You figure universities are primarily dumping grounds for politicians, their friends, and their families. You figure that because that’s the way it’s always been.

And then things suddenly change on you, and your life becomes unbearable.

The top academic official at North Carolina State University stepped down Thursday, saying controversy over his hiring of the state’s former first lady has become “unbearable.”

Provost Larry Nielsen created a new faculty position and used it to hire Mary Easley, wife of former Democratic Gov. Mike Easley, who left office in January after two terms.

The 31,000-student school hired Mary Easley in 2005 to oversee a lecture series and teach three courses. Last summer, a new compensation agreement expanded her role and boosted her salary to $850,000 over a five-year contract. [88% raise.]

The News & Observer of Raleigh has raised questions about why Nielsen was hired as provost even though he was not among an initial pool of candidates.

He served as interim provost during the search, and school officials named him to the post permanently in June 2005, shortly before the university announced Easley’s hiring. The newspaper said Nielsen worked closely with Easley ally McQueen Campbell, who chaired the university trustees’ personnel committee.

… N.C. State is the largest campus of North Carolina’s 16 public universities.

Last summer, Nielsen defended Easley’s increased salary by saying she had new duties, working at the Center for Public Safety Leadership and Strategic Legal Partnership. Before joining the university, she had taught law at North Carolina Central University in Durham.

University of North Carolina system leaders launched a review of the deal but later approved her salary while saying a portion of the pay would come from private funds.

Nielsen said the personal stress had become unbearable and he understands that some people will interpret his resignation as an indication the allegations are valid…

For background on Easley, who, unlike the fragile provost, will tough it out for the sake of the money, go here.

Spanish scientists have detected the presence of cocaine in the air of Madrid and Barcelona by using a new technique for the first time, a research institute said Wednesday.

The scientists looked for 17 components in five different types of illegal drugs — cocaine, amphetamines, opiates, cannabinoids and lysergic acid.

The results revealed cocaine is the predominant drug in the air of the two cities, the CSIC institute said.

It was found in concentrations of 29 to 850 picogrammes per cubic metre of air. A picogramme is one trillionth of a gramme.

The study is the result of the first use of a new method for the detection of drugs in the air, adapted specifically for the researchers, who are to publish their results in the review “Analytical Chemistry”.

“Heroin was also found in detectable levels in the samples taken in Madrid, but not in those from Barcelona,” the CSIC said.

This it explained by the fact that the area of Madrid where the sample was taken is close to a district where drug dealers are suspected of operating.

The scientists also reported a higher concentration of the components during the weekend, “suggesting higher consumption this time.”

But it said there was no reason for the public to be concerned.

“Even if we lived 1,000 years we would not consume the equivalent of a dose of cocaine through the air,” said one of the scientists, Miren Lopez de Alda.

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Cocaine rains on the plains of Spain.
Candycaine grains stain trains and lanes.

The best brains fight the bane in vain:
“No pain, no gain… But this is insane!”

Children crane.
In their panes it wanes.

… we’re getting our education in academic medicine.

Thanks to Senator Grassley, the weird science of some university-sponsored research reveals itself, and even UD, who’s been around, finds it head-spinning.

Here, for instance, is a professor at Washington University defending his colleague, Timothy Kuklo, charged with falsification of data, forgery of documents, and other stuff:

… The inquiry also found that Kuklo falsely claimed other Army doctors helped write the study. … [A colleague said, in defense of Kuklo, that] it’s not uncommon for a researcher to sign other authors’ names to a study after getting verbal consent. It is a practice that is done, for example, when other authors are abroad and do not have easy access to fax machines.

Since Kuklo has so far refused to respond to anyone – in the press or the military – about any of this, we can’t know whether he got the four faxless horsemen’s verbal consent… Or what that consent was for. We do know that sticking lots of names on articles – names of people who have absolutely nothing to do with the project – represents one of many curious folkways of UD‘s fellow professors in med schools around the country. No doubt it’s a short jump from rounding up friends who have nothing to do with your work and pretending that they helped you with it, to just going ahead and putting their names down… forging their names… on the cover page of your study… without permission:

… [Kuklo] falsely claimed had a 92 percent success rate in healing shattered legs of wounded soldiers injured in Iraq, and Medtronic [his client, and maker of the device at the heart of the study] has supported his research, the Times reported.

Kuklo’s study was retracted in March after [the] paper’s publisher, The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, received notification from Walter Reed questioning the validity of the report’s conclusions.

“It was further disclosed that much of the paper was essentially false,” the retraction read.

Additionally, four doctors listed as co-authors on the report said they had not seen the manuscript prior to publication, and their signatures were forged on the article before its submission…

But wait! They were detained abroad, bereft of faxes …

It’s not only the weird ways of research we’re learning about. It’s the yet weirder ways in which other researchers defend the research.

For generations, students at the University of Texas have believed that if, on your way to a test, you see an albino squirrel on campus, you’ll get an A.

But a biology professor at UT says: “The squirrels — at least the ones I’ve seen on campus — are not true albinos… I have actually seen several color variants of squirrels on campus with light-colored hair but all with normally pigmented eyes. … There are squirrels that lack or have reduced production of eumelanin, or black pigment, which are known as amelanistic squirrels.”

Not only that, but a student comments in response to the article:

I saw an albino squirrel and had a threesome later that night ….

… are the latest schools housing professors charged with serious professional misconduct. Wash U’s faculty member faces falsification of data charges (details here, at The Periodic Table). Federal prosecutors (as I note in the post below) charge the Dartmouth professor with conflict of interest. He could go to jail.

I must say, psychiatry departments at American universities look almost as troubled as campus athletic departments.  Both places often seem epicenters of greed, stupidity, and criminality.

Call UD old-fashioned, but she doesn’t immediately associate that set of values with universities as we’ve come to know them.

Federal prosecutors have filed conflict of interest charges against a VA hospital psychiatrist, alleging that he supervised contracts in which he had a financial interest.

Dr. William Weeks of Lyme, N.H., is accused of misconduct in five contracts between the White River Junction VA hospital and Dartmouth College. He acted as both a VA representative responsible for approving payments to Dartmouth and as Dartmouth’s principal investigator performing work on the contracts, prosecutors say.

If convicted of the misdemeanor charges, he faces a year in prison and fines of up to $100,000 for each charge. He also faces up to $1.3 million in penalties in an 11-count civil complaint.

In court papers filed Friday, Acting U.S. Attorney Paul Van de Graaf said Weeks sought $1.1 million in contracts from the VA for Dartmouth, and then did the work for significantly less by hiring fewer people and at lower rates. An estimated $567,000 was left over and deposited into an account at Dartmouth in Weeks’ name.

Weeks also is accused of participating in other contracts with the VA and Dartmouth while holding the dual positions…

It says Comments are closed on that last post, but they’re not. I mean, as always, I welcome comments. If you’ve been trying to comment, I apologize. I’m working on fixing it.

Comments don’t seem to be closed on this post. Feel free to put your comment here.

Black will be played by Robert Zemsky, historian.

White will be played by Tim Curley, propagandist.

Dead All Over will be played by Michael Adams, president of the worst university in America.

Today’s meeting of the Knight Commission on university athletics opened with White, proud member of what he calls “the Penn State family,” where he’s Athletic Director.

White speaks:

College athletics is today the healthiest I’ve ever seen it. Everything’s looking great. Everyone here should be celebrating the positive values of university sports. We’ve learned we can be the great success we are and at the same time we can govern ourselves. We don’t need to be governed by outsiders. We’ve made incredible progress on all fronts. Enthusiasm and excitement and participation and profit is at an all-time high. Yes, escalating salaries stress the system. Yes, we continue to be challenged with our expenses. But these things are out of our control. Every one of these expenditures is necessary. We live in a market society, and we have to respond to market conditions.

Black speaks:

Trying to describe the place of athletics in the larger context of higher education is like trying to describe a burnt-out desert. You see, this discussion today — it isn’t going anywhere. We came here to talk about cost-containment, and it isn’t going anywhere. And that’s because any sense of values is missing.

Since you people don’t have any values, you put the marketplace up as the only thing that matters. That’s why you’re not ever going to reform at all. You’re part of the general loss of aura, loss of particularity, at our universities in America. Football on your campus is just like the NFL, you say, and, see, you’re proud of it. So what makes you a college? Absolutely nothing.

Used to be universities were supposed to be like churches — separate, special places, dedicated to higher things. They’re not special anymore. They’re just like any other business. So why tenure? Why tax exemptions? Look at Harvard and places like that. University endowments aren’t charitable donations; they’re hedge funds. University presidents make million dollar salaries, just like other CEOs.

It all tears at the fabric of the specialness of the university. You’ve all helped make that happen. Since you’ve been in business, things have gotten a whole lot worse. The university athletics engine will certainly stop running. But it will never reform itself. It’ll just run out of gas.

Dead All Over:

I resent this negativity. Why, at the University of Georgia we’ve got a heck of a program…

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Update: This post is now comment enabled.

… UD heads downtown for the Knight Commission meeting on university athletics.

She’ll blog about it later this afternoon.

Remember when I went after Mark McGurl, author of The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing? I quoted Charles McGrath’s citation of a cryptic sentence from the book, and went to town on it here.

But note the updated correction to the piece. A reader, this morning, pointed out in the comment thread that McGrath had gotten part of the quotation wrong.

And now I’ve heard from the author of the book himself, who points out that “what McGrath describes as a sentence is in fact only half of the sentence,” and who asks if he can send me the book, so I can judge its writing for myself.

UD‘s delighted – not merely by the prospect of receiving the book (she has more than a passing interest in creative writing programs), but also by the gallantry of its author, who responds to snarling SOS with forbearance.

My punning is a real embarrassment, isn’t it? I mean, it would be, if I were capable of being embarrassed.

It’s going to be hard to beat The George Washington University in famous-for-D.C. star power at its commencement ceremony. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel will deliver the school’s keynote address on the National Mall on Sunday, May 17.

Strengths: Incredibly powerful politician and policy leader + charismatic, passionate personality = commencement speaker gold. Also, many ladies of our acquaintance insist he’s easy on the eyes. Who are we to argue?

Weaknesses: He’s always got the potential to go off script and say something provocative or even offensive, embarrassing poor grandma. But this could just as easily be listed in the “strengths” category.

Studies of cancer treatments were more likely to report improvements in overall survival when the investigators reported some kind of financial conflict of interest, researchers said.

Analysis of 124 oncology clinical trials showed that those with a conflict of interest — either direct industry funding or an author’s declarations of financial relationships — were more than twice as likely to find significantly improved patient survival, according to Reshma Jagsi, M.D., D.Phil., of the University of Michigan, and colleagues.

The finding emerged from an online report in Cancer covering conflicts of interest in more than 1,500 oncology studies in major journals during 2006.

Among 52 randomized, controlled trials with no conflict of interest, 14% found significantly better survival with the intervention relative to control, 72% found equivalent survival, and 6% significantly favored the control.

In 72 similar trials with a conflict of interest, 29% found in favor of the intervention, 61% showed no difference, and none reported better survival with the control (P=0.04 for trend relative to nonconflicted studies)….

The natural poetry of an Irvine student who notices birds on campus, and makes a top ten list.

… 4. Black Phoebe

A species I truly adore, these flycatchers are so dapper in little tuxedos: black back and tails with white bellies. They perch on a branch or sign, then fly off, catch an insect and fly back to their perch. This behavior is known, appropriately, as fly-catching. They like head-level branches in the park and call, “fee-bee.” …

From the Associated Press:

France’s education minister says protesting students who have blocked universities for months will not get diplomas.

Xavier Darcos says just a handful of students protesting against a proposed university reform have succeeded in disrupting operations at several French universities. Those students will not be awarded their degrees, he told RTL radio on Monday.

The protests have disrupted or completely blocked universities across the country, delaying many exams, in recent weeks and months.

The government says the university reforms are aimed at freeing up universities to allow private sponsors and become more competitive. Students say the government is commercializing universities

The protesters’ tactics have been disgusting. People attempting to attend or teach class have been met with barricades and intimidation. University presidents have been held hostage.

… who’s a recent Wesleyan grad reflects on the social networks she followed after the news of Johanna Justin-Jinich’s murder:

… [W]hen you’re part of a community, a crime produces shock, anger, a surplus of emotion, and you seek out information. This week, I learned how social networks offer a way through the clutter of “rational” reporting, sensationalism, and gossip that plague our tragedies, and are no substitutes for the proximity and empathy I was craving. These days, even after you leave a place, you get to keep your social bonds online. They lie dormant, ready to be reactivated with a few keystrokes, when you need them most.