humanities faculty members would collaborate with those in the social sciences, communication, and so on. If civic education at the secondary level ever picks up the slack that it should, the college humanities involvement in such instruction can be phased out.

"Mightn't your proposals just be a Trojan horse for dragging in the academic left's same old agenda and biases?"

The courses could be conceived in their specifics and taught by instructors with varying ideological viewpoints—or best of all, through team teaching by liberal and conservative instructors. In principle, this framework would "teach the conflicts," on Gerald Graff's model, not through advocacy or the monologic perspective of any teacher's own beliefs, but through enabling students to identify and compare a full range of opposing ideological perspectives (including those of the instructor and the students), their points of opposition, and the partisan patterns and biases of their rhetoric. I have found it easy to grade students on the basis of their skill in articulating those points, without regard to my political viewpoints or theirs.

To be sure, this conception runs up against the near impossibility of anyone's even defining terms and points of opposition between, say, the left and right with complete objectivity and without injecting value judgments. That problem itself, however, can become a subject of study within these courses and in advanced scholarly inquiry. Indeed, the courses could prompt a wealth of related research and theoretical explorations, creating a fruitful arena for bridging the gap between advanced scholarship and undergraduate teaching.

Davis Guggenheim, director of An Inconvenient Truth, has made a documentary about the failures of our public K-12 schools--and the role the teachers' unions have played in it. The film premiered at Sundance last week--and has been picked up by Paramount.

From the the Risky Business blog:

More than a few Hollywood heads were scratched when Paramount annouced Thursday that it had picked up worldwide distribution rights to Davis Guggenheim's "Waiting for Superman," a documentary chronicling the sorry state of the U.S. public education system, in advance of its Sundance world premiere.

Sure, Guggenheim's "An Inconvenient Truth," released in 2006 by Paramount Vantage, grossed nearly $50 million, won two Oscars and made unlikely movie stars out of Al Gore and PowerPoint. But that film managed a unique feat among documentaries, riding a political and celebrity-fueled zeitgeist (in that case, liberal anger over the Bush administration's environmental policies) in a way that caused moviegoers to show up as much to support the cause as to be entertained by the content.

A studied expose of failing school systems probably won't enjoy the same buzz factor among Huffington Post readers or Prius-driving celebrities, so Paramount has its work cut out for it in making this wonky subject matter appealing to more than just policy nerds. But the film, which we caught Friday night at its premiere, could find an equally enthusiastic audience on the other side of the political spectrum: In many ways, "Superman" might be as much a conservative call to action on education reform as "Truth" was a rallying cry for Democrats on the environment.

The film takes an even-keeled look at the issue, and its subjects, from educators to frustrated parents to Bill Gates (who showed up for a post-screening Q&A), espouse no political leanings. But from our seat, at least, there is a clear villain in "Superman," and it's the various Democrat-supported teachers unions that the film presents as the most powerful and entrenched impedement to real education reform.

That's not a new argument. Lifetime tenure, lax oversight and the lack of a performance-based compensation system have for years been blamed on the stranglehold that powerful teachers unions maintain over elected officials, especially Democrats. But this film is as merciless in its characterization of the unions and their self-serving leaders as "Truth" was of the Bush administration's stance on global warming. And at least at the federal level, Democrats like Bill and Hillary Clinton are shown as examples of the unions' prime beneficiaries.

In fact, for all its focus on underprivileged, inner-city kids, sections of "Superman" feel like they could have been cut together by Bill O’Reilly. Slo-mo footage of union leader speeches opposing reform that could help problem schools. Hidden-cam video of a teacher reading a newspaper and checking his watch as his class goofs around. New York educators being paid millions to not teach. A major subject of the film, reform-minded DC schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, runs into a crippling teachers-union road block in her effort to shift pay structures to reward good teachers.

These aren't cut-and-dried Republican vs. Democrat issues, of course, and the film also discusses failed Republican-supported education policies like No Child Left Behind. But the connection of the villainous teachers unions to Democrats could spark interest in this film among the exact conservative talking-head class that so hated "Inconvenient Truth."

Introducing the film, Guggenheim thanked Paramount for having "the courage to see that a film about public education could actually make some money and could actually change the issue and (for thinking they) could try to do what they did with 'An Inconvenient Truth' again."

Maybe Paramount can pull it off. Political pundits and op-ed writers will certainly be interested in the film. But in taking "Superman" to the masses, the studio should consider courting conservatives in the same way the marketing for "Inconvenient Truth" spoke to liberals. "Superman" could even end up prompting political change, just as "Truth" energized the global warming movement.

If so, a major studio picking up a public-school documentary might not seem like such a head-scratcher.

And I'm very glad Paramount is making an investment in this film--again, I am guessing that they didn't buy it because they thought they could release a winner for the right, but because they thought the film would have very broad, grassroots appeal, and could be marketed as a movie about an issue that affects and implicates us all.

From Ed Morrissey:

When MIT economics professor Jonathan Gruber allowed himself to be quoted by numerous media outlets about his sunny analyses of ObamaCare, including a big push by Peter Orszag on his OMB site and in challenging reporters to use Gruber's conclusions, Gruber never bothered to mention that he was receiving money through HHS to provide consultation on health-care reform. After Gruber's exposure, he claimed that few bothered to ask whether he received compensation from the administration and didn't feel compelled to volunteer the information. Now two members of the Senate have demanded that kind of disclosure from Gruber.

In a letter sent earlier this week and given to Hot Air by a source in Washington, Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Michael Enzi (R-WY) demand answers to a long series of questions, including why Gruber never revealed this conflict of interest on three occasions when he testified before Congress on health-care reform. They first accuse Gruber of dishonesty:

We are writing in response to recent news reports that you received nearly $400,000 from HHS in exchange for providing technical assistance in evaluating various health care reform legislative proposals. During this same time, you have been actively promoting and defending the Administration's preferred health care reform policies both before Congress and in the media. This includes your participation in the Finance Committee's May 12, 2009, Roundtable Discussion entitled "Financing Comprehensive Health Care Reform"; the HELP Committee's June 11, 2009 hearing entitled "Healthcare Reform"; and the HELP Committee's Novembver 3, 2009 hearing entitled, "Increasing Health Costs Facing Small Businesses." On occasions such as these, it appears that you advanced the Administration's agenda without disclosing the fact that you were receiving federal remuneration. ...

When an academic leader comes before Congress to advocate a position, Congress should have confidence that the witness is both independent and objective and not being paid to assist the Administration in its efforts. In this case, we are concerned that neither you nor the Department chose to inform Congress of your substantial ties in advance of, during, or any time after, your testimony before the Finance and HELP Committees. In fact, the biography submitted for the Finance Committee's Roundtable Discussion makes no mention of these ties or affiliations.

After this, Grassley and Enzi take aim at HHS and the Obama administration for failing to answer questions about outside consultants--answers that would have exposed Gruber as a shill long before being outed:

In July, Senator Enzi write to HHS Secretary Sebelius requesting among other information, a list of all outside consultants with the Department and copies of their agreements. HHS was unresponsive to this request, which should have revealed your relationship with the Department. Senator Enzi recently wrote again to reiterate this request to HHS Secretary Sebelius and to ask for additional information concerning your relationship with the Department. Senator Grassley also wrote to Secretary Sebelis requesting that HHS require any individuals under contract with the Department to disclose that fact publicly prior to any testimony before Congress. Additionally, Senator Grassley requested that HHS provide a complete list of individuals who are currently under contract, or have been under contract at any point last year, to assist the Department in any aspect of the health care reform process.

So much for increased transparency! This is an angle that we hadn't yet seen. The Republicans on these panels must have had some suspicion that the White House was tossing ringers into these committee meetings and wanted a list of consultants from HHS to spot them. HHS refused--and now one of those consultants got exposed anyway.

Hopefully Grassley and Enzi will stay on top of this development and find out if HHS or any of the other federal agencies in the Obama administration have more paid shills acting as independent voices supporting their agenda, especially on ObamaCare.

Academia has a responsibility to ensure its own ethical behavior--both institutions and disciplines should be self-policing when it comes to ethical training and to holding professors accountable to standards of ethical conduct. Not to do so is to erode the entire academic enterprise--and to make a powerful de facto argument against academic freedom.