The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "government experiments" ...
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Bad to the Bone
When four executives of a medical-device company called Synthes went to jail for illegally marketing a bone cement—five patients had died after it was injected into their spines—Mina Kimes knew there had to be a compelling saga behind a case that had generated little coverage beyond local news articles. So she began digging, first with FOIA requests for never-before-published government documents, and then assembling hundreds of pages of court transcripts and internal company e-mails and reports. She used that foundation to begin the harder challenge: persuading Synthes employees, many of them terrified by the criminal case and the company’s intimidating chairman, to talk to her. With six months of grueling, old-fashioned reporting, Kimes succeeded, and “Bad to the Bone” is the masterful result. Not only did she persuade more than 20 current and former company employees to speak, but she also revealed a story whose disturbing breadth far exceeded the case presented in court. Her tour de force reporting raises profound new questions about the culpability of a key figure who wasn’t charged: Hansjörg Wyss, the reclusive and controlling Swiss founder and chairman—one of the richest people in the world—who made crucial decisions about how to sell the bone cement. This is a classic tale of corporate malfeasance: Warned by the government not to sell its bone cement for use in the spine, Synthes ignored the admonition despite clear evidence of lethal danger—a pig had died within seconds when the cement was tested on it—and encouraged surgeons to use the cement on people, five of whom died soon afterward. But “Bad to the Bone” isn’t just an exposé. It opens a window into a broader issue: how the medical system actually runs. Readers see how salespeople with no medical training advise surgeons—inside the OR during operations—on how to use their devices. They experience the tale of one surgeon who continues using the cement even after two of his patients died. Oh, and what sort of justice does Synthes itself receive? Wyss sells it, for $20 billion, to health care giant Johnson & Johnson, which praises Synthes’s “culture” and “values.” Corporate crime. Death on the operating room table. Secret e-mails. Surgeons on the edge. An imperious multibillionaire CEO. It’s a mesmerizing article, and Kimes’s reporting takes readers on a deeply unsettling journey that ensures they’ll never look at the medical system the same way again.
Tags: Medical devices; bone cement; Synthes
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Solano County: Autopsies and Prosecutions
This was a great experience for me in investigative reporting, it required not only shoe-leather reporting and extensive public records requesting, but it also was an exercise in writing as there were a number of revelations I felt were important that were difficult to line up together in a coherent narrative. In the end, I think it turned out well and further solidified full-time investigative reporting as my future career goal.
Tags: Government; autopsies
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60 Billion Dollar Fraud
“Medicare Fraud, a crime that steals an estimated $60 billion a year from the American taxpayer”. Medicare stated they were made efforts to crack down on the fraud, but this investigation proved otherwise. This investigation revealed how easy Medicare fraud is and that zero experience can still result in thousands of dollars from Medicare.
Tags: health care; medical; medicine; officials; federal government; Congress; system; insurance; plan; doctors; hospitals; benefits
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Disposable Heroes
The original story focused on Iraqi war veteran James Elliott, who suffered a psychotic breakdown and was stun gunned by police while taking the drug Chantix in a smoking cessation study by the Department of Veterans Affairs. The series examined the use of military veterans as guinea pigs in drug experiments conducted by the federal government and exposed numerous ethical lapses, including a system-wide failure to notify participants when the Food and Drug Administration issues new drug warnings.
Tags: Department of Veterans Affairs; veteran; drug trials; Food and Drug Administration; Soldiers for the Truth; human research studies; Pfizer; PTSD; smoking
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Project Access
The reporters, with the help of 18 journalism students, set out to find out how public were public records. The students were sent out to request data from a range of public departments and rate their experience, the idea being that they were more representative of the general public rather than experienced journalists would be.
Tags: FOIA; public records; local government; open records; Sunshine laws
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The State Boys rebellion
This book reveals the practice of eugenics in America throughout the 20th century. Thousands of normal children were held in mental institutions because they were deemed "deficient" through crude IQ tests. United States health officials wanted to keep them from having children and degrading the American gene pool, a so-called "menace of the feebleminded." While institutionalized the children were beaten, raped and forced to fight each other. The story follows the lives of a group of boys from the Fernald State School.
Tags: BOOK; eugenics; gene pool; State Boys; government experiments
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Duty, Honor, Betrayal: How the U.S. turned its back on poisoned WWII vets
Zeman did months and months of research to tell the stories of U.S. army veterans who were exposed to poison gases as part of government experiments before and during World War II. In the early nineties, these stories came to light and the VA promised to help the affected veterans file claims and fight for compensation, but the agency never came through. This report found that the VA never fulfilled its pledge, and that many sick and dying veterans, affected by chemical experiments decades before, were left to handle their illnesses completely on their own.
Tags: military; mustard gas; Nuremburg; Anthony Principi; Pentagon; lewisite; gas chambers; Edgewood Arsenal; Department of Defense; Veterans Affairs
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"Dr. Holt: Two jobs, one man"
This investigation raises a number of questions about a county medical director. While working full time as medical director, he also works full time as a professor at an area university despite a state law that forbids workers holding two full-time government jobs. The state health department funnels his salary through the university to avoid the appearance of two jobs, while the university declined to provide a schedule of his lectures. Meanwhile, his lack of education and experience in administration has led to lawsuits and criticism of program cuts and job lay-offs. A planned follow-up story will reveal how the director has given the university $5 million in county health department contracts.
Tags: FOIA; conflict of interest; double dipping; public health administration; university; health department
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Friends in High Places
A WTVF-TV investigation exposed "a questionable relationship between Tennessee Governor Don Sundquist and some state contractors." The news station discovered that two long-time friends of the governor received contracts for work from the state totalling almost $200 million. In one case, one of the companies was given a no-bid, $2 million contract with the explanation that this company was "the only company in Tennessee that has experience" for the job. The company in question, however, was incorporated just six days prior to that statement.
Tags: Tennessee; Governor Don Sundquist; state contractors; state government; governor; ethics; TennCare TAPE; TRANSCRIPT
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Welfare that Works: Lessons from Three Experiments that Fight Dependency and Poverty by Rewarding Work
The American Prospect magazine examines three welfare experiments by the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, which tested policies that would reward getting a job and minimize dependency.
Tags: Welfare; experiments; Manpower Demonstration Research Center; incentives; disincentives; dependency; money; poverty; policy; United States; U.S. government; race; economics; income; jobs