Show Notes
Since World War II, America has led the world in science and medicine by making an unusual choice: instead of keeping research in government labs, it invested directly in universities. That partnership fueled decades of discovery and breakthroughs. But today, that pipeline is under serious threat, and nowhere is the impact clearer than at Harvard. This week, Dr. Joan Brugge, director of Harvard’s Ludwig Cancer Center, joins us to explore what’s at stake for scientific progress and for America’s place on the global stage.
More from Campus Files: Scandals, Secrets & Crimes at American Universities
Wake Forest players couldn’t seem to get down the football field. Even their trick plays weren’t working. Some remember thinking it felt like the other team had access to their playbook. It would take years, and an investigation, to confirm that suspicion wasn’t so far-fetched. There had, in fact, been a leak from inside the program.
One morning in Lubbock, an isolated town in northwest, Texas. The funeral go-ers are gathering outside one of Texas Tech’s Administration buildings. Behind them, University Regents file into the building, preparing for a Board of Regents meeting. The mourners are protesting the ""end of academic freedom"" at Texas Tech.
By day, they were MIT students and working professionals. By night, they played blackjack at casinos. Using mathematics and card counting, the MIT blackjack team found a way to beat the house and walk away with huge sums of money. They were good at it. Maybe too good. And before long, the casinos started to catch on.
In the 90s construction crews discovered a small collection of leftover World War I era munitions buried in the ground. This discovery triggered a massive and ever expanding search. The situation was made far more terrifying when researchers learned of a pit where a massive stockpile of chemical weapons was buried. Back in World War I, the Army crews burying these materials nicknamed this spot “The Pit of Hades”, calling it the most feared and respected place on the grounds. But the trouble was, nobody alive knew where this pit was buried.
In the mid-20th century, Americans were paying closer attention to nutrition. MIT researchers wanted to determine the nutritional value of oats. But their study required children to eat oatmeal containing radioactive tracers. They found those children inside a state institution.