A nurse who alerted the state medical board of Texas to the improper medical practices of a doctor was acquitted of a felony charge in less than an hour. Read more here.

A former administrator at Philadelphia’s first charter school has filed suit under Pennsylvania’s whistle-blower law claiming wrongful termination after alerting authorities to the school’s misuse of funds. Read more here.

A whistleblower has accused JM Eagle, one of the world’s largest pipe manufacturers, of falsifying test results about the quality of its PVC water pipe products. JM Eagle pipes are used my numerous state and local governments in their water systems and four states and 40 water districts in CA have joined the whistleblower’s lawsuit. Read more here.

A former banker, whose inside information on Swiss banking giant UBS helped launch a US tax evasion investigation, received no leniency on his three year, four month prison sentence for fraud conspiracy. Read more here.

Partners HealthCare, the owner of two research hospitals affiliated with Harvard Medical School, has issued new restrictions on the amount of outside pay from drug companies. Read more here.

U.S. Department of Transportation Inspector General Calvin Scovel III honored the whistle-blower who alerted federal officials of possible safety issues with the plans for Washington D.C.’s proposed Metro Silver Line. Read more here.

A December 2009 report finds that many vaccine safety advisors to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had potential conflicts  of interest that were unresolved by the CDC. Read more here.

On December 1st, 2009, the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation held an Aviation Operations, Safety, and Security Subcommittee hearing on pilot fatigue. This hearing highlighted the very real external pressures to the professional integrity of airline pilots. Topics discussed included airline scheduling without consideration of pilot well-being and the public safety implications of pilot fatigue. Watch the full Subcommittee hearing here.

Note: The hearing begins at 13:52 of the webcast available on the Committee website.

The leak of stolen e-mails between scientists working on climate change has cast a spotlight on the effect political pressure may have on the scientific process.  Read more here.

The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, which has reversed its own findings twice this year, has come under fire for allegedly cursory evaluations that often get the science wrong and ignore independent studies and community complaints.  Read more here.