Professions

“Let’s Have An Open Debate on Both Sides of This Controversial Issue. Wait…Your Side Offends Me. Shut Up. You’re A Bully.”

/ Jack Marshall / 74 Comments

The Shawano (Wisconsin) High School’s student newspaper decided to publish a “Pro vs. Con” feature on the contentious issue of gay couples adopting children. A student wrote a column advocating each position.

In his column headlined “Should Gay Couples Be Allowed To Adopt?” student Brandon Wegner catalogued various arguments against gay adoption, and included this:

“If one is a practicing Christian, Jesus states in the Bible that homosexuality is (a) detestable act and sin which makes adopting wrong for homosexuals because you would be raising the child in a sin-filled environment….A child adopted into homosexuality will get confused because everyone else will have two different-gendered parents that can give them the correct amount of motherly nurturing and fatherly structure. In a Christian society, allowing homosexual couples to adopt is an abomination.”

A male couple raising a child who goes to the school saw the paper, and strenuously objected to school administrators, saying that the piece was hateful and would encourage bullying. Naturally, the school district immediately caved and threw the student, the paper and the column under a metaphorical bus, because that’s what school administrators do. If an anti-gay bigot had objected to the pro-gay adoption feature, it is even money that the school would have done the same.

An official mea culpa was immediately released: Continue reading →

Now THIS Is Professional Misconduct!

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

 

"Ed, you have to stop blaming yourself...you did nothing wrong!"

Dr. Thomas Wilson is accused of breaching professional ethical standards by having sexual relations with a patient while the doctor was still a student in Oklahoma. Normally a student’s misconduct would not result in sanctions almost two years later, after graduation and certification, but, you see, Wilson is a veterinarian, and his patient at the time of their illicit relationship was a horse.

The good doctor, who now practices at an animal hospital in Pennsylvania, is charged in Oklahoma with a “crime against nature,” but the ethical aspects of what he did go far beyond that. It is a breach of the trust with a patient incapable of  informed consent.  It is an abuse of power. It is animal cruelty. It is really, really, icky.

Are there such things as registered animal-sex offenders? I certainly hope so. Dr. Wilson should not be allowed within 100 yards of a race track, a rodeo, a farm, the Central Park carriages, or the set of AMC’s “Hell on Wheels.” The idea that he will be able to just pay a fine, go to some therapy sessions, and then blithely return to his equine practice without having to tell Mr. Ed’s owner that be has a record of horse-rape is unthinkable. Please tell me, Pennsylvania, that some kind of law protects your horses against sexual predators in sheep’s clothing?

[Thanks, I think, to Drew Curtis’s Fark for the link]

Dear Banks: This Is Why Nobody Trusts You

/ Jack Marshall / 35 Comments

I know I’ve been hard on the Occupy movement, but I don’t want to let the protesters think that I’m pals with all of their targets. Take the banks, for example.

The “waiting for the check to clear” scam engaged in by banks has always been annoying, but I now realize, thanks to bitter personal experience, that we have been fools to tolerate it. Once upon a time, before electronic transfers and computers, it really did take a check at least “five business days” to go from one bank to another, but the banks have held on to the fiction that nothing has changed, presumably to give them free use of our money while we patiently wait for the completion of transactions that have already been completed. Running a small business with perpetual cash-flow problems, the Marshalls constantly hectored our bank (then Wachovia, which bought it from American Security Trust, and there may have been another one in there somewhere) about speeding up the process, and in fact they did: our checks from clients often had money available to us within a day or two. That’s right—the bank let us use our own money while telling less long-standing, savvy, or persistent customers that the checks they deposited were taking almost a week to clear. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Disclosing Information We have A Right To Know But May Not Want To Know

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Travel blogger Margie Goldsmith has a provocative post about a nightmare flight she experienced on American Airlines. You can read it here. The plane had one problem after another, all of which were

How much about what's happening in that cockpit do we really want to know?

described in terrifying detail by the captain, who cheerily informed them that:

  • The plane’s hydraulic system was leaking and had to be repaired
  • During the delay, the pilot was going to watch a video about how to take off from that airport, which was especially tricky.
  • The new plane the passengers were later moved to had been really foul-smelling, and needed to be completely cleaned and deodorized
  • The new plane’s hatch wouldn’t close properly, and..
  • They finally sealed it with duct tape, and were going to fly that way.

Goldsmith ends her story with this: “The next time I’m on a delayed flight and the Captain does not announce the reason for the hold-up, I think I’m going to be one happy passenger.”

Your Ethics Quiz for today poses this question:

“Is it more ethical for an airline pilot to detail all the problems an airplane is having in the interest of candor and full disclosure, or should he or she just deal with the problems and not increase passengers’ anxiety over matters that they neither understand nor can do anything about?” Continue reading →

Creating Captain Costanzas

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Metaphor

I think I stopped finding George Costanza funny when I saw the “Seinfeld” episode in which he panicked at a kids party after smelling smoke and trampled the children rushing to be the first out the door. (His callous reaction to his fiancée’s death from licking envelopes had paved the way for my inability to laugh at George.) The thought of a real-life George Costanza, the most unethical character on a show about unethical characters, serving as the captain of an imperiled ship full of passengers is horrifying, but that’s basically what befell the unsuspecting tourists on board the cruise ship that tipped over after hitting a rock off the coast of Italy. Having caused the accident, it appears, by irresponsibly changing course, captain Francesco Schettino hit the life boats before most of his passengers, and claimed to be directing the evacuation from the relative safety of a lifeboat as he defied orders from the Italian Coast Guard to return to the ship. Continue reading →

Ethical Lawyers? There’s an App For That!

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

At least in New York.

The New York bar has launched a Mobile Ethics App that allows judges, lawyers and law students to access legal ethics advice from their smartphones.

The State Bar has made its catalog of more than 900 legal ethics opinions,available on an app for iPhones, Android phones and BlackBerrys, as well as iPads, through their respective app marketplaces. “Ethics questions can arise in many different contexts. The NYSBA Mobile Ethics App will allow judges, lawyers and others to access the opinions of the Association’s Professional Ethics Committee on the spot from the convenience of their mobile devices,” said Association President Vincent E. Doyle III of Buffalo (Connors & Vilardo). “The State Bar is pleased to provide this service to its members and the legal community.”

This is a terrific idea, and it is to be hoped that other bar associations follow suit.

Now if someone will  develop an app for government ethics…

[Thanks to Robert Ambrogi for the news]

UPDATE: Shortly after this was posted, I learned that another bar association has an app for ethics: the Alabama Bar, which launched the first organized code of professional responsibility that was adopted by the American Bar Association in 1908.

Economists Start Getting Serious About Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Charles Fergusen’s documentary about the 2008 financial collapse, “Inside Job”, chronicled the maze of deceit, conflicts of interest, greed, recklessness and self-serving maneuvers across multiple professions and sectors of the economy that led to the meltdown. Among the professions that were implicated in the account was that of economists, who in many cases advised Congress and others regarding economic policies without disclosing their own ties to special interests and various players in the drama. The debacle was a severe blow to the credibility of economists as a group and economics as a discipline. Many have since called for the profession to put in place conflicts of interest rules to guide practitioners and to build public trust.

For my part, I was surprised to learn that there was not such a code already in place. As a lawyer, I am  spoiled—the legal profession, as with judges, doctors, researchers, psychiatrists, accountants, legislators and government workers, has recognized the need for formal ethics guidelines for a very long time. The number of fields without ethics codes continues to amaze me, although one of those professions is…ethics.

Economics, however, is making strides. At its annual meeting in Chicago last week, the American Economic Association  issued  principles for disclosure of potential conflicts of interest and conflicts related to published academic papers. Here they are: Continue reading →

A Lesson From Georgia: Schools Too Stupid To Be Ethical Are Also Too Stupid To Be Trusted To Teach

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Handy Tip: Don't trust this man to educate your children.

Rick Jones, proprietor of Curmudgeon Central,  launched his Curmie Award last year, “honoring” educational professionals who embarrass their profession. Rick discovered a  Curmie-worthy story that he blogs on here, from the Beaver Ridge Elementary School in Norcross, GA. A teacher gave her third-grade class a Monty Pythonesque math test in which all the questions revolved around slavery:

  • “Each tree had 56 oranges. If eight slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?”
  • “If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in one week?”
  •  “Frederick had 6 baskets full of cotton. If each basket held 5 pounds, how many pounds did he have all together?”

Moron.

Naturally the school got an earful from parents, and naturally the school, which had no possible justification for such wretched judgement on its teacher’s part, apologized and backtracked. It’s not enough. Why are such incompetent idiots hired to teach anything more sentient than a poodle? How can a parent trust a school that allows teachers like this in the front door? If your child is taught by a moron—and technical definitions aside, that is not an unfair or uncivil description of a teacher who thinks it’s reasonable to give the question, “If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in one week?” to a third-grader, your child’s likelihood of growing up moronic is vastly increased.

And yet, as Richard Dreyfus’s character says to Quint the shark-hunter as they compare scars in “Jaws,” “I got that beat.”In fact, Rick, I got that beat in Georgia. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Police Officer Robin Parker

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

The ethical way to take your medicine.

Officer Robin Parker, a Maine state police officer, was pulled over for drunk driving while off-duty and arrested, as he should have been, but as many officers in similar circumstances are not, due to “professional courtesy.”  Parker was put on administrative leave pending an investigation. His arrest was beginning to cause discord at the station, as some of Parker’s colleagues but some of his fellow officers were ostracizing the officers who arrested him.

Parker sent a mass email to all the officers. It read…

Dear Fellow Troopers,

I’m not sure I’m able to articulate exactly how I feel,  but I will try to put into words my thoughts.

Most if not all of you know by now what happened with me last Sunday evening. I was pulled over on the turnpike for suspicion of driving under the influence. I was subsequently processed and charged with that offense by Troopers within Troop G.

 I want to first thank all of you for your tremendous support and prayers. I will continue to graciously accept them as I move forward in this process. One thing I want to make perfectly clear to everyone. My decisions and choices were mine and mine alone. I have made some mistakes and I’m prepared to answer for them. I appreciate the kind words expressing sadness that I will have to deal with this in the courts and within the department. But these are the consequences for MY ACTIONS. I’m not saying this is not painful, because it is. I’m not saying this is not going to be hard, because it will be. I’m not saying I’m not ashamed and embarrassed, because I am. But, what I am saying is I own this and I’m prepared for the consequences. Continue reading →

The Third Annual Ethics Alarms Awards: The Worst of Ethics 2011 (Part 2)

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

The 2011 Ethics Alarms Awards for the worst in ethics continues (you can catch up with Part I here) with the large and depressing…

 Shameless Bad Character Division

Jerk (defined as an individual who habitually places his personal benefit and ego gratification above the welfare of everyone and everything else) of the Year: Donald Trump

The Dennis Rodman Award, (Awarded to a professional athlete for a career and lifetime of  behaving like a jerk): Jose Canseco. Jose’s done it all, from being baseball’s Typhoid Mary of steroids, to getting arrested for various assaults, to writing a series of tell-all books designed to rat out the very players he corrupted, not as a service to his sport, but as revenge for it rejecting him. In 2011, he hit a new low, accepting money to appear in a celebrity boxing match (the 21st Century version of becoming a circus geek to pay the bills) and sending his less-talented, equally dim-witted, identical twin brother Ozzie to perform instead, hoping to fool the fools who hired him. This, of course, was fraud. It takes quite a jerk to take this award from Manny Ramirez, who became eligible in 2011, but Jose was up to the task.

Asshole (defined as an individual who intentionally and maliciously causes pain and harm to others because he can) of the Year: Rev. Terry Jones, the publicity-seeking leader of a tiny rural church, who caused riots and deaths abroad and ramped up political tensions between America and Muslim nations by threatening to burn, and finally burning, the Koran as a demonstration of contempt for Muslims and the Islamic faith. Continue reading →