Writing for the New York Times, Atul Gawande reports on

a program that instituted in nearly every intensive care unit in Michigan a simple five-step checklist designed to prevent certain hospital infections. It reminds doctors to make sure, for example, that before putting large intravenous lines into patients, they actually wash their hands and don a sterile gown and gloves.

... The results were stunning. ... the rate of bloodstream infections from these I.V. lines fell by two-thirds.

However, "the Office for Human Research Protections shut the program down" because the researchers had not followed the informed consent protocols required for experimenting on patients: changing a checklist may alter patient care as much as an experimental drug, and so should be subject to the same controls. Gawande concludes, "the authorities ... [are] in danger of putting ethics bureaucracy in the way of actual ethical medical care."

As a project manager and Master of Public Administration student, I'm sensitive to the accusation of bureaucracy. I went and looked it up, and it turns out that's it's always been pejorative. OED defines bureaucracy as "Government by bureaux; usually officialism", and defines bureau as

An office, esp. for the transaction of public business; a department of public administration. ... Hence bureauism, officialism, 'red-tape-ism'.

Gawande condemns the Office for Human Research Protections for following "a certain blinkered logic" to reach a "bizarre and dangerous" decision, which it then imposes broadly to the detriment of many. But it's basically just enforcing some rules about paperwork, albeit poorly. Isn't the checklist he lauds another set of rules about paperwork? It seems to me that either bureaucracy should be acknowledged as a neutral word, leading to good bureaucracy and bad bureaucracy, or, if bureaucracy is to maintain its pejorative status, a new word should be introduced for an office transacting public business in a positive fashion.

How strong is exam culture in Singapore? Our first semester grades were available online (or by SMS!) a few days ago. I found out because another student clued me in to look; a day or two after we got this alert by email:

The online exam results for Semester 1, 2007/2008 have just been released. Pls check the NUS Student Intranet for more updates [...]

As far as I know, these are the actual class grades, not just the final exam. The final exam made up between 30 and 50% of my grade for various classes. But in Negotiation and Conflict Management, the instructor successfully petitioned NUS (not the Lee Kuan Yew school, but the NUS mothership) to skip the exam, and there is a result for that class, so I'm pretty sure these are class grades, not exam results. But, presumably influenced by the historical practice of having exams be 100% of class grades, they are labeled on the web page as "NUS Graduate Examination Results". I'm happy to say I passed, with results good enough to maintain my scholarship. I didn't have any particular reason to worry, but apparently no matter how old you get, the wait for results can still get under your skin.