risk

The Siena Research Institute’s Lousy Independence Day Gift: Misleading, Biased and Incompetent Presidential Rankings

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

The Siena College Research Institute persuaded over 200 presidential scholars to participate in a survey designed to rank America’s forty-three Chief Executives. There is great deal to be leaned from the resulting list that the Institute proudly released on July 1; unfortunately, very few of the lessons have anything to do with the men on it.

The list shows us that:

  • A survey is only as good as its design
  • Historians who call themselves “presidential scholars,” working together, could do no better in their supposed area of expertise than to arrive at a ranking that would get most 7th Graders a C in junior high school History, raising serious questions about how history is taught in our universities, but perhaps explaining why Americans choose to be so ignorant of their nation’s past.
  • Historians are, as a group, biased toward liberal causes, against conservatives, and in favor of people who are like them.
  • They are unable to recognize their biases, even when a list like this one makes them stunningly obvious.

Lists are mostly for fun and to start arguments. When one purports to make historical judgments, however, and the individuals doing the judging are supposed to be experts, there is still a responsibility to try to do the task fairly, competently, and responsibly. Continue reading →

Ethics Audit: the Deep-Water Oil-Drilling Ban Saga

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

President Obama’s ban on deep-water oil drilling in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon Gulf oil disaster pits important ethical values against each other: fairness vs. responsibility. On both sides of the equation is prudence. New Orleans federal judge Martin Feldman over-ruled the ban and issued an injunction against it, saying in effect that there was no contest: the ban isn’t fair, prudent, or responsible.

The Obama Administration’s ethical argument supporting the ban goes something like this: Continue reading →

When An Ethical Parent Must Veto a Child’s Dream

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

It looked grim for a while yesterday, when the media was reporting that the sailboat carryingAbby Sunderland, the 16-year old seeking to become the youngest person to circumnavigate the globe solo by sea, had been lost. Now it looks like she may be safe after all, as a rescue of her crippled craft is underway in the Indian Ocean.  That a tragedy may have been averted, however, doesn’t mitigate that unethical abdication of responsible parenting and trust by Abby’s parents that set the stage for a calamity.

Had the ill-conceived adventure ended fatally, it is certain that we would have heard her heart-broken parents eulogize their daughter as intrepid,  courageous and mature beyond her appearance, who lived a full life in her sixteen years, and perished “living her dream.”  All true, but those aren’t the facts that matter.  What matters is that she is a dependent, trusting, sixteen-year old child who desperately needed her older and supposedly wiser parents to say “No. Being the youngest woman to sail around the world is good, living long enough to go to college, have a family, have a career and experience the joys of life over many decades is better. Sorry. It’s too dangerous. When you understand a little bit more about life, you may be capable of deciding when to risk it.”

They failed her, and the fact that she isn’t dead as a result is only luck. Continue reading →

The Fan, the Taser, and Respect for the Law

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

A teenaged fan ran out on the field in the middle of a Philadelphia Phillies game a couple of days ago. This happens many times, too many times, during the baseball season, and it is always followed by a merry chase, sometimes with fans laughing or cheering, featuring over-weight security staff or police trying to capture the fool, and occasionally a featuring a  surprise, like a player intervening and decking the guy. There was a surprise this time, all right: when the fan wouldn’t stop after the pursuing officer told him to, he was shot with a taser. And some fans cheered at that, too.

A tsunami of criticism is now crashing over the security officer, condemning the tasering of 17-year-old Steve Consalvi, sometimes in terms more appropriate to discussing Abu Ghraib. If I were Consalvi’s father, I would counsel him to immediately issue a statement taking full responsibility for the incident and absolving the officer. The teen’s conduct was irresponsible and illegal, and for it to result in any adverse employment action against the security officer who tasered him would only compound the offense. This is especially true because the critics of the officer are dead wrong. They are in the grip of a dangerous, illogical but increasingly popular idea in our culture that submitting to  legitimate police authority is one of those things that we can do or not do without consequences or stigma. The fan on the field is one of the mildest examples of disrespect for the law, but it is a perfectly good place to start getting our ethics unmuddled. Continue reading →

What Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax Can Teach America

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

The one with the premium-grade ethics alarms bled to death on the sidewalk. The people who never had them installed at all took pictures. Is this the way it’s going to be?

Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax was a Guatemalan immigrant who lived in Queens, New York. His life was a mess; he was destitute, ill, and had no job or likelihood of getting one. When he saw a knife-wielding man apparently assaulting a woman on the street two weeks ago, however, he knew what his ethical obligations were. He rescued her by intervening in the struggle, and got stabbed, badly, for his actions. The attacker ran off, and so did the woman, who didn’t check on Hugo after he fell, and  never contacted the police. She also neglected to say, “Thanks for saving my life.” Continue reading →