The Wall Street Journal has a depressing piece about recent examples of unethical and fraudulent conduct in the world of science, including, naturally, the latest global warming flap resulting from the UN mistakenly warning that the Himalayan ice caps were melting away, and would be gone by 2035. This story, coming on the heels of the East Anglia email revelations, has added to justifiable public confusion over climate change, how fast it is happening, how well it is understood, and why governments are so eager to throw billions at a “solution” when there seems to be so much uncertainty. Continue reading
integrity
The A.I.G. Bonus Payments…Again
Here we go again.
A.I.G. is paying out another 100 million in “retention pay,” also known as eye-popping bonuses, which is certain provoke another round of cursing from the public and posturing by politicians. The question is whether it is unethical to pay these bonuses, and you’re not going to like the answer. I don’t like it much myself.
It is no. Continue reading
Ethics Notes on a Busy Week
- Sen. John McCain, who had well-earned credibility on military matters, released a statement after the State of the Union address saying that “it would be a mistake” to repeal “Don’t ask, don’t tell” as President Obama pledged, and added…
“This successful policy has been in effect for over 15 years, and it is well understood and predominantly supported by our military at all levels. At a time when our Armed Forces are fighting and sacrificing on the battlefield, now is not the time to abandon the policy.”
John, John, John. You have, in other interviews, stated that you served with many gay soldiers who performed their duties with distinction, so the current policy continues a form of bias and discrimination without any justification. The fact that it may be “successful” is not sufficient reason to continue a practice that is unethical, unfair, and a violation of the principles of civil rights. Success is no excuse for violating core ethical principles; one of the primary justifications for the U.S. allowing torture, an outright violation of the Declaration of Independence, was that it was “successful,” an argument you properly rejected. Continue reading
Ethics Quote of the Week
“Edwards, who wore expensive Italian suits, had panicked prior to a debate in front of an American union group. The label inside his jacket read “Made in Italy.” Sensing he might be about to step in a political cow pie if one of the unionists inquired, he asked Young about the label inside his own suit jacket. Young’s read “Made in the USA.” Edwards ordered Young to immediately take both jackets to a tailor and switch the labels. Later Edwards played back a videotape of the debate and complained to Young about how his suit appeared to be wrinkled where the labels had undergone the old switcheroo.”
————– Former John Edwards aide Andrew Young in his soon-to-be-released book, The Politician
There are those who argue that small deceptions like this are meaningless. They are wrong. Continue reading
Solving the Spouse Conflict Problem
When spouses are professionals whose jobs intersect, they will usually maintain that they never “talk shop” at home, and that for all intents and purposes, they are two unrelated workers, ships passing in the night. Nobody believes them, and nobody should. Continue reading
When the Police Lie to Convict the Guilty
Gene Weingarten, the Washington Post columnist, wrote about his recent experience as a juror. It was a trial of a man accused of selling $10 of heroin to an undercover officer. Weingarten professed to be annoyed that such a small amount would justify an arrest and trial; he’s just wrong about that. Dealing a dangerous prohibited drug is still dealing, no matter what the amount. I know this is the kind of case that gets the legalize-drugs-so-we don’t-put-so-many-people-in-jail crowd all self-righteous, but “a smidgen of heroin dealing” still supports a destructive social problem, and law abiding citizens don’t deal even a little smack.
That’s not really the issue here, however.
Weingarten was convinced that the defendant was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. He was also convinced that the police were lying. Continue reading
Final Ethics Alarms on the Coakley-Brown Race: Fairness and Honesty Take a Holiday
Some concluding Ethics Alarms from the Brown-Coakley Senate race, many with the same dispiriting lesson: hyper-partisan zealotry is causing many Americans to abandon their senses of fairness, proportion, and common sense : Continue reading
Disbar John Edwards
The last shoe dropped in the sordid John Edwards tale, with his admission that he was indeed the father of his mistress’s infant daughter, as many suspected. This comes months after he emphatically and repeatedly denied this fact to the media, in the course of admitting that he indeed did have an affair with the child’s mother, Rielle Hunter, after months of denying that. His efforts at covering up all of this ultimately incorporated his terminally ill wife, his friend and supporter Fred Baron, who paid his mistress to make herself scarce, and his aide Andrew Young, who was induced to publicly claim that he, not Edwards, was the father of baby Quinn. All of the deception initiated by Edwards took place while he was running for the Democratic presidential nomination, on a platform of moral obligation and justice. Continue reading
“The Ethicist” Jumps the Rails!
An ethical dilemma is a situation that requires us to choose between an ethical course and one that fulfills a non-ethical want or need, like getting a promotion, winning the love of our soul-mate, or improving our financial status. Choosing the ethical option often has negative consequences, but it is still the ethical option. Thus it is more than a little disheartening to read the advice columnist who calls himself “The Ethicist” supporting the unethical option—the one that rejects an ethical value in favor of self-interest. Continue reading
Erroll Southers: Right Result, Wrong Reason
Erroll Southers, President Obama’s nominee to head the Transportation Security Administration, withdrew his name today, citing political opposition. His nomination had been held up by Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, who wanted Southers’ assurances that TSA workers wouldn’t be unionized. That’s a legitimate issue, but Southers should have lost his nomination when it became clear that he had lied to Congress about an incident in which he had breached his own agency’s security to do investigative work on his estranged wife’s activities. Continue reading
Ethics Alarms 