Harvard! Ethicists! Experts! What’s Not To Trust?

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

From Financial Times:

…Francesca Gino is one of HBS’s best-known behavioral scientists and author of Rebel Talent, a 2018 book with the subtitle “Why It Pays to Break the Rules at Work and in Life”…[The ]high-profile expert on ethics and dishonesty is facing allegations of dishonesty in her own work and has taken administrative leave from Harvard Business School… Gino, whose work has been widely cited, including in the Financial Times, has been a professor of business administration at HBS since 2014. Her HBS profile was recently altered to indicate that she is on administrative leave. She did not respond to FT requests for comment via email and social media.

A Harvard Business School spokesman said: “We have no comment at this time.” A group of academics who compile the Data Colada blog about the evidence behind behavioural science has started publishing a series of posts in which they say they will detail “evidence of fraud in four academic papers” co-authored by Gino. “We believe that many more Gino-authored papers contain fake data,” they wrote in the first post of the series, which appeared on June 17.

See? She really is an expert in dishonesty!

That The Washington Post, New York Times And The Rest Of The MSM Refused To Report This Story Is More Significant Than The Story Itself [Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

I want to apologize in advance for the tone of this post. This issue makes me frightened, angry, frustrated and depressed. It is appropriate that I convey that, but this is not my favorite mode of expression.

Last month, Amazon blocked a Baltimore, Maryland-based Microsoft engineer named Brandon Jackson from accessing his “smart home” features. It disabled his Alexa and Echo Show, which managed his other smart devices. The justification for this intrusion was that an Amazon delivery driver thought he heard a racist remark from Jackson’s automated Eufy audio message when the driver rang the doorbell, which would have been odd indeed, since Jackson is black and he wasn’t at home at the time. The driver, good little Orwellian that he is, reported the imagined offense to Big Brother Amazon, which then exacted its revenge for Jackson’s WrongThink.

There was no racist comment. Jackson has multiple security cameras, and confirmed that fact, as did Amazon’s investigation. The Eufy doorbell had issued its programed response: “Excuse me, can I help you?” and the driver, walking away and wearing headphones, must have misinterpreted the message as “Bite me, you mocha-colored product of second-rate evolutionary processes!” or something similar. A completely understandable mistake on the driver’s part that resulted in Jackson’s Amazon account, his Alexa and Echo Show locking him out the next day. It took a week to undo it all.

Amazon confirmed the episode, and issued a statement promising that it was working to prevent similar incidents from happening in future. That’s nice. Everything is groovy, then!

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Apparently It’s Racist For Gov. DeSantis To Prefer Baseball To Basketball…Wow, That Desperate To Smear DeSantis Already?

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I am having increasing difficulty figuring out what progressives and Democrats are trying to convey when they all a politician “racist.” As far as I can tell the current definition amounts to “Republican.”

DeSantis was recently asked by a CBN interviewer about his love of baseball, which he extolled as a “meritocratic” game because athletes of different sizes and skill levels can perform at a competitive level professionally, unlike basketball.”I think that there’s kind of a place for everybody in a baseball team if you’re willing to work hard, if you’re willing to practice… I kind of thought it was always a very democratic game, a very meritocratic game.” He added, “Whereas I kind of viewed basketball as like ‘these guys are just freaks of nature.’ They’re just incredible athletes. In baseball, you know, you have some guys that might not necessarily be the best athletes, but maybe they’ve got you know that slider that nobody can hit, or they have the skills that allow them to compete at the highest level.”

I would take issue with DeSantis’s suggestion that basketball players are superior athletes to baseball players: as Bob Costas memorably replied to a similar claim by another sportscaster, check out Michael Jordan’s record when he tried to play in the minor leagues, where he never got higher than AA and washed out after a single (pathetic) season.

But never mind: the main thrust of his comments is irrefutable and true. The average height of an NBA player is nearly 6-feet-7-inches, nearly a foot taller than the average American man. Players under six feet are extremely rare. Major League Baseball players, in contrast, average about 6-feet-1-inch tall, with some superstars well under that level, like Houston’s Jose Altuve and the Dodgers’ Mookie Betts. There are some freaks in the mix (2022 MVP Aaron Judge, for example) but unlike in the NBA, they are an exception, not the rule.

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“Titan” Submersible Tragedy Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

Debris from the OceanGate Expeditions Titan submersible was found Yesterday. As feared, all five of those on board perished. There has been a splash of ethics-related matters in the wake of the disaster:

1. Former US President Barack Obama, once again proving the hoary “stopped clock” metaphor’s accuracy, criticized Western media hypocrisy for making a missing submersible carrying five wealthy would-be adventurers on a tour of the Titanic’s wreckage a sensational news story while giving little coverage to a refugee-filled trawler sinking off Greece with up to 700 people on board. At least 82 people died in that tragedy this week, and hundreds more are feared to have drowned. The incident off Greece was completely overshadowed by the Titan rescue operation as soon as news of its disappearance surfaced. BBC, CNN, the New York Times covered the Titan rescue operation minute by minute. Meanwhile, no survivors or bodies have been found since the trawler sank carrying an estimated 750 men, women and children from Syria, Egypt, Palestine and Pakistan.

Of course the disparity in news coverage is due to commerce and profits blotting out journalism as well as decency. “Titanic” is a magic word that generates clicks and TV ratings, and despite their pretenses at other times, the news media knows that its readers are more interested in the fate of five rich people on a high-priced, high-tech junket than 750 poor refugees on a trawler. If journalists were the professionals they claim to be, they would report the news according to its obvious human and international priorities, and let the clicks fall where they may. But they aren’t. As we know.

Obama is right.

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Open Forum: Raiders Of The Lost Ethics Stories

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments

More than the usual number of major or potentially major ethics tales swirling around that Ethics Alarms hasn’t gotten around to (yet), and having been chastised yesterday by a veteran commenter for “all this e-ink on Bud Light” (marketing is one of my many past and present occupations and special interests, so bite me), I am even more interested than usual in what issues the commentariat wants to discuss.

I think my favorite news item that I’m not going to write about is the Mississippi state Senator who says it’s time to revive the old Confederate-themed state flag. I’ll just mention that by pure coincidence, Grace and I re-watched “Mississippi Burning” last night.

I wonder if that senator has seen it?

(And no, I will not be seeing an 80-year-old Harrison Form reprise Indiana Jones. I care about the integrity of the character even if he and Disney don’t.)

“From The Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: Bud Light’s Bias Makes It Too Stupid To Sell Beer,” Addenda!

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

My frustrated high school Latin teacher Miss Rounds, who once told me I was the most infuriating student she ever had, would have been amazed to see me include four Latin words in a headline, but that’s not an explanation for the “addenda.” These are:

1. A bit after I posted the previous commentary, I came across this news from earlier in the week. Even though its marketing wizardry had driven off 26% of its marketing base and cost Bud Light its long-held perch as America’s favorite beer, the brand’s owner, Anheuser-Busch InBev was honored this week at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, the so-called Oscars of the ad industry, with one of the event’s highest honors: Creative Marketer of the Year for the second anum running. (That’s five, Miss Rounds!) AB InBev’s global chief marketing officer, Marcel Marcondes, was also given Cannes Lions’ main stage to present the event’s opening seminar, described in programming notes as an examination of AB InBev’s “relentless focus on connecting with consumers in meaningful ways.”

You can’t make this stuff up. The awards body, which is owned by London-based Ascential Events, announced AB InBev’s win for brilliant marketing in March, before the Dylan Mulvaney disaster struck. Leila Fataar, founder of cultural and marketing strategy firm Platform13 opined, among others, that “In the spirit of fairness and credibility, I think it would be a big and the right gesture for AB InBev to give the 2023 award back, make the changes necessary and come back even stronger.”

You know, like with the creative wizardry of the newly unveiled “Bud Light drinkers are fat, slovenly, clumsy white yahoos who are simply hilarious!” video.

The WSJ story further explicated the reason for my post, which was not to keep flogging Bud Light for associating its brand with the trans madness. I intended to point out that this was more evidence of how the Woke Virus has crippled the professions, if one considers marketing a profession (marketers clearly do) or, if you don’t, the creative trades as well. All marketers and ad mavens have to do is understand human nature, yet class, ideology, arrogance, insularity, stereotyping and bias have apparently blocked them from what psychologists, experience and common sense had taught the industry for decades.

Even when they have been proven spectacularly, disastrously wrong, today’s marketing “experts'” reaction—Just like the lawyers, doctors, public health officials, educators and journalists—is still ‘we’re the smart and virtuous ones, and those others—the deplorables— are too primitive to understand.’

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From The Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: Bud Light’s Bias Makes It Too Stupid To Sell Beer

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Desperately trying to turn the metaphorical page after a trans-endorsing fiasco that has dropped the brand in popularity, infuriated share-holders, and made it a foamy joke, Bud Light just issued that video above as “marketing.” Now-exiled marketing VP Alissa Heinerscheid, the genius who made male cross-dresser Dylan Mulvaney the symbol of the beer, did an infamous  interview with the podcast “Make Yourself At Home” on March 30 where she discussed her goal in transforming Bud Light’s outdated, unsophisticated, “fratty” image to appeal to a younger market. So now that the “Bud Light drinkers like chicks-with-dicks!” campaign has inexplicable failed, the geniuses running the show decided on a new, sure-to-succeed message: “Bud Light drinkers are fat, slovenly, clumsy yahoos who are simply hilarious!”

Unbelievable.

Where Reporting Ends And Propaganda Takes Over: The NYT On Affirmative Action

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Dominating today’s New York Times front page (above) is a report headlined “How It Feels to Have Your Life Changed By Affirmative Action” online and “Inside the Lives Changed by Affirmative Action” in the print version of the Times. The piece is naked and blatant advocacy for the Constitution- and U.S. law-violating policy that has been given temporary pass by a conflicted Supreme Court multiple times despite an unavoidable fact: it’s discrimination, and the Constitution doesn’t distinguish between good discrimination and bad discrimination. By the principles and values this nation was founded upon, all discrimination on the basis of qualities like religion, race, gender and ethnicity is wrong.

The Times approach to the subject is similar to its coverage of the illegal immigration controversy. In that matter, as periodically pointed out by Ethics Alarms, the Times has given readers frequent heart-warming tales of “the good illegal immigrant,” a hard-working immigration law violator who is the salt of the earth, a wonderful parent, and yet cruelly held accountable for his or her law-breaking anyway. The motive of such articles seems clear: use emotions to overcome and blot out law, ethics, fairness and common sense. As the Supreme Court seems poised to finally call college and university affirmative action programs what they are: illegal, the Times is trying to build support for its favorite party’s inevitable accusations of racism and illegitimacy against the five or six justices who will have simply done their jobs.

The headlines tell it all. Affirmative action changed the lives of its beneficiaries for the better, so obviously, affirmative action is good, and ending it would be unethical. What is striking about the article is that none of the affirmative action beneficiaries—all black—interviewed appear to have given a second’s thought to the individual whose opportunity they seized because of their “better” color. Some express regrets because they faced, or felt like they faced, skepticism about their degrees or career accomplishments because they were presumed to be “undeserving” affirmative action beneficiaries. None hint at any regret that someone who deserved to be accepted to an elite school or program was not so they could be.

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The Rogan-Kennedy-Hotez Controversy: Is It Ever Unethical To Debate?

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

A controversy among three people I usually have no interest in paying attention to raises fascinating ethics issues.

Joe Rogan is a giant in the podcaster universe despite having risen to fame as the host of the disgusting reality show “Fear Factor” and having little education beyond high school. Last week he had Robert Kennedy as a guest on his show to his Presidential run and his views as an anti-vaxxer. Dr. Peter Hotez, one of the more obnoxious and arrogant scientists with an addiction to the media spotlight tweeted to his 400,000+ Twitter followers that the podcast was “nonsense” and “misinformation.” This prompted Rogan—who is a giant in the podcaster universe because he knows how to “stir the pot”— to challenge Hotez to come on his show and debate Kennedy (or, failing that, Rogan), offering to give $100,000 to a charity of Hotez’s choice if he agreed. Hotez refused, saying that scientists don’t debate ignoramuses and charlatans (or words to the effect), Elon Musk tweeted in to support Rogan, and pundits left and right began taking sides.

The episode immediately called to mind the battle between Holocaust historian Deborah E. Lipstadt and Holocaust denier David Irving, a story recounted in the film “Denial.” Lipstadt took the unshakable position that a debate on this topic automatically gave dangerous credibility to a position that has none. If there is a debate, she reasoned, then uninformed people will think, ‘So—maybe the Holocaust happened, and maybe it didn’t!’ “Some things happened, just like we say they do. Slavery happened, the Black Death happened. The Earth is round, the ice caps are melting, and Elvis is not alive, ” her character, played by Rachel Weisz, says in the film. (Maybe that’s an actual quote from Lipstadt, but I can’t find it.)

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The Weenie Mandate

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Elsewhere on Ethics Alarms are a few posts defending the decision by employers to fire employees who have physically intervened in attempted robberies, sometimes to the extent of capturing the thieves. Such individuals are usually hailed as heroes by the media and the public, and the stores that discipline them are assailed as heartless ingrates. The companies are on solid ground, ethically, legally and practically. Typically, there are policies in the employees handbook specifically laying out how robberies are to be handled. Physical intervention not only risks the would-be hero’s well-being, but the welfare of other employees as well. When a staffer’s amateur law-enforcement act goes well, it is still just moral luck.

Unfortunately, this sensible policy has had illicit relations with the “shoplifting should be a crime” mutants, and the result is one frightening deformed offspring. Thanks to woke brain rot seeping through San Francisco and other urban areas, viral videos show staff just standing by politely as people forage through store shelves, sometimes returning several times.

The woman above, Mary Ann Moreno, had worked at Circle K for 18 years. Moreno was behind the counter when Tyler Wimmer walked into the convenience store with a knife, and asked Mary if she would give him a pack of cigarettes for free. Moreno declined. When he grabbed a pack anyway, she instinctively reached out and touched him, then pulled away. Based on the surveillance tapes, the company fired her for violating the company’s “Don’t Chase or Confront Policy” regarding shoplifters and robbers. Moreno is now suing Circle K Stores Inc. Her attorney, Iris Halpern, said the footage clearly shows that Moreno acted in self-defense and made no real effort to stop or chase Wimmer. “Companies have not sufficiently thought through the nuance in these situations,” she says.

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