cheating

The Ethics Incompleteness Dilemma and MLB’s Melky Cabrera “Solution”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Who cares what Melky wants?

[ When we last visited the messy Melky Cabrera situation, people were clamoring for baseball to rule Cabrera ineligible for the National League batting championship he seemed destined to win because the Giants outfielder had been suspended for the rest of the season for testing positive for steroids. The suspension froze his average, then as now leading the NL, and because he had already amassed sufficient at bats to qualify for the title, this meant that 1) he would benefit from what was supposed to be a punishment and 2) the most prestigious of all baseball season titles would be won by a proven cheater. I explained why taking the title away from Melky would be unethical as well as unwise:

“…There is a very good reason why the Constitution bans ex post facto laws—laws that make something illegal retroactively, so someone can become a criminal for something they did that was legal when they did it. Allowing such rules is an invitation to an abuse of power, culminating, in the worst case scenario, with the modern day equivalents of the Russian or French Revolutions, where people are executed for “crimes” that were not crimes at all. Even cheaters have rights, and one of them is to know what their risks are when they cheat. Cabrera knew that he risked suspension, a loss of millions in income, and permanent harm to his reputation and career. He did not know that he risked not winning a batting championship if he qualified for it, or being put in the stocks, being exiled to Portugal, or having his children subjected to human medical experiments. Should a player suspended for performing enhancing drug use after testing positive be disqualified from winning a batting championship that season? That seems fair and reasonable, but because Major League Baseball didn’t think of it when they were making the rules, it would be unfair for Cabrera to be subjected to such a penalty, which would embody the inherently unfair principle of an ex post facto law. Some people just can’t process this. People just shouldn’t get away with intentional bad conduct, they say. …Such people are unwittingly willing to dismember the bedrock principle of due process, which requires that we know by what rules and laws our conduct society will use to judge our conduct, and that we know what the penalties for violating them will be, or at least have a the opportunity to find these things out. No, of course it’s not fair for Melky Cabrera to win a batting championship by cheating, but a society that allows him to be penalized in ways he could not have anticipated using a rule imposed after the fact is an unfair society, and ethics is ultimately about building a more ethical society.”

Bud Selig, the Commissioner of Baseball who is always as likely to make a terrible decision as a good one, said that he would not take any action on the matter. But that was not the end of the story…]

Yesterday, Major League Baseball announced that Melky Cabrera would not be eligible for the batting title after all. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of This And Any Other Month: Bonnie Pollack

/ Jack Marshall / 39 Comments

“It was a real dilemma. I decided to do the right thing.”

—-58-year-old Bonnie Pollack of Manhattan, a doctoral student in social welfare who lives in Manhattan, telling the Wall Street Journal about the time she threw away her husband’s absentee ballot after promising to mail it, because she knew he was voting Republican. She didn’t tell him about the fate of his vote for years.

This photo of a baby polar bear has nothing to do with Bonnie Pollack, but it cheered me up after having to think about her. UPDATE: Now I find out that it’s a toy, so I’m depressed  all over again. If you can’t even trust cute, all is lost.

Ms. Pollack’s jaw-dropping admission appears in an article called “The Marriage Problem That Comes Every Four Years,” but is an example of the year-round ethics problem that makes life intermittently miserable for us all: people whose concept of right and wrong consists of arrogance, self-righteousness, and a full embrace of “the ends justify the means” without any moderation.

Let us do an ethics audit of Bonnie’s words and deeds: Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Novelist R J Ellory

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“Jellybean”

Yes, he really did: best-selling British crime novelist R J  Ellory actually went on Amazon, and using fake names like “Jellybean” and “Nicodemus Jones,” wrote rave reviews of his own books . In one review, he called one of his novels a “modern masterpiece” and wrote that it “just stopped me dead in my tracks.”

How embarrassing. Sales a little soft lately, R J? He also used fake identities to post negative reviews of his rivals’ works. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: Harvard Dean Jay Harris

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

“We always stress academic integrity with our students. It’s very hard to explain to someone that this raises ethical concerns and that it’s not OK.”

—-Jay Harris, Dean of Undergraduate Education at Harvard College, where about 125 students in a Government course are under investigation for cheating on a take-home final. Similarities in the tests handed in for Government 1310 ( Introduction to Congress) raised suspicions of copying or collaboration. It is the largest cheating scandal in Harvard history.

Wait…what?

Yeah, right.

Harvard stresses academic integrity, but about half a class cheated as soon as some lazy professor was willing to trust the students with a take-home exam? Well, you’re not doing a very good job stressing integrity,are you, Dean? But why does Harvard have to stress integrity—aren’t these supposed to be the best and the brightest? Doesn’t the nation’s most prestigious college only admit students with integrity, or did they cheat to get into Harvard, too? Isn’t part of “best” being honest, and doesn’t “brightest” mean “doesn’t have to cheat”? I’m so confused!

Please help us understand, Dean Harris! Continue reading →

The Last of Lance

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

The Lance Armstrong Fan Club writes to the US Anti-Doping Agency to protest its witch hunt.

Lance Armstrong has announced that he will no longer fight doping allegations, meaning that the Anti-US Doping Agency will effectively ban him from cycling and strip him of his titles. “If I thought for one moment that by participating in USADA’s process, I could confront these allegations in a fair setting and — once and for all — put these charges to rest, I would jump at the chance,” Armstrong said in a statement. “But I refuse to participate in a process that is so one-sided and unfair.”

It’s a shrewd move. Now Armstrong fans and admirers who refuse to acknowledge what is overwhelmingly likely bordering on certain—that he is a cheat, a liar and a fraud—can argue that poor Lance is a victim, and never was “proven guilty.” Of course, poor Lance has made millions of dollars and lived the life of a celebrity and hero for more than a decade, and he not going to forfeit any of that, or his freedom, no matter what rational people think of him. Like Barry Bonds, baseball’s most successful steroid cheat, he pulled it off, exploiting his sport, deceiving the public and taking advantage of a “look the other way” culture that corrupted bicycle racing even more thoroughly than steroids corrupted baseball. Continue reading →

The Great Scrabble Cheating Scandal

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

And you get a 50 point bonus for CHEATERS…

Over at Slate, Stefan Fatsis, one of the competitors at the recently completed National Scrabble Championship—Olympics? What Olympics?— gives background and details to the cheating scandal that put the Championship front and center in the blogosphere  and cable news fare, if only for a little while.

Fatsis has two complaints about the coverage: first, that the cheater (he palmed extra blank tiles to help him make high scoring words) was a kid, not an adult, and thus the media abuse heaped on him for his transgression was unduly harsh and cruel, and second, that…

“Two of the greatest players of all time, joined in one of the most remarkable finishes Scrabble has ever seen, and all anyone wants to talk about is a kid who made a terrible mistake.”

He’s dead wrong on both points. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Suspended Giants Outfielder Melky Cabrera (And Not For The Reason You Think)

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Who is “Melky Cabrera” really?

Melky Cabrera shocked Major League Baseball by getting caught mid-season using banned metabolic steroids, it’s true. It is also true that this marks him for all time as a cheater, and something of an idiot, since the penalties for PED (performance enhancing drug) use are devastating to a baseball player’s reputation and wallet, and because, unlike when Barry Bonds was breaking records and racking up MVP trophies while being juiced, the game has belatedly decided that it isn’t going to let games, championships and records be distorted by chemical means.

Melky, however, is special among baseball’s cheaters. Only he, as far as we know, decided to attempt an elaborate internet deception to try to duck responsibility after he had been caught.

From today’s New York Daily News: Continue reading →

The Melky Cabrera Affair: When Fair Isn’t Fair

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

A useful tool, when the government decides that what you did should have been illegal.

Let me bring the non-baseball fans among you up to date, reminding you that while the immediate subject is baseball, the ethical implications of this story are far broader.

Melky Cabrera, until last season, was a standard issue major league outfielder of substantial but undistinguished abilities and accomplishments. Last season, playing with the frequent destination of such players, the Kansas City Royals, Cabrera suddenly and unexpectedly emerged as a star, surpassing all expectations and his previous levels of performance. The Royals traded him, like an over-priced stock, to the San Francisco Giants in the off-season, getting a package of players in exchange for one they probably thought was as valuable as he would ever be.

This season, however, he was even better.  Not only was he selected to the All-Star team for the first time, he was also on the way to leading the Giants to the play-offs and possibly a World Series appearance. Then, this week, a drug test came in positive for testosterone: steroids. By MLB’s rules, Cabrera was suspended from play for 50 games, effectively eliminating him from the Giants season and post season and, not incidentally, marking him as a cheat and an idiot.

And maybe a batting champion. When he was suspended, Cabrera was second in the National League in batting average, and had already amassed the necessary at bats to qualify for the championship (actually, there are some complications with that, but for all intents and purposes, that’s true). He’s only 13 points behind the leader, and averages tend to come down as the season drags on. Not only is Cabrera’s high average a likely product of pharmaceutically-aided cheating, but his suspension for getting caught at cheating may actually help him win the prestigious batting crown, by freezing his average at a lofty .346. Is this fair? Certainly not. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: Men’s Breast Stroke Olymipic Gold Medal Winner Cameron van der Burgh

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

“If you’re not doing it, you’re falling behind. It’s not obviously – shall we say – the moral thing to do, but I’m not willing to sacrifice my personal performance and four years of hard work for someone that is willing to do it and get away with it.”

—– South African Olympic swimmer Cameron van der Burgh, admitting that he cheated in his gold medal winning race because, you understand, everybody else cheats too.

Yechhh.

Maybe they won’t notice…

The commercialism is blatant, the nationalism is sickening, the warping of the lives of the young athletes as they prepare for the Games is disturbing. The one constant that has made the Olympics worth our attention is the opportunity to see great athletes in fair and intense competition with the most capable rivals in the world, and to see the best of the best triumph in the various sports by dint of superior effort, skill, training and character.

Who wants to see who the most effective cheater is? If you do, what’s the matter with you? The most disturbing aspect of van der Burgh’s admission is that there was no shame in it. He matter-of-factly explained that he cheated, how he cheated and why, and apparently believes that this doesn’t diminish his victory at all. And, also apparently, he’s right. Despite the fact that a gold medal winner blandly declaring that he cheated robs the Olympics of any pretense of integrity, it appears unlikely that anything will happen to the swimmer or his prize.

See? Cheating works!

And nobody cares!

Well, if the Olympics are going to stand for the cultural standard that cheating is acceptable as long as enough competitors do it, I have better things to do with my time, like making dust bunny sculptures under my bed. Just about everything we see and read about these days is corrupting and cynicism-producing; if the Olympics are just going to add one more toxic lesson to the array, what good are they? What’s the point?

Higher, faster, sneakier?

Wonderful.

_____________________________________

Pointer: Rick Jones

Facts: NBC

Graphic: Deviant Art

Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at  jamproethics@verizon.net.

 

Massachusetts: A State Lottery Shows Its Corrupt And Irresponsible Core

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

“Hey! No fair! Smart people aren’t supposed to play the lottery!”

On one level, I love this story, for it confirms what I have been arguing for over a decade. State lotteries represent an unethical capitulation of governments to laziness, cowardice and greed, as they choose  emulate casinos to entice the poor, desperate and stupid to give away their money rather than do their duty and make hard political choices about taxes. The inherent corruption this engenders was beautifully demonstrated by the lottery scandal recently revealed in Massachusetts.

A group of science and math whizzes, many of whom had MIT credentials, formed a gambling syndicate to beat the lottery, and did, generating almost $8 million in winnings after exploiting a flaw in the lottery rules to execute a system that virtually guaranteed profit. Their domination of the lottery continued over seven years, and was known about by lottery officials, who did nothing. Why? Because the money was coming in, and they didn’t understand that they were facing a net loss. Continue reading →