For more information, see this week’s Research Report.

Editor’s Note: Unless otherwise stated, all Statline and Research Report inclusions are sourced from survey work conducted by third parties and made available in the public domain. Their inclusion neither confers agreement with the findings or endorsement of the polls’ accuracy. Respondents’ answers to survey questions can vary based on the wording of the question, the order of offered options, the manner of the pollster, the agenda of the organization, etc. Critical-thinking skills and examination of topline documents when available from the polling organization(s) are encouraged.

Those of us who follow the news with an eye toward stories about ethics (or the lack thereof) might have noticed the following:

• In schools, it was cheating at the most prestigious high school in New York City.

• In cycling, it was Lance Armstrong’s giving up the fight against doping charges. (I heard one cycling commentator say that he had no doubt that Armstrong did cheat, but that he was the victim of a witch hunt.)

• In baseball, it was the 50-game suspension for drug use and lying of all-star, Melky Cabrera.

Writing about the Armstrong affair, columnist Mike Lupica of the New York Daily News accuses Armstrong of engaging in the “worldwide lie” — the claim that “if I did it, I didn’t know I was doing it.” He attributes the phrase to U.S. district court judge Kenneth Karas, who sentenced the famous Olympian Marion Jones to jail for lying about her use of performance-enhancing drugs.

Under the harder-to-believe category of cheating stories was this one yesterday: “SELF-INFLICTED PAIN’S THEIR DRUG OF CHOICE — Paralympic athletes with spinal injuries hurt themselves to ‘boost’ performance.” It states that “some athletes, whose blood pressure doesn’t respond because of their injury, use electric shocks or even breaking a toe to spike pressure and markedly improve performance. The practice can also lead to strokes, aneurysms, and death.”

Coincidentally, I have been reading a book called The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty, by psychologist Dan Ariely, in which he describes some fascinating experiments about cheating and dishonesty. Ariely writes that while we all think of ourselves as honest, in fact, we all cheat. Unethical behavior is everywhere, he insists, contradicting the conventional wisdom that we cheat when we rationally calculate the odds of getting away with it and that we believe that if we are caught, we can manage the consequences.

Ariely asserts that it is “irrational forces that we don’t take into account that often determine whether we behave ethically or not.” He goes on to conclude that the “band-aid” approaches to preventing dishonesty, such as code of conduct seminars that organizations compel people to take, do not work because they are based on the rational theory of dishonesty described above.

What would work, he says, are systems that take into account the real, irrational reasons for dishonesty (e.g., catching the cheating bug, telling ourselves that we are not dishonest, physical or mental depletion, and being in a culture that gives us examples of dishonesty among others).

Among anti-cheating approaches that seem to work are “reminders” in proximity to temptation. Ariely’s experiments planted the notion of moral values in the participants’ minds before the orchestrated temptations to cheat, and that intervention significantly diminished the cheating.

Additionally, he cited both religious and secular social mechanisms that have a “re-setting” effect on the moral compass. Ariely says that these can block the contagion effect and the “what the hell” notion that leads people to give in to the desire to cheat. He refers to the “broken windows” theory of crime causation and its implications as a re-setting device. (That one is near and dear to my heart as a veteran of the NYPD because it has helped decrease crime in New York City to record lows.)

This brings me back to the work of the late (and greatly missed) Dr. Rushworth Kidder. In creating both the Ethical Fitness® and Moral Courage Seminars™, I believe Rush recognized what Dan Ariely has demonstrated empirically.

My view is that in offering people a thoughtful way to deal effectively with both right vs. right dilemmas and right vs. wrong temptations and by having such dealings become an internalized response (i.e., Ethical Fitness® as analogous to physical fitness), Rush’s ideas and work can be the kind of social mechanism that Ariely is suggesting.

In addition, the moral courage to do the right thing once it becomes apparent can become a re-setting environment or supportive context. Rush advocated creating a supportive context for moral courage by “discourse and discussion, by modeling and mentoring, and by practice and persistence.”

When I present seminars to those in leadership positions or those who aspire to them, I use business terminology to stress the importance of creating an effective “ethics control program.” Control programs that standardize employee behavior are a major responsibility of management. Unfortunately, among the variety of control programs that management creates, ethics control programs are usually covered by a compliance-orientation (we spell out dos and don’ts, ensure that employees sign that they are aware of them, and punish those who are found in violation in order to send a message).

Why do people do the right thing in a compliance-orientation? They have to. Why do people do the right thing in a values-orientation? They want to.

In my view, Dan Ariely’s work confirms Rush Kidder’s work. While I confess to being as human as Dan Ariely and most folks, I agree that it is in all of our interests to keep working at encouraging ethical behavior and discouraging dishonesty.

©2012 Institute for Global Ethics

Alan Z. Goodman is a retired member of the New York Police Department and has been an affiliate of the Institute for Global Ethics for the last 15 years. He presently is one of IGE’s Master Trainers.

For more information: New York Daily News, Aug. 23

– Excerpt from a note written by a California billionaire to a waitress who helped him with directions after he became lost while driving. Ty Warner, the billionaire founder of the company that makes Beanie Baby dolls, later sent the woman a $20,000 check to cover “a stem cell procedure she needs to help save her life because she suffers from kidney failure and does not qualify for a transplant,” reports Yahoo News.

The woman, waitress Jennifer Vasilakos, happened to be at an intersection trying to raise funds for her treatment by handing out flyers when Warner pulled up and asked for help. An hour later, he came back. “I listened as he repeated over and over that he was going to help me,” Vasilakos wrote on her blog, reports Yahoo. “That my fundraising was done. That I didn’t need to worry any longer.”

Warner later issued a release that read in part: “After I serendipitously met Jennifer, I further educated myself on her stem cell needs. I was shocked that this particular type of treatment wasn’t available to her in the U.S…. My hope is that we can bring this lifesaving treatment to the forefront so that it can become more readily available and provide alternatives for people like Jennifer.”

Source: Yahoo, Aug. 24.

VARIOUS DATELINES

Last week’s international business news included several stories touching on ethics. Among the coverage:

• In what is regarded as one of the most significant intellectual-property cases in recent memory, Apple last week was awarded more than $1 billion in damages after a California jury concluded that South Korean company Samsung infringed on Apple’s patents for smartphones and tablets. Samsung vowed to appeal, saying the decision casts a pall on the ability to innovate and gives Apple an unfair monopoly, reports the BBC. Wired reports that, in some ways, the future of innovation could be at stake, with some critics of the decision saying that copying certain aspects of existing technology is unavoidable. “Big leaps forward are rare; most innovation occurs in increments,” Indiana University law professor and author Lea Shaver told Wired. “Allowing companies to take a good product and make it better and cheaper is good for consumers. But the patent lawyers won today.”

• CNN reports that one of the biggest business-ethics scandals in history has concluded with what looks like a happy ending: AIG, the insurance company vilified for writing exotic financial instruments backing up shaky mortgages and then saved from collapse by an infusion of government cash, has actually turned a profit for taxpayers. The U.S. Treasury, which acquired billions of shares in AIG in a bailout-oriented takeover, sold the securities for an $18 billion profit, according to the CNN report.

• An analysis in the Harvard Business Review says that ethical breaches are most common during organizational changes that affect an employee’s duties or compensation. Three times as much bribery is reported when a round of layoffs is taking place, and four times as much insider trading is seen when it seems likely that jobs will be lost. Author Paul Michelman argues in the article that a small amount of time is devoted to ethics and compliance training as it is, and that the situation is exacerbated when such training is done on a cycle not connected to times of temptation. “A single hour spent with employees during a key career moment, when both the risk of misconduct and receptivity to training is heightened, can have a much bigger impact on behavior than cyclical training,” Michelman contends.

• An accidental millionaire who found a fortune in his account due to a bank error — and then promptly went on the run — has been sent to jail for four years. Hui Gao, a resident of New Zealand, fled to Hong Kong after $10 million appeared in his account. Hui’s lawyer says his client is sorry for succumbing to the temptation of absconding with the money, which was mistakenly loaded into his account in 2009, reports Radio New Zealand. But the judge expressed skepticism about Hui’s remorse, noting that $8 million remains unaccounted for.

Sources: BBC, Aug. 25 — Wired, Aug. 25 — CNN, Aug. 25 — Radio New Zealand, Aug. 25 — Harvard Business Review, Aug. 22.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Aug. 13 — Related Newsline story, July 23 — Related Newsline story, July16 — Related Newsline story, June 25 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 16.

LONDON

The standoff among the United Kingdom, the United States, Ecuador, and WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange continued last week, with Ecuador saying that the fugitive founder of the whistle-blowing website can stay holed up in its London embassy indefinitely.

But Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa also said that he might be willing to negotiate if Britain backs away from its implied threat to storm the embassy, reports the London Telegraph.

Sweden’s government wants Assange extradited to face questioning over rape allegations, according to Reuters. That circumstance has reframed at least some of the issue to focus on the seriousness given to rape allegations. Some critics charge that the accusations have been concocted to exact political revenge on Assange, who has leaked a variety of secret documents; others say the rights of the victims are being ignored by Ecuador.

Ecuadorian officials contend that Assange is facing a potential violation of his human rights — a claim that raises another set of ethical issues, according to Discovery’s Benjamin Radford: “This case raises several thorny ethical issues, including harboring people who are accused of crimes. Assange has been accused, though not convicted, of being a serial rapist. If he had been convicted and sought asylum to escape justice and prison, that would rightfully be seen as an abuse of political asylum powers. However if a person seeks asylum in order to avoid being tried in a court of law, that poses ethical problems as well…. If an accused (but not convicted) Nazi tried to seek political asylum to avoid being put on trial for war crimes, he or she would be rejected out of hand by any ethical government and turned over to authorities for trial. In this light, Ecuador runs the risk of being seen protecting accused rapists and sex offenders…. Some have suggested that Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa has his own political motives for granting Assange asylum — ones that have less to do with concern for Assange’s personal fate (or guilt) than with Correa’s reputation for suppressing journalists and a free press.”

President Correa rejects that view, saying the press in his region is corrupt and needs oversight.

“Don’t let yourself be fooled by what’s going on,” he told foreign journalists, according to a report from the Christian Science Monitor. “This image of the media as being about Woodward and Bernstein and the struggle for freedom of expression, but that’s not the case here. The press in Latin America is totally corrupt.”

Sources: Telegraph, Aug. 22 — Christian Science Monitor, Aug. 22 — Reuters, Aug. 21 — Discovery, Aug. 17.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Aug. 20 — Related Newsline story, Nov. 14, 2011 — Related Newsline story, Oct. 17, 2011 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 21, 2011 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 7, 2011.

VARIOUS DATELINES

Several international stories last week put the focus on corruption and its effects. Among the pieces:

• Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh is facing calls for his resignation after a new round of corruption allegations surfaced, reports the Voice of America. A national auditor reported that government coal-field deals, transacted without competitive bidding, resulted in billions of dollars being funneled to private firms at the expense of the government and public. The prime minister disputes the allegations and has offered to publicly debate the report. VOA’s Anjana Pasricha reports that the mining scandal is “the latest to hit India, where Prime Minister Singh has been widely accused of not being serious about controlling graft. A series of multi-billion dollar scams have come to light in the last two years relating to the hosting of the 2010 Commonwealth Games and the sale of mobile phone licenses…. As both the Congress Party and the BJP lock horns over the latest corruption scandal, concerns are mounting that the parliamentary deadlock will delay the passage of crucial reform legislation at a time when the economy is slowing.”

• Russian president Vladimir Putin blames corruption, among other issues, for the spike in ethnic conflict there, reports Bloomberg. “Corruption, prejudice, and the inability of the authorities to guarantee justice and protect human rights are the drivers of inter-ethnic tensions,” Putin said at a meeting of a government council convened in the Volga region.

• Liberian president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has suspended her son in an anti-corruption purge, reports ABC News. Charles Sirleaf, a government bank head, was among 46 government officials punished for not disclosing their assets to an anti-corruption commission. Johnson-Sirleaf said the officials can be reinstated only after full disclosure. Writes ABC’s Bazi Kanani: “Analysts say widespread corruption in Liberia is inhibiting the West African country’s development progress, keeping people in poverty despite the country’s rich mineral resources. Since she was elected president in 2005, Johnson-Sirleaf repeatedly has pledged to take on the deep-seated problem, which the 2010 U.S. government’s Country Report on Human Rights said was prevalent in all levels of society, in public and private sectors.”

Sources: Bloomberg, Aug. 24 — Voice of America, Aug. 23 — ABC News, Aug. 22.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Aug. 20 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 13 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 6 — Related Newsline story, July 30 — Related Newsline story, July 30.

VARIOUS DATELINES

Culminating a long-running controversy in sports ethics, U.S. cycling legend Lance Armstrong was stripped of his Tour de France titles and banned from the sport for life after he declined to refute allegations that he used banned performance-enhancing substances.

The Washington Post reports that Armstrong said he would no longer participate in what he characterized as a prolonged “witch hunt.”

“If I thought for one moment that by participating in USADA’s [U.S. Anti-Doping Agency] 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 reprinted in the Post. “But I refuse to participate in a process that is so one-sided and unfair.”

Another facet to the story, of course, is Armstrong’s fame as a cancer survivor and his work for various charities for research and victim support.

According to USA Today, many of his supporters view Armstrong more as an activist in the fight against cancer than as a cyclist.

At issue, though, is whether Armstrong’s sanction will affect the future of his charities, most notably the Livestrong Foundation. As this issue of Newsline went to press, three of Armstrong’s major supporters, Oakley, Nike, and Radio Shack, said they would stand behind him, according to the Boston Herald.

“As Lance’s longtime supporter and partner, Oakley respects his decision and his restated commitment to focus on the foundation he created to help battle cancer,” Oakley, a sunglass manufacturer said in a statement, reports the Herald. “Oakley supports its athletes who respect and honor the ethics of sports until proven otherwise.”

Armstrong’s decision seemed to stimulate a surge in donation’s to his anti-cancer charity. “Since Friday, when the penalties were announced by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, Armstrong’s Livestrong foundation for cancer survivors had received about 1,700 donations for a total of about $174,000,” reports USA Today. “The prior daily average had been about $3,000.”

TIME examines another ethical angle of the story: what the takeaway will be for young athletes, many of whom idolized Armstrong.

Larry Lauer of the Institute for the Study of Youth Sports at Michigan State University told TIME that youngsters should take a long-term view: “Do you want to be known as a cheater or someone who does things the right way? You need to think about what you value and how you want to be known.”

Sources: USA Today, Aug. 25 — Boston Herald, Aug. 25 — Washington Post, Aug. 24 — TIME, Aug. 24.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, July 9 — Related Newsline story, May 23, 2011 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 24, 2011 — Related Newsline story, May 24, 2010 — Related Newsline story, May 24, 2010.

VARIOUS DATELINES

Media news from around the world last week included several stories involving ethics. Among them:

• There’s a controversy — on several levels — over a book written by a Navy SEAL that details the killing of Osama bin Laden. The announcement of the book, planned for release on September 11, immediately stirred a backlash among other military who claimed that the revelation of details of the operation broke the special operatives’ honor code and revealed details that could put future operations in danger. Next, reports the Baltimore Sun, came Fox News’s decision to release the real name of the former SEAL, who had authored the book under a pseudonym. While the revelation apparently has spurred some death threats against the author, Baltimore Sun columnist David Zurawik argues that there was no ethical problem with outing the author. “Despite the publisher, Dutton, putting out a disingenuous release saying essentially that anyone who publishes the author’s name bears moral responsibility for any harm who comes to him, the truth is exactly what Fox has said in its defense: Anyone who writes such a book has no reasonable expectation of privacy.”

• Pictures of Britain’s Prince Harry frolicking naked in a Las Vegas hotel room have been widely circulated on internet gossip sites and reprinted in some international publications, but British papers — not known for their restraint — largely have avoided reproducing them. The Sun — the only major British paper that has reprinted the photos as this issue went to press — argued that there was no expectation of privacy because Prince Harry invited people into his room for a game of strip billiards and also contended that the issue of the character of a leader is fair game. But the U.K. Guardian editorialized that there are strong ethical counterarguments: “Prince Harry is a single man and he has a right to a private life. What he does in the privacy of his own hotel room is his own business, and no one else’s, so long as it is legal and consensual. The argument that the material is already in the public domain is a strong one — but also dangerous. Taken to its logical extremes, it means Britain abandons any kind of ethical, regulatory or legal framework. The stage is thus set for a balancing of two human rights — freedom of expression versus privacy. On the facts of this particular case it is a fine balance.”

• The Wall Street Journal reports that scientific journals are gaming the system that ranks scholarly publications. At the center of the controversy is the “impact factor” rating, which gauges the prestige of journals by how often they are cited in the literature. The Journal says the system has become vulnerable to editors who insist on many citations to their own journal in order to ratchet up the index.

• South Korea’s constitutional court last week revoked a law that required verification of identity for posting opinions on major websites, reports ZDNet. The court not only ruled that the policy was a violation of free speech, but also held that it was discriminatory because those wishing to post controversial comments apparently migrated to sites from other countries where they were not required to verify their identity. The ruling also held that foreigners, who did not have a resident registration number were being discriminated against because they could not express opinions online, according to the report. The now-defunct law required verification on South Korean sites that had more than 100,000 visitors per day.

Sources: Baltimore Sun, Aug. 25 — ZDNet, Aug. 24 — Wall Street Journal, Aug. 24 — Guardian, Aug. 24.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Aug. 20 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 20 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 20 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 13 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 13.

VARIOUS DATELINES

Medical-ethics news received coverage last week in several stories from across the country. Among the pieces:

• The New York Times reports on a recent case in which an Ohio man killed his ailing wife as she lay hooked to monitors in a hospital intensive care unit. The husband, who had no criminal record, has been charged by a grand jury with aggravated murder and faces a maximum sentence of life without parole. Sentences for such “mercy killings” vary widely, reports the Times, from time served with probation and mental health treatment to occasional life sentences. One expert interviewed for the report says there may be a spike in such incidents as more baby boomers, who are generally more prone to depression that the previous generation, confront such end-of-life issues.

• CBS News reports that a Pennsylvania 23-year-old apparently was denied a heart transplant because he is autistic. While a spokesman for the University of Pennsylvania said the hospital cannot discuss individual cases, he did say that “when individuals are referred for transplant consideration at Penn or any other certified transplant center, all aspects of their medical status would be reviewed.” Medical ethicist Arthur Caplan says that while some people with intellectual disabilities have received heart transplants, a severe intellectual problem would make the procedure “next to impossible” because of the complex regimen required to survive after the surgery, notes CBS. The young man’s mother says she is circulating an online petition to have her son placed on a transplant list.

• The author of an essay in the New England Journal of Medicine says the U.S. Food and Drug Administration should require fuller disclosure of risk to those involved in clinical drug trials, according to a report in Scientific American. Ruth Faden, director of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, says some drugs already approved have dangerous side-effects and some clinical trials are designed to assess those problems.

Sources: New York Times, Aug. 23 — Scientific American, Aug. 23 — CBS News, Aug. 17.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, May 21 — Related Newsline story, Nov. 21, 2011 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 22, 2011 — Related Newsline story, June 6, 2011 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 4, 2010.

From the Pew Research Center:

“As Republicans gather for their national convention in Tampa to nominate a presidential candidate known, in part, as a wealthy businessman, a new nationwide Pew Research Center survey finds that many Americans believe the rich are different than other people. They are viewed as more intelligent and more hardworking but also greedier and less honest.

“Nearly six-in-ten survey respondents (58%) also say the rich pay too little in taxes, while 26% say they pay their fair share, and just 8% say they pay too much. Even among those who describe themselves as upper or upper-middle class, 52% say upper-income Americans don’t pay enough in taxes.

“In spite of these views, overwhelming majorities of self-described middle- and lower-class Americans say they admire people who get rich by working hard (92% and 84%, respectively).

“The new survey … finds that a majority of the public (65%) thinks the nation’s income gap between rich and poor has grown in the past decade — and most say that’s a bad thing for the country.

“The survey also finds that the gap between rich and poor goes far beyond income. Adults who self-identify as being in the upper or upper-middle class are generally happier, healthier and more satisfied with their jobs than are those in the middle or lower classes. And they are much less likely to have suffered economic hardships as a result of the recession.

“In addition, those in the upper class are more satisfied than those in the middle or lower classes with their family life, their housing situation and their education. Upper-class Americans even report experiencing less stress….

“…More than half of all adults (55%) say rich people are more likely than the average person to be greedy. Only 9% say they are less likely to be greedy. The remaining 36% have no opinion. About one-third of the public (34%) says the rich are less likely than average people to be honest. Only 12% say they are more likely to be honest, and 54% have no opinion on this.

“Republicans and Democrats view the rich differently. A much higher share of Republicans (55%) than Democrats (33%) say, compared with the average person, rich people are more likely to be hardworking. Republicans are also more likely than Democrats to view rich people as more intelligent than average….

“For their part, Democrats are much more likely than Republicans to view the rich as greedy….

“Another widely held perception of the rich is that they do not pay their fair share in taxes.

“A majority of adults (58%) say that upper-income people pay too little in federal taxes. One-in-four (26%) say upper-income people pay their fair share in taxes, and 8% say they pay too much in taxes. Even among those who consider themselves upper or upper-middle class, fully 52% say upper-income people pay too little. Only 10% of this group says upper-class adults say people pay too much in taxes.

“The public is divided over whether lower-income people pay the appropriate amount in federal taxes. Some 37% say lower-income people pay too much in taxes, while roughly as many (34%) say lower-income people pay their fair share in taxes. One-in-five adults say lower-income people pay too little in taxes….

“The notion that the rich are not paying their fair share in taxes is compounded by the public’s perception that the income gap between the rich and the poor has widened in recent years. Roughly two-thirds of Americans (65%) say the income gap between the rich and poor has gotten larger in the past decade. And 57% also say this is a bad thing for society (3% say this is a good thing). Only 7% say the gap has gotten smaller, and 20% say it has stayed about the same.

“The economic data bear out the public’s perception that the gap has widened. Whether the metric is income or wealth, the rich have outpaced the poor in recent decades….”

For the full press release, see: Pew Research Center, Aug. 27.

Editor’s Note: Unless otherwise stated, all Statline and Research Report inclusions are sourced from survey work conducted by third parties and made available in the public domain. Their inclusion neither confers agreement with the findings or endorsement of the polls’ accuracy. Respondents’ answers to survey questions can vary based on the wording of the question, the order of offered options, the manner of the pollster, the agenda of the organization, etc. Critical-thinking skills and examination of topline documents when available from the polling organization(s) are encouraged.