Ethics: January 2003 Archive Page

Interesting discussion of grade inflation, party skewed by early comments that claimed that engineering and other technical majors are immune from the pressures that cause humanities professors to inflate student grades. Sparked by a Washington Post article that few people on Slashdot seem to have read (that's fine with me -- most are drawing on their own experience as students, graduates, or teachers). --Grade Inflation in Higher EducationSlashdot)

"About one-fourth of university-based medical researchers receive funding from drug companies -- ties that sometimes distort study results, according to a review done by two researchers with industry connections of their own."

--Review finds Pervasive Medical Research-Industry TiesAssociated Press)

Ohmigosh ohmigosh oh...my...gosh! Scientific research isn't completely objective? Scientists aren't lofty supreme beings of pure intellect, untouched by such human vices as pride and clumsiness? And when did corporations start funding scientific research? This is an outrage! I'm glad I'm in the humanities, where fraud never happens.

"Nurses quickly learned how to hack the system to save time. For example, if a patient's bar code didn't scan correctly on the first try, nurses often entered the seven-digit bar code number manually rather than rescanning it.

"Nurses also felt that the computer system's demands forced them to focus on pill-pushing. If meds weren't given on time, nurses had to take time out to tell the system why. Many feared this could result in poor performance evaluations.

"'I found myself walking away from important conversations with patients and families in order to fulfill the computer's demands,' said a VA nurse who spoke on condition of anonymity. 'I feel like robo-nurse, and I don't like it.'" --Bar Code Tech Drives Nurses NutsWired)

Does manually entering a bar code number really count as "hacking"? I think a system is probably broken if you have to "hack" it to make it work. Maybe the nurses were "optimizing" the system instead.

"Rightly or wrongly, record companies are detested by politicians (for corrupting youth), by webcasters (for demanding royalties), and by their customers (for inflating prices). Musicians and songwriters are famous for loathing the labels... Radio and MTV aren't in the industry's corner... And the electronics industry's attitude toward the labels is summed up by an Apple slogan: Rip. Mix. Burn. Which, a music executive once told me, translates into..." Charles C. Mann --The Year the Music DiedWired)

"My first cartoon short, Steamboat Willie, was a direct parody of Keaton's movie Steamboat Bill, Jr. On the very first page of the script, it says, 'Orchestra starts playing opening verses of Steamboat Bill.' I remember what Eldred's lawyer Lawrence Lessig said when he read that: 'Try doing a cartoon take-off of one of Disney, Inc.'s latest films with an opening that copies the music.'" Jesse Walker --Mickey Mouse Clubbed: Disney's Cartoon Rodent Speaks out...Reason)

"Not so many decades ago, you couldn't buy or legitimately connect your own phone or other telecom equipment to the public telephone network in the United States.... Virtually everything related to telephone communications had to be leased from the local monopoly phone company, which also performed all installations and maintenance. Remarkably, it was even prohibited to attach shoulder rests or any other gadgets to phone handsets..." --DMCA: Ma Bell Would Be ProudWired)

"Walt Disney understood the value of the public domain, and used it precisely as other great artists had done. He updated an out-of-copyright character to create Mickey Mouse, for example, and launched an empire. The company he founded later used writer Victor Hugo's work, which was also no longer owned by anyone, to create a cartoon based on the Hunchback of Notre Dame saga. The Disney animators had every right to build new works on old ones -- and the public also got the benefit. Try the same thing with Mickey Mouse and you'll be hauled into court faster than you can say 'Goofy.' The court's 7-2 ruling betrayed some judicial discomfort, observing that Congress has the power to do 'arguably unwise'' things. Get ready for more unwise acts, in that case." Dan Gilmor --Copyright Ruling is a Ripoff of ConsumersSiliconValley.com)

On Jan 17, 1998, maverick webmaster Matt Drudge broke the Monica Lewinsky story on his weblog. (Actually, Jorn Barger coined the term "weblog" only a few weeks earlier, so I doubt anybody used that term for Drudge's website back then.) Drudge has posted an understandbly self-congratulatory piece about his website. To refresh your memory, here's part of what he wrote:

"At the last minute, at 6 p.m. on Saturday evening, NEWSWEEK magazine killed a story that was destined to shake official Washington to its foundation: A White House intern carried on a sexual affair with the President of the United States!

The DRUDGE REPORT has learned that reporter Michael Isikoff developed the story of his career, only to have it spiked by top NEWSWEEK suits hours before publication. A young woman, 23, sexually involved with the love of her life, the President of the United States, since she was a 21-year-old intern at the White House. She was a frequent visitor to a small study just off the Oval Office where she claims to have indulged the president's sexual preference. Reports of the relationship spread in White House quarters and she was moved to a job at the Pentagon, where she worked until last month." Matt Drudge

--Drudge's Website Broke Clinton Sex Scandal 5 Years AgoDrudge Report)

"Hundreds of thousands of books, movies and songs were close to being released into the public domain when Congress extended the copyright by 20 years in 1998.... [That] would have cost entertainment giants like the Walt Disney Co. and AOL Time Warner hundreds of millions of dollars. AOL Time Warner had said that would threaten copyrights for such movies as Casablanca, The Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind." --Supreme Court Upholds Copyright ExtensionWired (AP))

Disney doesn't want to lose hold of Mickey Mouse, so 20th century scholarship will suffer. I chose the years 1920-1950 as the time span for my dissertation, figuring that as I worked my way through my academic career, the plays I had studied would one by one come out of copyright, and I could publish critical editions that would be available at an affordable rate. Looks like that ain't gonna happen. Since hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake, I figure it would be sensible to tax old copyrighted materials, making it more and more expensive for copyright holders to maintain their monopoly on a particular title. The money gained could support the scholars who will work on the material that copyright holders feel is not worth paying the extra money to protect beyond a reasonable limit (say, 25 years free, another 25 years if you're still alive and you still want it, then another 25 years for a modest fee, after which each 10 years the company has to report how much money they made off of the material, and pay a user fee that supports the common domain. Sigh. Dream on, Jerz.

"The main conclusion by DCSD [Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty] finds that my book is 'clearly contrary to the standards of good scientific practice' because of systematically biased selection of data and arguments. But since the DCSD has neglected to take their position on the technical scientific disputes their conclusions are completely unfounded. The DCSD does not give a single example to demonstrate their claim of a biased choice of data and arguments. Consequently, I don't understand this ruling. It equals an accusation without defining the crime." Bjørn Lomborg

--Lomborg Responds to Dishonesty AccusationsLomborg.com)

Lomborg ran afoul of traditional eco-scientific interpretations of data involving the global environment. I am not an expert in the matter, but I was troubled to read of what appears to be an ad-hominem attack by members of the scientific community on Lomborg. This is Lomborg's response to being censured for his book The Sceptical Environmentalist.

Bjorn Lomborg - the director of Denmark's Environmental Assessment Institute and a leading would-be debunker of mainstream scientific opinion on issues like global warming and overuse of natural resources - has been found guilty by a Danish government committee of 'scientific dishonesty'. --Paul Brown --Anti-green Author Dishonest, Says Scientific Panel (Guardian)

This is the peer-review process at work. Somebody will doubtless publish a rebuttal, and the debate will continue. The panel concluded "Based on customary scientific standards and in light of his systematic one-sidedness in the choice of data and line of argument, [he] has clearly acted at variance with good scientific practice." I'm a little troubled by the idea that a particular "line of argument" is equated with "dishonesty," but I'm not an expert in the subject matter.

"The high-tech industry plans to launch a sophisticated new lobbying campaign later this month to strike back against Hollywood in a battle to shape rules of the road for new digital technologies. The Business Software Alliance and Computer Systems Policy Project....hope to convince Congress that strict copy-protection legislation that sets technological mandates would stifle innovation, harm consumers and threaten an already suffering tech industry." Heather Fleming --Tech Industry to Take on Hollywood over Digital RulesMercury News)

Before you jump up and down cheering, note that Microsoft is one of the companies behind this new legal strategy. The end result will be to put more power in the hands of technology monopolists, instead of the publishers of entertainment media. So either way, you'll still have to pay to let Hollywood entertain you.

"Proposal. Develop a false website and organization concentrating on the newest national concern: videogame addiction and violence. This organization is called Mothers Against Videogame Addiction and Violence (MAVAV, www.mavav.org). There is a great amount of stereotypes about people who play videogames (anti-social, depressed, unintelligent) and a lot of videogame violence bashing and blame (scapegoat) by the media and the government. So I decided to play off this, exaggerating all the common stereotypes, creating absurd facts, and officially linking violence in videogames to killers. :)" David Yoo --Interactivity Final Assignment: Create a Hoax. Submission: "Mothers Against Videogame Addiction and Violence" (Parsons School of Design)

For years, undergraduates everywhere will be citing this website in their freshman composition papers. Hint to students: look for peer-reviewed academic journal articles, not web pages that pop up in response to a google.com search!

"Throughout the 1990s, my basic philosophy was this: Work=Boring, but Work+Speed+Risk=Cool. Speed and risk transformed the experience into something so stimulating, so exciting, so intense, that we began to believe that those qualities defined 'good work.' Now, betrayed by the reality of economic uncertainty and global instability, we're casting about for what really matters when it comes to work." Po Bronson --What Should I Do With My LifeFast Company)

This essay wins my prize for "best cultural reflection written by somebody sharing the name of a Teletubbie."