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."