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Paul Basken Bio

Paul Basken

Reporter (former)
The Chronicle of Higher Education

Paul Basken was a government policy and science reporter with The Chronicle of Higher Education, where he won an annual National Press Club award for exclusives.

He founded the State Department bureau at Bloomberg News, was a White House and international correspondent with United Press International, and served on the editorial advisory board of ASEE’s Prism Magazine.

Stories by This Author

U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announces that nine Iranians have been charged with conducting vast cybertheft campaigns on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
News
U.S. Discovery of Iranian Cyberattack Doesn’t Seem to Alarm Universities
By Paul Basken March 25, 2018
Foreign-policy experts suggest a computer-hacking indictment has more to do with international politics than a dire threat to American research institutions.
Michael Goldblatt, an entrepreneur and former official at the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, came up with the Polyplexus concept, "the idea of trying to create research into digestible chunks to drive citations and drive understanding and learning."
News
Twitter for Scientists: an Idea Whose Time Has Finally Come?
By Paul Basken March 19, 2018
A new federally funded project called Polyplexus aims to become a repository for “micropubs” — 300-character summaries of research findings. For now, it’s open to academic scientists only.
A physics grad student at the U. of Maryland works on an atomic physics experiment studying quantum information, the kind needed to build a superfast computer. That would require sophisticated cooperation between computer scientists, physicists, mathematicians, and engineers, which could be facilitated by the Office of Science and Technology Policy.
From the Archives
Quiet White House Science Office Stirs Fears but Also Raises Some Hopes
By Paul Basken March 12, 2018
The leaderless office is the main coordinating body for officials throughout the government to confer on a range of scientific matters affecting their agencies.
A study involved the records of more than 34,000 heart-attack hospitalizations; about a tenth of them occurred during cardiologists' annual meetings.
News
Academic Conferences May Save Lives — by Keeping Big-Name Doctors Busy
By Paul Basken March 9, 2018
That’s the counterintuitive conclusion of a study by scientists at Harvard. The report’s lead author admits that it’s hard to know what to make of the findings.
Peer Review in Flux NU
News
Can Peer Review Be Saved?
By Paul Basken March 4, 2018
The problem facing universities in 2018 isn’t so much that peer review has inevitably evolved, but that scientists collectively have failed to respond with a better replacement.
Nearly two decades ago, two studies hailed the drug Tamiflu as effectively fighting the flu in nearly three out of four cases. But recent studies have cast doubt on both the drug’s effectiveness and the peer-review system that cleared it.
News
Tamiflu and the Limits of Peer Review
By Paul Basken March 4, 2018
The $20-billion controversy surrounding the influenza vaccine illustrates the problem of relying too heavily on published articles as a measure of scientific reliability.
How to Protect Your College’s Research From Undue Corporate Influence 1
News
How to Protect Your College’s Research From Undue Corporate Influence
By Paul Basken February 25, 2018
Public scandals and private worries have prompted efforts to rethink the management of university-industry ties.
News
NSF to Require Reporting of Researchers Who Harass
By Paul Basken February 8, 2018
The agency seeks to ensure firsthand that any research it funds, including at remote outposts, is carried out free of harassment.
Faculty Productivity
UT-Austin Professors Join Campaign Against Faculty-Productivity Company
By Paul Basken January 24, 2018
The Faculty Council passed a resolution urging the University of Texas’ flagship to make no use of the company, Academic Analytics, especially for promotion, tenure, and related decisions.
Kurt Rohloff, a computer scientist at the New Jersey Institute of Technology: "You’re never going to completely limit the ability of someone to steal information from a computer, but you can make it a heck of a lot harder."
Technology
2 New Threats Highlight Human-Factor Gaps in Cybersecurity Research
By Paul Basken January 12, 2018
To address vulnerabilities like Meltdown and Spectre, computer scientists must consider the work of social scientists. But, argues one expert, they tend to give it short shrift.
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