Posts Tagged ‘ethics’
June 11, 2013
Apparently pigs and humans share many genetic characteristics:
Researchers, who undertook the largest ever study of the pig genome, found that swine are adaptable, easy to seduce with food and susceptible to domestication – much like humans.
Insights into the genetic code of pigs reveal the swine and its cousin the wild boar have much in common with humans.
from bellscorners.wordpress.com
This affinity between human and pig behaviour is demonstrated daily – and especially – by parliamentarians the world over. They don’t just feed – they gorge themselves. Perhaps it is the availability of the trough of taxpayers money which triggers our parliamentarians to revert to ancient type. Following the recent revelations about UK parliamentarians and their greed (Trougher Yeo), or in the US for example, comes this story from Australia:
The New South Wales Finance Minister Greg Pearce is facing further accusations about his parliamentary travel, with a Sydney newspaper reporting that he spent thousands of dollars on flights that coincided with sports events.
Last week, Premier Barry O’Farrell initiated an inquiry into claims the minister may have breached travel guidelines by taking a trip to Canberra that was initially booked through his office but was subsequently repaid by the minister.
The move came just days after he was accused of being drunk in parliament, prompting a public warning from the Premier.
Now the Daily Telegraph newspaper is reporting Mr Pearce has made at least $9,000 worth of trips to major sporting events around the country.
It says the events include the Melbourne Cup, AFL Grand Final and Australian Open, although Mr Pearce has denied the newspaper’s suggestions that he travelled to a V8 event on the Gold Coast last year.
I suppose they could all employ the defence that it is all in their genes and it is the fault of the taxpayers in providing them with the temptations which trigger their piggy instincts.
Tags:Australia, corruption, ethics, Greg Pearce, New South Wales, parliamentarians
Posted in Australia, Behaviour, Corruption, Politics | 4 Comments »
May 10, 2013
“Moral Turpitude” at the University of New Hampshire which does not amount to “moral delinquency of a grave order” can still lead to dismissal. Seems to me like playing with words to be able to apply some common sense. But the UNH use of “to grieve” may be innovative if a little odd.
The University of New Hampshire has terminated the employment of a Professor for “moral turpitude”. The University press release (my emphasis):
After an extensive review of the facts, Provost John Aber has determined that it is appropriate to terminate the employment of Marco Dorfsman, associate professor of Spanish, effective May 17, 2013. Professor Dorfsman admitted to intentionally lowering the student evaluations of another faculty member. This serious breach of ethical standards constitutes moral turpitude that cannot be tolerated at UNH.
Provost Aber’s determination was informed by the recommendation of the Professional Standards Committee (PSC) of the Faculty Senate. The PSC members unanimously agreed that Professor Dorfsman’s conduct constituted moral turpitude and “evinces a gross disregard for the rights of others, is a clear and intentional breach of duties owed to others and to the university by virtue of employment at UNH and membership in the profession, in which such an act is considered contrary to the accepted and expected rules of moral behavior, justice, or honesty, and evokes condemnation.” The PSC’s recommendation contained a range of possible sanctions.
The provost’s decision reinforces UNH’s commitment to upholding and teaching ethical behavior. Professor Dorfsman’s conduct disregarded the rights of his colleague, undermined the evaluations submitted by our students (a prime source of data for employment decisions for all instructors), and corrupted an important process by which our faculty’s teaching effectiveness is measured.
If Professor Dorfsman decides to grieve the provost’s dismissal decision, the case will be decided by an arbitrator.
“To grieve” obviously has a rather special meaning at UNH. Clearly it cannot just mean “to sorrow” but must (also) mean “to contest” or “to pursue a grievance” which is not an action I normally associate with “grieving”. I wonder how – if he decides to contest the dismissal – he is expected to demonstrate his grieving. Perhaps there is a threshold of proof of pain or sorrow or hurt or grief that he must first attain?
The CHE reports that “last year the university agreed to a new contract with its faculty union that eased the standard of discipline to allow the institution to fire professors who demonstrate moral turpitude”. This use of “moral turpitude” was introduced last year instead of “moral delinquency of a grave order”:
After a long stalemate, the University of New Hampshire has agreed to a new contract with its faculty union that lowers the threshold for the university to take disciplinary action against professors, according to Foster’s Daily Democrat. The sticking point in the contract talks stemmed from a 2009 incident in which a professor was convicted of indecent exposure, yet later allowed by an arbitrator to keep his job. Administrators had sought to fire the professor, but the arbitrator ruled that his crime, while morally delinquent, did not rise to the old contract’s standard of “moral delinquency of a grave order.” The faculty union objected to the university’s attempt to rewrite the contract, saying that the proposed disciplinary provisions were too broad. The language in the new contract has been changed to allow the university to fire professors who demonstrate “moral turpitude,” therefore easing the disciplinary standard, according to the newspaper.
Tags:ethics, Marco Dorfsman, Moral turpitude, to grieve, UNH, University of New Hampshire, use of language
Posted in Academic misconduct, Behaviour, Ethics, Language | Comments Off on “Moral Turpitude” at University of New Hampshire
October 17, 2012
An article in The Telegraph caught my eye while watching the US Presidential debate at my hotel.
A rather disturbing development in the UK and I don’t like the ethics of the situation. Euthanasia is voluntary but I am not sure that the Liverpool Care Pathway is. It is a pathway which leads to the death of the patient /victim in about 33 hours. I wonder who this pathway serves? At first sight it seems to be primarily for the benefit of hospitals and doctors and health care system costs. Perhaps for relatives.
The Telegraph:
Mary Cooper, 79, died a few days after being put on the Liverpool Care Pathway at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King’s Lynn, Norfolk.
The pathway, originally designed to ease the suffering of terminally ill cancer patients in their very last days, is being used more and more widely in NHS hospitals.
The idea behind the LCP is to give patients a ‘good death’ by avoiding unnecessary and burdensome medical interventions.
However, there have been accusations it hastens death because it can involve the removal of hydration and nutrition.
The LCP leads over 100,000 people to death every year – just in the UK. It smacks of execution of the elderly for convenience.
Daily Mail:
There are around 450,000 deaths in Britain each year of people who are in hospital or under NHS care. Around 29 per cent – 130,000 – are of patients who were on the LCP. …. Professor Pullicino claimed that far too often elderly patients who could live longer are placed on the LCP and it had now become an ‘assisted death pathway rather than a care pathway’.
An assisted death for someone who does not wish to die is an execution.
Tags:ethics, Euthanasia, execution of the elderly, Liverpool Care Pathway, National Health Service
Posted in Behaviour, Ethics, Medicine, UK | 3 Comments »
March 15, 2012
It was high time and even though they have tried before, the new measures just announced by the Chinese Education Ministry will hopefully begin to curb the widespread plagiarism, data manipulation and even data fakery that allegedly goes on.
India needs to institutionalise something similar. The Society of Scientific Values in India is an independent body and tries valiantly to act as a watch-dog but it has no teeth and no official standing. Of course in India the danger with creating institutions under a Ministry – and therefore under a Minister – is that the institution will very quickly become politicised. And Indian politicians are perhaps not the best choice when it comes to monitoring and establishing ethical standards. Nevertheless a start has to be made and the Ministry of Science and Technology in India is the natural home of an institution to promote ethical standards in scientific research and at institutes of higher education. The key will be to provide the backing of the Ministry to give it sufficient weight but to maintain its independence from party political influences. Giving such an institution semi-judicial status is one way but could be very heavy handed.
China Daily reports:
China’s Ministry of Education on Wednesday issued new rules to supervise universities’ scientific research and academic activities in order to “effectively prevent and curb academic misconduct.”
(more…)
Tags:China, China Education Ministry, ethics, India, Scientific misconduct, Society for Scientific Values
Posted in Academic misconduct, China, Ethics, India, Science, scientific misconduct, Technology | Comments Off on Chinese Government tries to get to grips with science misconduct. When will India follow?
February 26, 2012
Fakegate enriches language!
gleick, n, a vain and inept person
to gleick, v, to forge ineptly
Peter was a gleick, Peter is a gleick, Peter will always be a gleick.
Peter gleicked, Peter is gleicking, Peter will gleick.
It trips of the tongue very nicely.
Fakegate and Peter Gleick’s inept (but “heroic”) escapades are the source of much amusement over at Climate Audit. One reader, a Dr. UK has found a very apposite quotation from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream:
Bottom (wearing the head of an ass): Nay, I can gleek upon occasion.
Titania:Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful.
But there are many contenders for the role of Titania! Monbiot and Laden lead the list.
To gleick, or not to gleick ..
Peter (soliloquy):
To gleick, or not to gleick, that is the question:
Whether ’tis Nobler in the mind to suffer
The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Heartland,
Or to take Fakes against a Sea of Truths,
And by publishing end them:
(with apologies to WS)
Tags:Climate Audit, climate change, ethics, Fakegate, global warming, Heartland Institute, Laden, Monbiot, Peter Gleick
Posted in Academic misconduct, Alarmism, Corruption, Ethics, scientific misconduct | 1 Comment »
January 8, 2012
I am not Tony Blair’s greatest fan and don’t have very high expectations of him. Nevertheless, the manner in which he cashes in on his former position is breathtaking! Personal ethics are clearly unknown to him.
Paying 2.5% of his income as tax is a pretty impressive case of tax avoidance (which is probably perfectly legal and not tax evasion). But it makes him a parasite. Some parasites are useful but he is not one of them.
The Telegraph:
Former Prime Minister Tony Blair channelled millions of pounds through a complicated web of companies and paid just a fraction in tax
Official accounts show a company set up by Mr Blair to manage his business affairs paid just £315,000 in tax last year on an income of more than £12 million. In that time, he employed 26 staff and paid them total wages of almost £2.3 million. ….
(more…)
Tags:administrative costs, £8 million, ethics, Tax, Tony Blair
Posted in Ethics, Politics | 5 Comments »
January 2, 2012
A case of squirrelling away your losses to avoid taxes when times are good!!
Allowing for deferred taxes to average out the ups and downs of a business cycle makes good sense. But of course such provisions are exploited to the full – especially by the financial “industry”.
Barclays stockpiles ‘losses’ to soften tax obligations
Barclays has amassed a war chest of “losses” to offset against future tax payments that can almost rival those at the crippled state-backed banks, despite remaining strongly profitable.
Tags:Barclays, Deferred tax, ethics
Posted in Business, Ethics | Comments Off on Saving your losses for a sunny day!
December 6, 2011
While I have been travelling over the last week, the IPCC Durban circus has been performing to dwindling audiences.
The Climategate 1 and 2 emails that have been released so far (about 1,000 + 5,000) are focused mainly on a 3-way nexus between a group of rather mediocre scientists, a few willing (and gullible) reporters and some of the bureaucrats/politicians who have seized on the advantages of fear-mongering.
The mediocrity of the so-called climate scientists is palpable. Michael Mann leaves out data whwnever he feels like it, Phil Jones can’t fathom the intricacies of an Excel table, Tom Wigley (appropriate name) tries to get the PhD’s of his opponents retracted, etc …….. . And all for “The Cause”.
We have seen the blatant lobbying activities of Harrabin and Revkin undermine the reputation of the BBC and the New York Times. At least George Monbiot does not pretend to be anything other than a lobbyist. Harrabin’s pompous defence of his blinkered view is particularly nauseating.
Now we find that the IPCC itself was not averse to falsifying data when it felt the message needed strengthening.
The Global warming fraternity have been busy defending themselves, denying that what they have been engaged in has been bad science or bad journalism. But the politicians and bureaucrats have escaped scrutiny — at least so far.
But there are 200,000 further emails waiting to be un-encrypted by the release of a decrypting phrase (the emails themselves have already been released). And some bureaucrats, some IPCC functionaries, some carbon trading entrepreneurs and some amoral, fear-mongering politicians have to wait their turn.
But they will probably not have to wait very long!!!!
Tags:Andy Revkin, Climategate 2.0 emails, ethics, global warming, IPCC, Mann, Phil Jones, Roger Harrabin
Posted in Academic misconduct, Alarmism, Climate, Corruption, Media, Politics, UN | Comments Off on Climategate 2.0: What’s in the encrypted 200,000 emails?
October 8, 2011
Håkan Juholt, the relatively new leader of the Swedish Social Democratic Party, is in deep trouble.
He became leader of the party following an old fashioned “coup” in March this year – reminiscent of a Soviet style of leadership change which did not bode well for the “renewal” of the party.
Håkan Juholt: FOTO SCANPIX via SvD
It now seems that back in 2007 he moved into his girl-friend’s apartment in Stockholm and since then has been claiming the entire rental of the apartment as his “temporary” residence in the capital. Apparently he should not have been claiming more than half the rental. (By the rules, if he had evicted his girl-friend and was the sole occupant he would have been perfectly entitled to his claim!).
In any event his exaggerated claims have totalled some 160,000 kronor (about $23,000) that he was not entitled to. Yesterday he called a press conference and apologised excusing his behaviour on “not being aware of the rules”. He paid back the money yesterday. His acknowledgement of his “ignorance of the rules” is being received with some incredulity since an “internal audit” within the Social Democrats had apparently identified the problem back in 2009. The Parliamentary Finance Office pointed out the non-compliance a month ago when Juholt applied for an increase in his compensation because the rent had increased. That he kept silent for a month and only decided to apologise and pay the money back after the Aftonbladet newspaper had revealed the scandal has not added to his crediblity.
The extra payment he claimed has amounted to about 3,500 kronor per month and considering that his monthly salary is 144,000 kronor (about $21,000), the impression he has created is one of a greedy little man looking for every kronor he can squeeze out of the system.
Of course he is not the first – and is certainly not the last – Swedish politician caught with his hand in the till. Many have distinguished themselves by jumping housing queues and “purchasing” rental accommodation with very lucrative results. Swedish politicians are also known – both at the national and at the local level – for blatantly arranging the rules to ensure their financial well-being even after they have left office. Their defence thereafter has always been that they are “just following the rules” but they don’t usually mention that they made the rules themselves.
Swedish politicians like most of their European counterparts are extremely moralistic about the behaviour of others but are remarkably hypocritical when it comes to their own behaviour. Their own sense of ethics leaves a lot to be desired.
Tags:cheating politicians, ethics, false expense claims, Håkan Juholt, Stockholm, Swedish Social Democratic Party
Posted in Behaviour, Ethics, European Union, Politics, Sweden | 3 Comments »
October 5, 2011
Retractions of scientific papers is increasing sharply.
I am a strong believer in the Rule of the Iceberg where “whatever becomes visible is only 10% of all that exists”. And while I do not know if the number of retractions of scientific papers is increasing because detection methods are improved or because scientific misconduct is increasing, I am quite sure that the misconduct that is indicated by retractions is only a small part of all the misconduct that goes on.
What is clear however is that the world wide web provides a powerful new forum for the exercising of a check and a balance. It provides a hitherto unavailable method for mobilising resources from a wide and disparate group of individuals. The success of web sites such as Retraction Watch and Vroniplag are testimony to this. And the investigative power of the on-line community is particularly evident with Vroniplag as has been described by Prof. Debora Weber-Wulff’s blog. And this investigative power – even if made up of “amateurs” in the on-line community – can bring to bear a vast and varying experience of techniques and expertise which – if harnessed towards a particular target – can function extremely rapidly. The recent on-line investigation and disclosure that an award winning nature photographer had been photo-shopping a great number of photographs of lynxes, wolves and raccoons and had invented stories about his encounters was entirely due to “amateurs” on the Flashback Forum in Sweden who very quickly created a web site to disclose all his trangressions and exactly how he had manipulated his images.
Nature addresses the subject of retractions today:
This week, some 27,000 freshly published research articles will pour into the Web of Science, Thomson Reuters’ vast online database of scientific publications. Almost all of these papers will stay there forever, a fixed contribution to the research literature. But 200 or so will eventually be flagged with a note of alteration such as a correction. And a handful — maybe five or six — will one day receive science’s ultimate post-publication punishment: retraction, the official declaration that a paper is so flawed that it must be withdrawn from the literature. … But retraction notices are increasing rapidly. In the early 2000s, only about 30 retraction notices appeared annually. This year, the Web of Science is on track to index more than 400 (see ‘Rise of the retractions’) — even though the total number of papers published has risen by only 44% over the past decade. ….
…… When the UK-based Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) surveyed editors’ attitudes to retraction two years ago, it found huge inconsistencies in policies and practices between journals, says Elizabeth Wager, a medical writer in Princes Risborough, UK, who is chair of COPE. That survey led to retraction guidelines that COPE published in 2009. But it’s still the case, says Wager, that “editors often have to be pushed to retract”. ……
In surveys, around 1–2% of scientists admit to having fabricated, falsified or modified data or results at least once (D. Fanelli PLoS ONE4, e5738; 2009). But over the past decade, retraction notices for published papers have increased from 0.001% of the total to only about 0.02%. And, Ioannidis says, that subset of papers is “the tip of the iceberg” — too small and fragmentary for any useful conclusions to be drawn about the overall rates of sloppiness or misconduct.
Instead, it is more probable that the growth in retractions has come from an increased awareness of research misconduct, says Steneck. That’s thanks in part to the setting up of regulatory bodies such as the US Office of Research Integrity in the Department of Health and Human Services. These ensure greater accountability for the research institutions, which, along with researchers, are responsible for detecting mistakes.
The growth also owes a lot to the emergence of software for easily detecting plagiarism and image manipulation, combined with the greater number of readers that the Internet brings to research papers. In the future, wider use of such software could cause the rate of retraction notices to dip as fast as it spiked, simply because more of the problematic papers will be screened out before they reach publication. On the other hand, editors’ newfound comfort with talking about retraction may lead to notices coming at an even greater rate. ……
Read the article
A graphic of retractions is here.
The academic and scientific community will – perforce – mirror the surrounding society it is embedded in. Standards of ethics and instances of misconduct will follow those of the surrounding environment. But the scientific community is somewhat protected in terms of not often having to bear liability for what they have published. Having to bear some responsibility and face liability for the quality of what they produce can be a force which will improve ethical standards immensely. Bringing incompetent or cheating scientists to book is not an attack on science. And it is what science needs to regain some of the reputation that has been tarnished in recent times. With the spotlight that is now available in the form of the world wide web, I expect the level of scrutiny to increase and this too can only be a force for the good.
Tags:Academic publishing, Committee on Publication Ethics, ethics, Nature, Retraction Watch, Scientific misconduct, scientific retractions, United States Office of Research Integrity
Posted in Academic misconduct, Ethics, Media, Science, scientific misconduct | Comments Off on Scientific retractions increasing sharply but is it due to better detection or increased misconduct?
The k2p blog 