Friday, 13 September, 1991 Washington, DC

1. MORE BODIES UNEARTHED AS INDIRECT COST INVESTIGATION SPREADS!
Even as Stanford disclosed last week that upkeep on the tomb of its founder had been billed as a research-related cost, corpses were being found at other major research university campuses. Records exhumed by federal auditors at the University of Michigan reveal expenses, represented as research-related, for travel by the UM Director of Communications and his wife to the 1989 Rose Bowl. Not only is UM the first public university to be caught in the fallout of Stanford's overhead bomb, Michigan is the home state of Rep. John Dingell (D-MI), who led congressional hearings into academic sleaze. In April, MIT agreed to pay back $731,000 to the government (WN 26 APR 91). Johns Hopkins reportedly used federal research funds for lavish parties. It beats mausoleums.

2. NSF PANEL TO EXPLORE ROOTS OF UNHAPPINESS IN ACADEMIC SCIENCE.
Puzzled by the fact that researchers have been complaining, NSF has put Roland Schmitt, President of RPI, in charge of getting to the bottom of this mystery. Schmitt, former head of the National Science Board, believes research funding is not the real problem. His theory was contained in a letter to Physics Today last June. "Clearly there is something funny happening here," he is quoted as saying. In an attempt to help, WHAT'S NEW has reviewed recent events for clues to this baffling malaise, but we found nothing! After all, what scientist would object to administrators' using overhead gouged from research grants to throw parties and travel to football games, or to congressional earmarking of research funds for a $20M Science Center at East Cupcake Divinity School, or to gigadollar space stations with no discernable mission?

3. HOW STEALTHY IS THE B-2? STEALTHY ENOUGH TO CONCEAL THE FLAWS
in its radar-evading capability while the government spent $30B on the program. Even if the B-2 program is killed, however, the savings could not be used for urgent domestic needs under the terms of the budget agreement. Although the Senate turned down a proposal by Tom Harkin (D-IA) to shift resources from defense to social welfare, pressure is building to re-examine the budget agreement in the wake of a diminishing Soviet threat.

4. U.S. MAINTAINS "SUNUNU STANCE" ON CO2 AT NAIROBI CONFERENCE.
The meeting is intended to draft an international accord for the control of greenhouse emissions to be signed next June in Rio de Janiero. In the White House, controls are as popular as spotted owls at a lumber camp. The US, alone, insists that action should await further research. Meanwhile, NASA launched a satellite to study ozone depletion. It is the first step in EOS; according to NASA, it opens a new era in environmental observation from space.

5. IN RESPONSE TO NUMEROUS REQUESTS, JAMES RANDI's DEFENSE FUND
against the law suit by Uri Geller is: the Skeptics Legal Fund, c/o Robert Steiner, P.O. Box 659, El Cerito, CA 94530.



Bob Park can be reached via email at whatsnew@bobpark.org
THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND
Opinions are the author's and are not necessarily shared by the University, but they should be.