Specter -- Key Research Backer -- Defeated
Sen. Arlen Specter's defeat in Tuesday's Democratic primary in Pennsylvania will end a political career in which the senator was frequently a key ally of advocates for biomedical research and education. Specter, a Republican until last year, was for many years the ranking Republican on the Senate appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over spending on education programs and the National Institutes of Health -- and he backed spending increases in both areas, in particular for the NIH. Joe Sestak, who defeated Specter, doesn't differ from him significantly in views on those issues.
Is Admissions Process Too Trusting?
The Boston Globe explores the case of Adam Wheeler, the former Harvard University senior who used fraudulent materials to gain admission, to ask the question of whether admissions systems are too trusting. The article notes that many leading universities engage in relatively limited verifications of materials.
Historians Want Texas Standards Reconsidered
The officers and board of the American Historical Association on Tuesday issued a statement calling on the Texas State Board of Education to reconsider history standards that have been widely criticized for attempting to put a conservative spin on history by adding and subtracting certain people and ideas. The AHA statement said that the state's standards are inconsistent with national standards and with what Texas school children learn in the early grades. As but one example, the historians said that the Texas standards are "almost entirely discounting the importance of human activity in North America before the British colonization of the Atlantic Coast." Offering a comparison to science, the AHA statement said that "no curriculum in chemistry would be of much value to students if it made arbitrary selections and deletions among the elements to be studied; if the focus were to be on oxygen with hydrogen omitted, then students would be at a considerable disadvantage when it came to understanding water."