Salon.com > ethics

Bachmann faces fresh ethics questions

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 13:35:00 +0000

The Office of Congressional Ethics investigation into Rep. Michele Bachmann has reportedly widened to include questions about the use of staff to promote her book tour, according to sources who spoke with the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Investigators reportedly began their work by looking into payments to staff from her presidential campaign, but the new questions involve a 2011 tour to promote her memoir, Core of Conviction. Two former staff members told the Star Tribune that they had been asked about whether they worked to promote the book while on the payroll of Bachmann's presidential campaign, something that would potentially violate federal ethics rules.

Bachmann’s campaign lawyer, William McGinley, denied any wrongdoing and said the book's publisher paid for the tour and promotional expenses. “Records show that the campaign was very careful to ensure that protocols were in place to keep the book tour and presidential campaign completely separate and distinct,” he said. “Any fair and objective review of the record will conclude that Congresswoman Bachmann and the campaign followed the FEC [Federal Election Commission] advisory opinions and acted appropriately.”

Does studying science make you a better person?

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 20:00:00 +0000

Want to be a better person? Spend more time thinking about science.

That’s the implication of newly published research, which finds people who study science — or who are even momentarily exposed to the idea of scientific research — are more likely to condemn unethical behavior and more inclined to help others.

“Thinking about science leads individuals to endorse more stringent moral norms,” report psychologists Christine Ma-Kellams of Harvard University and Jim Blascovich of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Their research is published in the online journal PLOS One.

The researchers describe four experiments, all conducted at UCSB, that back up their surprising conclusion.

Do abandoned children have the right to know their origins?

Sun, 10 Feb 2013 16:00:00 +0000

It has become common practice in the United States, Europe, and worldwide for governments to provide baby boxes or “safe surrender” sites, usually near hospitals, where mothers or relatives of unwanted newborns may abandon them anonymously, so that they may be cared for by others and eventually adopted. Such programs are intended to prevent infanticide and deaths from infant abandonment and have succeeded in doing so around the world. Despite this success, the United Nations has called the provision of baby boxes into question.

Do such programs violate the human rights of the abandoned babies? The obvious answer is no, since the service provides desperate mothers an alternative to infanticide or unsafe abandonment. In fact, baby boxes appear to promote children’s right to life, as described in Article 6 of The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).

Should we medicate parents to prevent divorce?

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 19:04:00 +0000

The divorce rate is high. Internet dating has killed romance. And we are all going to die alone.

But it might not have to be that way, says Oxford ethicist Brian Earp and colleagues Anders Sandberg and Julian Savulescu. Not if couples start taking trust-enhancing drugs like ecstasy, that is. While Earp does not advocate taking illegal drugs, his research poses a provocative question: In a tightly controlled research setting, could drugs like MDMA be the answer to a commitment-averse culture? As Earp tells Ross Andersen at the Atlantic:

When is it ethical to kill somone?

Wed, 26 Dec 2012 12:45:00 +0000

Applied ethics should interest all but the most philosophy shy, as it poses moral questions of everyday use.

Applied ethics is the application of moral theory to the real world. I first read the five books that we are going to talk about here 25 years ago, which was the beginning of a burgeoning of applied ethics, with people like Jonathan Glover and Peter Singer applying theory to real issues like euthanasia, capital punishment, poverty, distribution of income, animal rights, abortion – questions of life and death.

Talking of which, I understand you’re a bit of an expert on “trolleyology”. What is a trolley problem?

Poll: Only used car salespeople are less honest than Congress

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 16:26:00 +0000

A Gallup poll finds that Americans don't think members of Congress are very honest, and, in fact, are only slightly more honest than used car salespeople.

According to the survey, which looked at how people view the honesty and ethics of members of various professions, 54 percent ranked Congress as "low/very low," compared to 24 who said "average," and 10 percent who said "high/very high."

49 percent said used car salespeople had "low/very low" honesty and ethics, the only of the 22 listed professions to receive a lower score than Congress.

Advertising practitioners were the next lowest, followed by stockbrokers and HMO managers.

How Paula Broadwell wronged her readers

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 14:36:00 +0000

That Paula Broadwell violated the bond of trust between a biographer and her readers when she had an affair with her subject may seem beyond doubt. Certainly it seems less questionable than the notion that, by the same turn, her lover, Gen. David Petraeus, violated the trust of the U.S. government. Nevertheless, it is Petraeus who stepped down as the director of the CIA last week, while Broadwell's book about him, "All In: The Education of General David Petraeus," jumped up a few thousand notches on Amazon's best-seller list and has had its paperback publication date bumped forward by Penguin Books.

If we have learned anything from the past decade of book-world scandals — whether over plagiarism, fabrication, Internet sock puppetry or simple inaccuracy — it's that what seems like an obvious ethical violation to some observers will strike others as no big deal. Biography, a genre that can scale the heights or wallow in the gutter, is a particularly delicate enterprise. There's no official — or even quasi-official — biographer's code of ethics, and members of the profession are contemplating changing that. While informed readers are unlikely to confuse the likes of Broadwell with the the authors of definitive, years-in-the-making, doorstop "lives," the biographical profession is at least slightly besmirched by the scandal. "When Jayson Blair did his nonsense, it reflected badly on all journalists," said acclaimed biographer David Nasaw, "and this will reflect on all biographers."