A Johns Hopkins professor who co-authored a study suggesting that huge numbers of civilians have died during the U.S. war in Iraq was accused of ethics violations yesterday by a prominent group of polling researchers, and university officials announced that they are conducting their own review.

The rebuke, by the American Association for Public Opinion Research, came after an investigation into how Dr. Gilbert Burnham of the Bloomberg School of Public Health determined that nearly 655,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the U.S.-led invasion and its bloody aftermath. The results – which estimated hundreds of thousands more deaths than the Bush administration had reported – were published in 2006 in The Lancet, a leading British medical journal.

Officials of the association, of which Burnham is not a member, said Burnham refused to disclose the wording of his questions and basic methodological details of his research, a violation of the group’s code of ethics and practices. That makes it impossible for other researchers to verify the work, said Mary E. Losch, chairwoman of the AAPOR’s Standards Committee….

Burnham does not seem to list the Lancet article on his webpage, though he has written other pieces for the Lancet.

Note the blizzard of skeptical questions for Burnham here.

Press release from AAPOR.

Recall the similar case of Michael Bellesiles.

****************

Update: A reader, David, points out that the likely article is indeed listed on Burnham’s website. I overlooked it because it’s the only listing that doesn’t include a date of publication. Here’s the citation:

Roberts L, Lafta R, Garfield R, Khudhairi J, Burnham G. Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: cluster sample survey. Lancet, 364:1857-64.

UD thanks her reader.

… Walter Wendler.

From the Telegraph.

A political blog written by Jim Knight, the Schools Minister, has been found to be riddled with spelling mistakes.

The Labour MP’s website was also found to contain typing errors and grammatical oversights.

The mispellings of Mr Knight, who was educated at Cambridge University, include “maintainence”, “convicned”, “curently”, “similiar”, “foce”, “pernsioners”, “reccess” and “archeaological”.

Mr Knight, who is responsible for raising education standards, also clearly has problems with the “i before e, except after c” spelling rule taught to primary school pupils.

He spelled “achieving” and “received” incorrectly.

Mr Knight, 43, gives his opinions on local and national issues regularly on his website, which reveals he attended the fee-paying Eltham College, in Mottingham, south east London.

He went on to study geography, and social and political sciences at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, from 1984 to 1987.

Mr Knight, MP for Dorset South, said: “When I was at school the teachers told me to always check my work. While my spelling is generally pretty good, I need to focus more on checking.”

Rob Wilson, the Conservative education spokesman, said: “He will be disappointed with his efforts in class but I’m sure he’ll make every effort to improve now teacher has noticed he’s falling behind.”

Words the education minister got wrong:

maintainence (maintenance)

convicned (convinced)

curently (currently)

similiar (similar)

foce (force)

pernsioners (pensioners)

reccess (recess)

archeaological (archeological)

acheiving (achieving)

receieved (received)

UD thanks her sister for the link.

… for mixing metaphors?

When you’re all hepped up and you want your writing to be red hot.

Beware, says Scathing Online Schoolmarm.

He took Capitol Hill by storm Wednesday, unleashing a double blow of written and spoken testimony that painted a devastating picture of the alleged Ponzi schemer Madoff and unleashed withering criticism of the Securities and Exchange Commission and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

Calm down, laddie! Your writing’s a withered painting that really blows.

The names of several thousand clients who lost money investing with Bernard Madoff have been released in a court filing that reads like a Who’s Who: former Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Sandy Koufax, actor Kevin Bacon and even Madoff’s defense lawyer.

Defending a man who stole your money from the charge that he stole your money. Hm.

UD‘s campus, George Washington University, also begins to acknowledge the obvious.

Facebook, video-chatting and instant messaging may soon be a thing of the past – at least in some GW classrooms.

A growing number of professors are banning or restricting the use of laptop computers in their classrooms in an attempt to get students to pay attention and engage in classroom discussions.

… Sophomore Joe Goldman … said he does not mind that his professor bans laptops in his class.

“I find the use of a computer to be terribly distracting. I already have a BlackBerry, if I had a computer in class I’d literally be staring at a screen all day,” he said.

… “Students pay a lot of money to attend this institution, but I’m sure it’s no one’s intent that people should be throwing that money away,” [one professor said]. “If lectures are being compromised, it’s not in anyone’s best interest to use them.”

… Georgetown Law professor David Cole said 80 percent of his students who were anonymously surveyed reported that they are more engaged in class discussion when they are laptop-free, 70 percent said that they liked the no-laptop policy, and 95 percent admitted that they use their laptops in class for “purposes other than taking notes.”

GW professor Tapan Nayak also said he has banned laptops in his statistics courses.

“In the past, some of my students were using laptops to do other things, checking e-mail, surfing the Internet,” Nayak said. “For my class it is not necessary or that helpful to use a laptop.”

“In general I’d say that laptops are kind of like a double-edged sword in the classroom. We are only using what is given to us, but we all know what people are going to do in the classroom and that’s not pay attention,” said Zach Hanover, a student in SMPA professor Carole Bell’s class. Bell has also banned laptops in her class….

UD thinks that eventually the only professors to encourage laptop use will be those who already stuff their classrooms with PowerPoint and clickers and anything else that will allow them the same screening from their students that the screened students have from them.

If UD‘s right, students who want to stay on Facebook during class should identify professors suffering from Asperger’s Syndrome. Or borderline Asperger’s.

And you can see why. He has presided over a university which appointed Bernard Madoff treasurer of its trustees and chair of the board of directors for its business school.

Don’t forget – it was only a few months ago that Madoff retained these positions at Yeshiva.

Harry Markopolos, in his testimony today, tells us the sort of person Yeshiva’s president maintained in these positions of responsibility.

Markopolos feared for his life while investigating Madoff. Why?

I don’t consider it paranoia. And the reason is, Mr. Madoff was running such a large scheme of unimaginable size and complexity, and he had a lot of dirty money. And let me describe dirty money to you. When you’re that big and you’re that secrective, you’re going to attract a lot of organized crime money, and which we now know came from the Russian mob and the Latin American drug cartel, and when you are zeroing out mobsters, you have a lot to fear. And he could not afford to get caught … And he would’ve known my name and knew he had a team tracking him, I didn’t think I was long for this world.

A blogger explains Richard Joel’s compensation:

Yeshiva University paid its president Richard Joel $698,495, plus the institution gave him an expense account of $84,869, according to the Chronicle for Higher Education, Facts and Figures, Executives’ Compensation at Private Institutions. That’s an $80,000 raise from his compensation package of the previous year. At that rate of increase it’s fair to assume that two years later, i.e., this year, 2008-9 his compensation is more than $940,000.

So – a million dollar a year salary… And how do you earn it? At a religious institution? By putting the fate of your campus in the hands of organized crime.

Strange incentive system.

… Senator Chuck Grassley urged the administration to snatch back the [corporate] bonuses. “They ought to give ’em back or we should go get ’em,” the Republican told me. “If this were Japan and a corporate executive did what is being done on Wall Street, they’d either go out and commit suicide or go before the board of directors and the country and take a very deep bow and apologize.”

He was shocked to learn that the Office of Management and Budget, insistent on following the Paperwork Reduction Act, was dragging down a special inspector general’s investigation of what banks are doing with taxpayer money. (After complaints, the O.M.B. yielded on Friday.)

“Once in a while, some C.E.O. comes and talks to me and I wonder if they’re laughing under their breath at having to talk to someone who makes 1 percent of what they make,” he said.

Yes, gross money inequality is a very bad thing. Very undemocratic. Destructive of civic life. UD‘s been harping on that for years in the context of universities with overpaid presidents, universities with millionaire football coaches, universities where professors hawk medical devices on university time. These are the sources of money corruption in the American university, and UD ain’t saying they’re going away any time soon. But she notes Grassley’s persistent attack on university conflict of interest, and Obama’s rhetoric about corporate greed, and she feels hopeful.

This university does not really exist. There’s no there there.

Here’s the latest news.

The trustees of Alabama A&M University are attempting to organize another meeting some time this week to review the three finalists for the school’s top job.

The board of trustees met in Birmingham on Saturday, but five trustees did not attend. Without at least seven voting members, the board could take no official action regarding finalists for university president.

… Jerome Saintjones, who handles public relations for the university, said today that he expects to know by Tuesday when trustees will meet again.

Trustee Robert Avery said he was asked about a possible meeting Saturday, but said he would not be available. Avery, who did not attend the meeting in Birmingham, suggested the board stick to its regularly scheduled meeting at the end of the month.

Lynn Sherrod, a Madison County district judge and A&M trustee, also did not attend the Birmingham meeting. She said she needed more thn 24 hours to review the materials related to the candidates.

“I am very hopeful that this board will come together,” said Sherrod. “The university needs a permanent president, but the board needs to take every precaution to get the best available person.”

Total free fall. Shut it down.

… Republicans had also signaled that they would grill Daschle on conflict-of-interest issues, noting that the president’s choice to lead a healthcare overhaul had accepted more than $5 million in speaking and consulting fees from the healthcare industry in the past two years.

From Talking Points Memo:

Daschle’s coziness with corporate interests, many of whom will have key business before Congress and the Obama administration, could complicate the larger task of reducing the influence of the private sector in Washington.

… [T]here’s nothing explicitly nefarious about Daschle’s work on behalf of health insurers. But interests like AHIP and UnitedHealth have, by and large, stood in the way of efforts to remove our healthcare system from the grip of private interests, which many see as a prerequisite for real reform. Of course, that likely won’t happen without at least neutralizing the opposition of the private insurers — so perhaps Daschle’s ties to those insurers make him ideally suited for the role. But at the very least, it would be nice to know what kind of “policy advice” he gave his corporate clients.

… notable Americans beginning to come in.

Number one: Nils Lofgren.

… is the title of my new post up at Inside Higher Education. It’s a little meditation on Bernie Madoff and Harry Markopolos and universities.

Wells Fargo & Co. said it has reconsidered holding an event in Las Vegas after reports earlier that the company had planned functions for its mortgage and insurance units.

Spokesman Kevin Waetke said in an e-mail the company has reconsidered holding the event. A follow up statement is “forthcoming,” he wrote.

Background here.

Singularity University, which will be housed on the NASA Ames base near Mountain View and begin classes in June, is the brainchild of Ray Kurzweil and Peter Diamandis. The two world-renowned scientists were expected to unveil their plans at the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference beginning in Long Beach today.

The school hopes to attract students from a cross section of emerging disciplines – including nanotechnology, biotechnology and information technology – to tackle huge issues facing humanity. Pandemics and global health care concerns would be typical in scope and import.

… Singularity will consist of a single, nine-week course of study every summer, during which 120 students from a cross-section of disciplines will mix together to tackle weighty issues. Tuition will be $25,000…

More than 4 1/2 tons of pot has been found in an abandoned school bus near the U.S.-Mexico border.

A Texas Department of Public Safety statement released Tuesday says a state trooper found the drugs near Laredo, on the side of U.S. 59 in Webb County, over the weekend. According to the statement, 560 marijuana bundles totaling more than 9,210 pounds were hidden under a cardboard false floor and in a secret ceiling compartment.

The DPS estimates the marijuana is worth $3.9 million retail and says the seizure is the second largest it’s made during routine traffic enforcement since 1997…

… local news excitement, UD has gotten behind in her coverage of university stories: the on-again, off-again affair between Brandeis and its art collection; drunk coaches, overpaid fund managers, conflicted medical school professors (far too many to link to); and, of course, that perennial embarrassment, Southern Illinois University.

Bear with her as she pulls herself together.