HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Department Of Education’s New Loan Repayment Program Punishes Law School Grads.

HMM: Antidepressant Paxil Is Unsafe for Teenagers, New Analysis Says.

Fourteen years ago, a leading drug maker published a study showing that the antidepressant Paxil was safe and effective for teenagers. On Wednesday, a major medical journal posted a new analysis of the same data concluding that the opposite is true.

That study — featured prominently by the journal BMJ — is a clear break from scientific custom and reflects a new era in scientific publishing, some experts said, opening the way for journals to post multiple interpretations of the same experiment. It comes at a time of self-examination across science — retractions are at an all-time high; recent cases of fraud have shaken fields as diverse as anesthesia and political science; and earlier this month researchers reported that less than half of a sample of psychology papers held up.

“This paper is alarming, but its existence is a good thing,” said Brian Nosek, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, who was not involved in either the original study or the reanalysis. “It signals that the community is waking up, checking its work and doing what science is supposed to do — self-correct.”

Yes, and it’s why data should be made public.

A MATCH.COM for carpooling. “Instead of having an awkward and silent car ride with a stranger, Berlingerio’s team at the University of Pisa and IBM Research is trying to make carpooling into a social experience. They tapped Twitter data to create a carpool matchmaking model based on shared interests and compatibility of the driver and passenger. This model was compared with traditional optimized carpooling methods that aim to take as many cars off the road as possible. Of the software’s 200 users, 39 percent said they were more interested in the enjoyable, social model than in a more efficient, greener carpooling model. The engineers also found that 24 percent chose to carpool specifically for the opportunity to ride with interesting people rather than to save money and time.”

PLANNING TO CARRY MORE OFTEN? Amazon has holsters.

HUH. SO THAT’S NOT JUST AN EXPRESSION, THEN. Over 190 hurt when fire drill goes wrong in China.

NO THANKS: This Bicycle Just Went 85.71 MPH on Human Power Alone.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Sex Does Not Trigger Heart Attacks. “For those who want to grow old disgracefully, it could be good news. A study has found no evidence that sex can trigger a heart attack, even in patients who have had one already.” There you are. The science is settled.

WITH INTEREST RATES REMAINING LOW, the “Senior Squeeze” remains a big deal. Except, of course, in the news, where we hear almost nothing about it.

HOW THE BAKER RIFLE turned soldiers into long-distance killers.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Udacity Expands Services And Announces Scholarships In India.

Online computer programming educator Udacity announced on Monday it would expand on the ground in India, the country where the service is growing the fastest.

Udacity’s free and nanodegree services are available worldwide, but with Monday’s announcement, the company will begin offering the service in rupees and expanding its staff in the country. Nanodegrees are credentials recognized by many companies, such as Google and Salesforce.

Hitting underserved markets first, supplying credentials recognized by employers and bypassing the accreditors’ guild: Who could have seen this coming?

REP. JARED POLIS (D-CO) HASN’T PUT HIS SCANDALOUS REMARKS ABOUT SEXUAL ASSAULT BEHIND HIM YET: Prosecutor from Polis’s District: ‘Shadow’ campus system is no solution to sexual assault.

Although universities adjudicate student discipline, it is a serious mistake to equate investigation and resolution of felony sex assault with cheating on a test or drinking or smoking in a dorm room or the other normal fodder of the university discipline process, where due process on some level is important, but of an entirely different quality than the criminal justice system provides.

We should never tolerate the adjudication of serious felony behavior outside the criminal justice system. There are many reasons:

1. The risk of wrongful conviction is too great. The rigorous due process of the criminal justice system exists for mainly one reason: to make sure society can have confidence that one who is found guilty is, in fact, guilty. Relaxing due process, or having investigations not handled by well-trained professionals can lead to wrongful conviction.

2. The risk of traumatizing victims of sex assault. Interview and handling of victims and witnesses in sex crimes requires skill, sensitivity and time. Clumsy or repeated interviews can be traumatic for victims.

3. Those guilty of serious felony behavior present a societal risk, not just a campus risk. To suggest that sex assault on campus is primarily a campus problem is just plain wrong: it is a societal problem and deserves a societal response through the criminal justice system.

4. The criminal justice system is public and the public can observe, evaluate and criticize the proceedings. University conduct investigations carry the inherent secrecy of the discipline process, which can leave the public questioning the fairness of an investigation and the accuracy of the determinations.

The federal government’s decision to tie campus funding to a one size fits all investigative approach can interfere with criminal investigations. Fair, effective, sex assault investigations take time and cannot be handled by investigators under pressure to rush to a particular conclusion due to financial pressures on the university. Also, “warning letters” or warning bulletins, or campus-based “stay away from each other” orders can, if issued prematurely, prevent law enforcement from determining the truth of alleged criminal behavior.

Of course, that only matters if you actually care about justice. If you’re just pushing bureaucratic employment and Hillary-friendly “War On Women” talking points, then who cares what happens to individuals?

IN LIGHT OF THE STORY ABOUT the Afghan boy-abuse scandal, I should note my colleague Valerie Vojdik has an article on Sexual Violence Against Women and Men In Wartime.

JAMES LILEKS: “If ISIS took over France they would level Versailles, or just burn the pictures. Same with the Louvre. Any statuary embedded in the structures would get a good whacking, of course. Would they jackhammer all the details off Notre Dame? Well, that’s nonsense. Ridiculous to think that any revolutionary madness that upended every precept of the dominant culture would sweep through Paris like a virus.”

Heh, indeed.™

Related: Ralph Peters: ’2000 Years of Christian Civilization Destroyed on Obama’s Watch.’

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 865.

CHANGE! THEN: NO BLOOD FOR OIL. NOW: NY TIMES COHOSTS ‘OIL AND MONEY’ CONFERENCE; IRANIAN OIL MINISTER TO ATTEND:

A year ago, Tim Graham at NewsBusters noted that the New York Times was “offering 13-day tours of Iran guided by Times journalist Elaine Sciolino” at the bargain rate of $6,995 per person. Among other things, it promised “excellent insights into … (the) life and accomplishments” of Ayatollah Khomeini, the ruthless Islamist leader who posed as a liberator, but then imposed a fundamentalist Islamic state after taking control of that country in the late 1970s. Those tours are still active, and popular.

Given that background, I suppose we really shouldn’t all that surprised that Ira Stoller at SmarterTimes.com reported a related development this morning. With the imminent lifting of Western sanctions against Iran, the ever-opportunistic International division of the Times is cohosting an October 6-7 “Oil and Money” conference in London (I promise, I’m not making this up).

There, among other things, industry decisionmakers can schmooze with “H.E. Seyed Mehdi Hosseini, chairman of the Oil Contract Restructuring Committee at the Iranian Ministry of Petroleum.”

For months, the Times has presented slanted reporting and relentlessly editorialized in favor of what Times staffer Brenda Erdmann Hagerty calls “the historic nuclear deal between Iran and world powers” in an email to potential attendees. Now it is capitalizing on the deal it advocated.

Is it really possible that no one at the Times sees, or at least cares about, how such a blatant conflict of interest seriously and permanently damages any claim they might have objectivity in this matter?

Forget it Jake, it’s Sulzbergertown.

As for the Times’ junkets to Iran, in March, Andrew Stiles of the Washington Free Beacon reported back in March from one on what he saw during his “journey to the birthplace of Valerie Jarrett.” As he noted, “Americans in Iran are generally regarded with a degree of skepticism, but not for the reason you might think. Iranians want to know what you’re doing in Iran, not because they suspect you of plotting a coup, but because they know American passport holders could spend their vacations anywhere else on earth (give or take a few tin-pot communist police states), and feel sorry for you.”

THE OTHER 25% WORK FOR THE GOVERNMENT: 75% in U.S. See Widespread Government Corruption. The number has climbed a lot since 2009. Hopey-changey!

Related: Trust in Mass Media Returns to All-Time Low.

After registering slightly higher trust last year, Americans’ confidence in the media’s ability to report “the news fully, accurately, and fairly” has returned to its previous all-time low of 40%. Americans’ trust in mass media has generally been edging downward from higher levels in the late 1990s and the early 2000s.

Prior to 2004, Americans placed more trust in mass media than they do now, with slim majorities saying they had a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust. But over the course of former President George W. Bush’s re-election season, the level of trust fell significantly, from 54% in 2003 to 44% in 2004. Although trust levels rebounded to 50% in 2005, they have failed to reach a full majority since. . . .

Trust among Democrats, who have traditionally expressed much higher levels of confidence in the media than Republicans have, dropped to a 14-year low of 54% in 2014. Republicans’ trust in the media is at 27%, one percentage point above their all-time low, while independents held steady at 38% — up one point from 37% in 2013.

2004 was the year of RatherGate, of course. 2005 was Katrina, where the press performed worse than President Bush did. And these days, well . . . .

‘NEO-PURITANS’ WANT TO PUNISH YOU FOR ‘SIN:’ “If you disagree with one, you’re not just wrong, you’re not just unenlightened – you’re immoral, you’re sinful, and you’re deserving of punishment in the here and now,” [Jack Cashill] said. “Not in the afterlife – there is none of that – in the here and now.”

Related: “‘Vegan Internet trolls’ target butcher and his family on Facebook.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Ernst & Young Removes Degree Classification From Entry Criteria As There’s ‘No Evidence’ University Equals Success. How did I miss this?

Oh, well. All is proceeding as I have foreseen, even when I don’t notice.

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UNSUSTAINABLE: Average NYC school janitor makes $109K a year.

Who do they think they are, the city manager of Bell, California?

OF COURSE IT DOES: Feds’ new ‘college scorecard’ excludes top conservative, Christian colleges.

CLAIM: OBAMA READY TO ENDORSE BIDEN—WITH CONDITIONS. “The talk in Democratic Party circles is that Barack Obama has told Joe Biden that he is prepared to endorse him for president if, in return, Biden promises to let Obama have a final say in the choice of his vice presidential running mate.” Hmm.

THE ISIS INTEL THAT WAS CHANGED FOR POLITICAL REASONS: The intelligence pros said killing certain ISIS leaders might not diminish the group and that airstrikes might not be working. The bosses didn’t like those answers—not at all.

Senior intelligence officials at the U.S. military’s Central Command demanded significant alterations to analysts’ reports that questioned whether airstrikes against the so-called Islamic State widely known as ISIS were damaging the group’s finances and its ability to launch attacks. But reports that showed the group being weakened by the U.S.-led air campaign received comparatively little scrutiny, The Daily Beast has learned.

Senior CENTCOM intelligence officials who reviewed the critical reports sent them back to the analysts and ordered them to write new versions that included more footnotes and details to support their assessments, according to two officials familiar with a complaint levied by more than 50 analysts about intelligence manipulation by CENTCOM higher-ups.

In some cases, analysts were also urged to state that killing particular ISIS leaders and key officials would diminish the group and lead to its collapse. Many analysts, however, didn’t believe that simply taking out top ISIS leaders would have an enduring effect on overall operations.

“There was the reality on the ground but it was not as rosy as [the leadership] wanted it to be,” a defense official familiar with the complaint told The Daily Beast. “The challenge was assessing whether the glass was half empty, not half full.”

Some analysts have also complained that they felt “bullied” into reaching conclusions favored by their bosses, two separate sources familiar with analysts’ complaints said. The written and verbal pressure created a climate at CENTCOM in which analysts felt they had to self-censor some of their reports.

Some of the analysts have also accused their bosses of changing the reports in order to appeal to what they perceived as the Obama administration’s official line that the anti-ISIS campaign was making progress and would eventually end with the group’s destruction.

The country’s in the very best of hands. At least if by “best” you mean, politicized and not particularly concerned about what’s going on in the world so long as they enhance their position here.

IN LIGHT OF THE TRAGIC DEATH OF JAKE BREWER, Mary Katharine Ham’s husband and the father of her two kids (one on the way), Guy Benson has set up a GoFundMe page for the kids’ education. I donated. (Bumped).