William Heisel

<p>Do you know how many hours there are in a week?</p> <p>For doctors, the answer is on the tips of their tongues: 168 hours. As one medical resident recently put it to me, “When you are in residency, you start with the hours in the week and then subtract the few hours that you are <em>not</em> at the hospital. It’s not uncommon to work 120 hours a week. It’s the reverse human schedule.”</p>

<p>Have you ever worked on a story where you knew that you were just one source away from a blockbuster? But you could never find that one great document that spelled out the connections or that one repentant insider willing to walk you through the corporate crime, government malfeasance or law enforcement deceit.</p>

<p>Most reporters never have the misfortune of being sued for libel. If they are, there are broad free speech protections in court precedent, especially in California, that make it unlikely a plaintiff will win, unless a reporter has been truly reckless.</p>

<p><br />Some doctors crave distinction.</p><p>They carefully place their many diplomas and certificates on their wall to signal to patients that they are high achievers who can be trusted with surgical instruments and drugs that can cure or kill you, depending on how they are dosed.</p><p><a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/regional/perv_doctor_hit_with_ny_biggest_3… Sorodsky</a> craved the distinction of being a doctor. Instead, he now has the distinction of being thrown into jail with a massive bail: $33 million.</p>

<p>When the <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20021020020858/http:/www.reproductivemedicin… of Reproductive Medicine</i></a> published a study that purported to prove that <a href="http://www.allaboutprayer.org/intercessory-prayer.htm">intercessory prayer</a> can heal people, there were many reasons to be doubtful, regardless of one's religious beliefs. </p>

<p>Dr. Bruce Flamm, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California at Irvine, has been waging a lonely war for nearly a decade. He took the unusual step of accusing fellow scientific researchers of fakery. In 2001, the <i>Journal of Reproductive Medicine</i> published a paper titled, <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&amp;db=PubMed&amp… prayer influence the success of in vitro fertilization-embryo transfer?

<p>Dr. Charles McKay understands the human heart better than most of us.</p> <p>He has authored or co-authored hundreds of research papers about various aspects of cardiac care. He helped write the joint American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association <a href="http://www.acc.org/qualityandscience/clinical/guidelines/valvular/dirin… for valvular heart disease treatment</a>. Some of his work has been cited more than 1,000 times by other researchers.</p>

<p>A dentist drives through the dark alleyways of New Jersey in the dead of winter, visiting morgues where he cuts out bones, slices out tendons and peels off layers of skin from corpses. With coolers packed with human flesh, he then drives to a smoking factory where the body parts are turned into things that are put into other people's bodies, without them ever knowing. </p>

<p>Evan George at the Los Angeles Daily Journal, a newspaper focused on the legal community, wrote a great investigative series about disability insurance last month. He spoke to Antidote <a href="/blogs/qa-los-angeles-daily-journals-evan-george-investigating-disability-insurance">last week </a>about how he got started on the project. The second part of the interview is below. It has been edited for space and clarity.</p><p><i>Q: Did you start small or did you immediately dive into looking up all 500+ cases?</i></p>

<p>In the annals of twin research, the twisted story of the identical Blankenburg brothers could fill a volume.</p>