Advocate Online

They're Talking On Campus.

. . . About the loss of one of higher education’s strongest advocates when U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone, a former college professor, died in a plane crash on October 27.

The liberal Minnesota Democrat, who was campaigning for re-election when he died, was a staunch supporter of all issues of importance to higher education (especially bills that proposed increasing postsecondary student aid) since his first election to the Senate in 1990.

“I’ve seen how when the spark of learning is ignited it can take a kid from any background to a life of creativity and accomplishment,” he said in an interview with The Chronicle of Higher Education in 1991. “Pour cold water on that, and it’s the cruelest thing you can do.”

. . . About a report in The New England Journal of Medicine that medical schools conducting research sponsored by drug companies routinely ignore guidelines established by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors to ensure that the studies are unbiased and that the results are shared with the public.

The authors of the New England Journal article found that just 1 percent of researchers working on studies being performed at more than one site were guaranteed access to data at all the locations.

Only 2 percent of the contracts established an independent oversight committee to oversee industry-sponsored trials.

Just 5 percent of the research agreements required that the results be published.