ChatGPT Is a Plagiarism Machine

Joseph Keegin

The Chronicle

Originally posted 23 MAY 23

Here is an excerpt:

A meaningful education demands doing work for oneself and owning the product of one’s labor, good or bad. The passing off of someone else’s work as one’s own has always been one of the greatest threats to the educational enterprise. The transformation of institutions of higher education into institutions of higher credentialism means that for many students, the only thing dissuading them from plagiarism or exam-copying is the threat of punishment. One obviously hopes that, eventually, students become motivated less by fear of punishment than by a sense of responsibility for their own education. But if those in charge of the institutions of learning — the ones who are supposed to set an example and lay out the rules — can’t bring themselves to even talk about a major issue, let alone establish clear and reasonable guidelines for those facing it, how can students be expected to know what to do?

So to any deans, presidents, department chairs, or other administrators who happen to be reading this, here are some humble, nonexhaustive, first-aid-style recommendations. First, talk to your faculty — especially junior faculty, contingent faculty, and graduate-student lecturers and teaching assistants — about what student writing has looked like this past semester. Try to find ways to get honest perspectives from students, too; the ones actually doing the work are surely frustrated at their classmates’ laziness and dishonesty. Any meaningful response is going to demand knowing the scale of the problem, and the paper-graders know best what’s going on. Ask teachers what they’ve seen, what they’ve done to try to mitigate the possibility of AI plagiarism, and how well they think their strategies worked. Some departments may choose to take a more optimistic approach to AI chatbots, insisting they can be helpful as a student research tool if used right. It is worth figuring out where everyone stands on this question, and how best to align different perspectives and make allowances for divergent opinions while holding a firm line on the question of plagiarism.

Second, meet with your institution’s existing honor board (or whatever similar office you might have for enforcing the strictures of academic integrity) and devise a set of standards for identifying and responding to AI plagiarism. Consider simplifying the procedure for reporting academic-integrity issues; research AI-detection services and software, find one that works best for your institution, and make sure all paper-grading faculty have access and know how to use it.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, make it very, very clear to your student body — perhaps via a firmly worded statement — that AI-generated work submitted as original effort will be punished to the fullest extent of what your institution allows. Post the statement on your institution’s website and make it highly visible on the home page. Consider using this challenge as an opportunity to reassert the basic purpose of education: to develop the skills, to cultivate the virtues and habits of mind, and to acquire the knowledge necessary for leading a rich and meaningful human life.

The info is here.

Cognitive control and dishonesty

Speer, S. P., Smidts, A., & Boksem, M. A. (2022b).

Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 26(9), 796–808.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2022.06.005

Abstract

Dishonesty is ubiquitous and imposes substantial financial and social burdens on society. Intuitively, dishonesty results from a failure of willpower to control selfish behavior. However, recent research suggests that the role of cognitive control in dishonesty is more complex. We review evidence that cognitive control is not needed to be honest or dishonest per se, but that it depends on individual differences in what we call one’s ‘moral default’: for those who are prone to dishonesty, cognitive control indeed aids in being honest, but for those who are already generally honest, cognitive control may help them cheat to occasionally profit from small acts of dishonesty. Thus, the role of cognitive control in (dis)honesty is to override the moral default.

Significance

The precise role of cognitive control in dishonesty has been debated for many years, but now important strides have been made to resolve this debate.

Recently developed paradigms that allow for investigating dishonesty on the level of the choice rather than on the level of the individual have substantially improved our understanding of the adaptive role of cognitive control in (dis)honesty.

These new paradigms revealed that the role of cognitive control differs across people: for cheaters, it helps them to sometimes be honest, while for those who are generally honest, it allows them to cheat on occasion. Thus, cognitive control is not required for (dis)honesty per se but is required to override one’s moral default to be either honest or to cheat.

Individual differences in moral default are driven by balancing motivation for reward and upholding a moral self-image.

From Concluding remarks

The Will and Grace hypotheses have been debated for quite some time, but recently important strides have been made to resolve this debate. Key elements in this proposed resolution are (i) recognizing that there is heterogeneity between individuals, some default more towards honesty, whereas others have a stronger inclination towards dishonesty; (ii) recognizing that there is heterogeneity within individuals, cheaters can be honest sometimes and honest people do cheat on occasion; and (iii) the development of experimental paradigms that allow dishonesty to be investigated on the level of the choice, rather than only on the level of the individual or the group. These developments have substantially enhanced understanding of the role of cognitive control in (dis)honesty: it is not required for being honest or dishonest per se, but it is required to override one’s moral default to either be honest or to cheat (Figure 1).

These insights open up novel research agendas and offer suggestions as to how to develop interventions to curtail dishonesty. Our review suggests three processes that may be targeted by such interventions: reward seeking, self-referential thinking, and cognitive control. Shaping contexts in ways that are conducive to honesty by targeting these processes may go a long way to increase honesty in everyday behavior.

The research is paywalled here.

The Look Over Your Shoulder: Unethical Behaviour Decreases in the Physical Presence of Observers

Köbis, N., van der Lingen, S., et al., (2019, February 5).

https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/gxu96

Abstract

Research in behavioural ethics repeatedly emphasizes the importance of others for people’s decisions to break ethical rules. Yet, in most lab experiments participants faced ethical dilemmas in full privacy settings. We conducted three experiments in which we compare such private set-ups to situations in which a second person is co-present in the lab. Study 1 manipulated whether that second person was a mere observer or co-benefitted from the participants’ unethical behaviour. Study 2 investigated social proximity between participant and observer –being a friend versus a stranger. Study 3 tested whether the mere presence of another person who cannot observe the participant’s behaviour suffices to decrease unethical behaviour. By using different behavioural paradigms of unethical behaviour, we obtain three main results: first, the presence of an observing other curbs unethical behaviour. Second, neither the payoff structure (Study 1) nor the social proximity towards the observing other (Study 2) qualifies this effect. Third, the mere presence of others does not reduce unethical behaviour if they do not observe the participant (Study 3). Implications, limitations and avenues for future research are discussed.

General Discussion

Taken together, the results of three experiments suggest that the physical presence of others reduces unethical behaviour, yet only if that other person can actually observe the behaviour. Even though the second person had no means to formally sanction wrong-doing, onlookers’ presence curtailed unethical behaviour while the local social utility (co-beneficiary or observer, Study 1) and the level of proximity (friend vs. stranger,Study 2) played a less important role. When others are merely present without being able to observe, no such attenuating effect on unethical behaviour occurs(Study 3).  Introducing the physical presence of another person to the rapidly growing stream of behavioural ethics research, our experiments provide some of the first empirical insights into the actual social aspects of unethical behaviour.

Humans are social animals who spend a substantial proportion of their time in company. Many decisions are made while being in the presence or in the gaze of others. At the same time, the overwhelming majority of lab experiments in behavioural ethics consists of individuals making decisions in isolation(for a meta-analysis, see Abeler et al., 2016). Also field experiments have sparsely looked at the impact of the tangible social elements of unethical behaviour (for a review, see Pierce & Balasubramanian, 2015). Nevertheless, the behavioural ethics literature emphasizes that appearing moral towards others is one of the main explanatory factor to explain when and how people break ethical rules (Mazar, Amir, & Ariely, 2008; Pillutla & Murnighan, 1995). Yet, so far behavioural research on the presence and observability of actual others remains sparse. Providing some of the first insights into how the physical presence of others shape our moral compass can contribute to the advancement of behavioural ethics and potentially inform the design of practical interventions. 

The research is here.

Direct application to those who practice independently.

Ernst & Young to Pay $100 Million Penalty for Employees Cheating on CPA Ethics Exams and Misleading Investigation

Largest Penalty Ever Imposed by SEC Against an Audit Firm

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

2022-114

Washington D.C., June 28, 2022 —

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Ernst & Young LLP (EY) for cheating by its audit professionals on exams required to obtain and maintain Certified Public Accountant (CPA) licenses, and for withholding evidence of this misconduct from the SEC’s Enforcement Division during the Division’s investigation of the matter. EY admits the facts underlying the SEC’s charges and agrees to pay a $100 million penalty and undertake extensive remedial measures to fix the firm’s ethical issues.

“This action involves breaches of trust by gatekeepers within the gatekeeper entrusted to audit many of our Nation’s public companies. It’s simply outrageous that the very professionals responsible for catching cheating by clients cheated on ethics exams of all things,” said Gurbir S. Grewal, Director of the SEC’s Enforcement Division. “And it’s equally shocking that Ernst & Young hindered our investigation of this misconduct. This action should serve as a clear message that the SEC will not tolerate integrity failures by independent auditors who choose the easier wrong over the harder right.”

EY admits that, over multiple years, a significant number of EY audit professionals cheated on the ethics component of CPA exams and various continuing professional education courses required to maintain CPA licenses, including ones designed to ensure that accountants can properly evaluate whether clients’ financial statements comply with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.

EY further admits that during the Enforcement Division’s investigation of potential cheating at the firm, EY made a submission conveying to the Division that EY did not have current issues with cheating when, in fact, the firm had been informed of potential cheating on a CPA ethics exam. EY also admits that it did not correct its submission even after it launched an internal investigation into cheating on CPA ethics and other exams and confirmed there had been cheating, and even after its senior lawyers discussed the matter with members of the firm’s senior management. And as the Order finds, EY did not cooperate in the SEC’s investigation regarding its materially misleading submission.

The entire press release is here.

Blind loyalty? When group loyalty makes us see evil or engage in it

J. A. Hildreth, F. Gino, & M. Bazerman

Organizational Behavior and 

Human Decision Processes

Volume 132, January 2016, 16-36

Abstract

Loyalty often drives corruption. Corporate scandals, political machinations, and sports cheating highlight how loyalty’s pernicious nature manifests in collusion, conspiracy, cronyism, nepotism, and other forms of cheating. Yet loyalty is also touted as an ethical principle that guides behavior. Drawing on moral psychology and behavioral ethics research, we developed hypotheses about when group loyalty fosters ethical behavior and when it fosters corruption. Across nine studies, we found that individuals primed with loyalty cheated less than those not primed (Study 1A and 1B). Members more loyal to their fraternities (Study 2A) and students more loyal to their study groups (Study 2B) also cheated less than their less loyal counterparts due to greater ethical salience when they pledged their loyalty (Studies 3A and 3B). Importantly, competition moderated these effects: when competition was high, members more loyal to their fraternities (Study 4) or individuals primed with loyalty (Studies 5A and 5B) cheated more.

Highlights

• We define loyalty as the principle of partiality toward an object (e.g. group).

• Across nine studies we found that loyalty reduced rather than increased cheating when group goals were unclear.

• Pledging loyalty increased the salience of ethics which led to less cheating.

• Competition moderated these effects: when competition was high the loyal cheated more.

• The findings are consistent with loyalty’s role as an ethical principle.

A pdf is here.

Does encouraging a belief in determinism increase cheating?

Nadelhoffer, T., and others
(2019, May 3).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104342

Abstract

A key source of support for the view that challenging people’s beliefs about free will may undermine moral behavior is two classic studies by Vohs and Schooler (2008). These authors reported that exposure to certain prompts suggesting that free will is an illusion increased cheating behavior. In the present paper, we report several attempts to replicate this influential and widely cited work. Over a series of five studies (sample sizes of N = 162, N = 283, N = 268, N = 804, N = 982) (four preregistered) we tested the relationship between (1) anti-free-will prompts and free will beliefs and (2) free will beliefs and immoral behavior. Our primary task was to closely replicate the findings from Vohs and Schooler (2008) using the same or highly similar manipulations and measurements as the ones used in their original studies. Our efforts were largely unsuccessful. We suggest that manipulating free will beliefs in a robust way is more difficult than has been implied by prior work, and that the proposed link with immoral behavior may not be as consistent as previous work suggests.

To cheat or not to cheat? Researchers uncover the moral dilemmas of doping

Press Release
University of Birmingham
Originally posted May 9, 2019

Elite athletes are less likely to take banned substances if they consider the morality of what they are doing, and not just the health consequences of doping, according to a new study led by the University of Birmingham and funded by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

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The researchers were also interested in finding out what factors might reduce these justifications, which would ultimately allow athletes to suppress their feelings of guilt and use banned substances. The key factor which seems to protect athletes from doping was moral identity. This means how important it was to the players to be a moral person, and how strong their moral values, such as being fair or honest, were. Those players who had a strong moral identity did not use justifications for doping, expected to feel more guilt for doping, and ultimately were less likely to dope.

The researchers also found that coaches' behavior, and the 'performance climate' in which athletes were training also had a significant effect on their doping likelihood. If coaches were creating a climate in which players who made a mistake were penalised, or if they gave undue attention to the best players, athletes were more likely to turn towards banned substances. The coach can therefore play an important role in doping prevention.

The research findings are forming the basis for anti-doping interventions aimed at challenging players' attitudes towards banned substances. Funded by the World Anti-Doping Agency and the International Olympic Committee, the team has developed a series of interventions which highlight the moral angle through stories of athletes who have been affected by these issues, and what it has meant for them, and for their team mates and families.

The pressor is here.

U.S. Ethics Office Declines to Certify Mnuchin’s Financial Disclosure

Alan Rappeport
The New York Times
Originally published April 4, 2019

The top federal ethics watchdog said on Thursday that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s sale of his stake in a film production business to his wife did not comply with federal ethics rules, and it would not certify his 2018 financial disclosure report as a result.

Although Mr. Mnuchin will not face penalties for failing to comply, he has been required to rewrite his federal ethics agreement and to promise to recuse himself from government matters that could affect his wife’s business.

Mr. Mnuchin in 2017 sold his stake in StormChaser Partners to his then-fiancée, Louise Linton, as part of a series of divestments before becoming Treasury secretary. Since they are now married, government ethics rules consider the asset to be owned by Mr. Mnuchin, potentially creating a conflict of interest for an official who has been negotiating for expanded access for the movie industry as part of trade talks with China.

The controversy over Mr. Mnuchin’s finances has become an unwanted distraction in recent weeks as the Trump administration has been engaged in intense negotiations with China on a wide range of trade matters. While Robert Lighthizer, President Trump’s top trade official, has been leading the talks, Mr. Mnuchin has been the point person for promoting the film industry because of his background as a Hollywood producer and investor.

The info is here.

Why good businesspeople do bad things

Joseph Holt
The Chicago Tribune
Originally posted October 30, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

Businesspeople are also more likely to engage in bad behavior if they assume that their competitors are doing so and that they will be at a competitive disadvantage if they do not.

A 2006 study showed that MBA students in the U.S. and Canada were more likely to cheat than other graduate students. One of the authors of the study, Donald McCabe, explained in an article that the cheating was a result of MBA students’ “succeed-at-all-costs mentality” and the belief that they were acting the way they believed they needed to act to succeed in the corporate world.

Casey Donnelly, Gatto’s attorney, claimed in her opening statement at the trial that “every major apparel company” engaged in the same payment practice, and that her client was simply attempting to “level the playing field.”

Federal authorities engaged in a yearslong investigation of shadowy dealings involving shoe companies, sports agents, college coaches and top high school basketball players have reportedly looked into Nike and Under Armour as well as Adidas.

Time will tell whether those companies were involved in similar payment schemes.

The info is here.

The Link Between Self-Dehumanization and Immoral Behavior

Association for Psychological Science

Here is an excerpt:

After establishing that unethical behavior can increase self-dehumanization, the researchers then carried out a second set of studies designed to test whether self-dehumanization may also lead to unethical behavior. Across all three studies, participants completed the writing assignment described above before deliberating over a moral choice. Those in the self-dehumanization condition were found both to cheat more when asked to self-report the results of a coin flip in exchange for cash, and to assign partners to the more difficult of two available tasks.

Finally, the researchers tested their full model of self-dehumanization on a sample of 429 students. Participants first predicted a series of seemingly random coin flips. Unbeknownst to them, the results in the neutral condition were rigged so that the participants’ predictions always matched the coin flips. In the possibility-of-cheating condition, however, the results were rigged to always be inconsistent with the coin flips, followed by an erroneous message announcing that they had guessed correctly.

Participants in the cheating condition then had a choice: they could either click a box on the screen to report the “technical issue,” or they could collect their ill-begotten $2 reward for an accurate prediction. Of the 293 participants in this condition, 134 chose to take the money.

After reporting their levels of self-dehumanization and completing a filler task, participants then completed an anagram test in which those in the possibility-of-cheating condition had another chance to misreport their results. As the researchers suspected, people who chose to take money they did not deserve in the first task reported higher self-dehumanization, and were more likely to cheat in the final task as well.

The information is here.

Kouchaki, M., Dobson, K. S., Waytz, A., & Kteily, N. S. (2018). The Link Between Self-Dehumanization and Immoral Behavior. Psychological Science, 29(8), 1234-1246. doi:10.1177/0956797618760784

Are free will believers nicer people? (Four studies suggest not)

Damien Crone and Neil Levy
Preprint
Created January 10, 2018

Abstract

Free will is widely considered a foundational component of Western moral and legal codes, and yet current conceptions of free will are widely thought to fit uncomfortably with much research in psychology and neuroscience. Recent research investigating the consequences of laypeople’s free will beliefs (FWBs) for everyday moral behavior suggest that stronger FWBs are associated with various desirable moral characteristics (e.g., greater helpfulness, less dishonesty). These findings have sparked concern regarding the potential for moral degeneration throughout society as science promotes a view of human behavior that is widely perceived to undermine the notion of free will. We report four studies (combined N =921) originally concerned with possible mediators and/or moderators of the abovementioned associations. Unexpectedly, we found no association between FWBs and moral behavior. Our findings suggest that the FWB – moral behavior association (and accompanying concerns regarding decreases in FWBs causing moral degeneration) may be overstated.

The research is here.

Ethics and sport have long been strangers to one another

Kenan Malik
The Guardian
Originally posted March 8, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

Today’s great ethical debate is not about payment but drugs. Last week, the digital, culture, media and sport select committee accused Bradley Wiggins of “crossing the ethical line” for allegedly misusing drugs allowed for medical purposes to enhance performance.

The ethical lines over drug use are, however, as arbitrary and irrational as earlier ones about payment. Drugs are said to be “unnatural” and to provide athletes with an “unfair advantage”. But virtually everything an athlete does, from high-altitude training to high-protein dieting, is unnatural and seeks to gain an advantage.

EPO is a naturally produced hormone that stimulates red blood cell production, so helping endurance athletes. Injections of EPO are banned in sport. Yet Chris Froome is permitted to sleep in a hypoxic chamber, which reduces oxygen in the air, forcing his body to produce more red blood cells. It has the same effect as EPO, is equally unnatural and provides an advantage. Why is one banned but not the other?

The article is here.

Facebook Woes: Data Breach, Securities Fraud, or Something Else?

Matt Levine
Bloomberg.com
Originally posted March 21, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

But the result is always "securities fraud," whatever the nature of the underlying input. An undisclosed data breach is securities fraud, but an undisclosed sexual-harassment problem or chicken-mispricing conspiracy will get you to the same place. There is an important practical benefit to a legal regime that works like this: It makes it easy to punish bad behavior, at least by public companies, because every sort of bad behavior is also securities fraud. You don't have to prove that the underlying chicken-mispricing conspiracy was illegal, or that the data breach was due to bad security procedures. All you have to prove is that it happened, and it wasn't disclosed, and the stock went down when it was. The evaluation of the badness is in a sense outsourced to the market: We know that the behavior was illegal, not because there was a clear law against it, but because the stock went down. Securities law is an all-purpose tool for punishing corporate badness, a one-size-fits-all approach that makes all badness commensurable using the metric of stock price. It has a certain efficiency.

On the other hand it sometimes makes me a little uneasy that so much of our law ends up working this way. "In a world of dysfunctional government and pervasive financial capitalism," I once wrote, "more and more of our politics is contested in the form of securities regulation." And: "Our government's duty to its citizens is mediated by their ownership of our public companies." When you punish bad stuff because it is bad for shareholders, you are making a certain judgment about what sort of stuff is bad and who is entitled to be protected from it.

Anyway Facebook Inc. wants to make it very clear that it did not suffer a data breach. When a researcher got data about millions of Facebook users without those users' explicit permission, and when the researcher turned that data over to Cambridge Analytica for political targeting in violation of Facebook's terms, none of that was a data breach. Facebook wasn't hacked. What happened was somewhere between a contractual violation and ... you know ... just how Facebook works? There is some splitting of hairs over this, and you can understand why -- consider that SEC guidance about when companies have to disclose data breaches -- but in another sense it just doesn't matter. You don't need to know whether the thing was a "data breach" to know how bad it was. You can just look at the stock price. The stock went down...

The article is here.

Increasing honesty in humans with noninvasive brain stimulation

Michel André Maréchal, Alain Cohn, Giuseppe Ugazio and Christian C. Ruff
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)
April, 114(17), 4360-4364

Abstract

Honesty plays a key role in social and economic interactions and is crucial for societal functioning. However, breaches of honesty are pervasive and cause significant societal and economic problems that can affect entire nations. Despite its importance, remarkably little is known about the neurobiological mechanisms supporting honest behavior. We demonstrate that honesty can be increased in humans with transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Participants (n = 145) completed a die-rolling task where they could misreport their outcomes to increase their earnings, thereby pitting honest behavior against personal financial gain. Cheating was substantial in a control condition but decreased dramatically when neural excitability was enhanced with tDCS. This increase in honesty could not be explained by changes in material self-interest or moral beliefs and was dissociated from participants’ impulsivity, willingness to take risks, and mood. A follow-up experiment (n = 156) showed that tDCS only reduced cheating when dishonest behavior benefited the participants themselves rather than another person, suggesting that the stimulated neural process specifically resolves conflicts between honesty and material self-interest. Our results demonstrate that honesty can be strengthened by noninvasive interventions and concur with theories proposing that the human brain has evolved mechanisms dedicated to control complex social behaviors.

The article is here.

Almost All Of You Would Cheat And Steal If The People In Charge Imply It's Okay

Charlie Sorrel
www.fastcoexist.com
Originally posted February 2, 2017

Would you cheat on a test to get money? Would you steal from an envelope of cash if you thought nobody would notice? What if the person in charge implied that it was acceptable to lie and steal? That's what Dan Ariely's Corruption Experiment set out to discover. And here's a spoiler: If you're like the rest of the population, you would cheat and steal.

Ariely is a behavioral scientist who specializes in the depressingly bad conduct of humans. In this lecture clip, he details his Corruption Experiment. In it, participants are given a die, and told they can take home the numbers they throw in real dollars. The twist is that they can choose the number on the top or the bottom, and they only need to tell the person running the experiment after they throw. So, if the dice comes up with a one on top, they can claim that they picked the six on the bottom. Not surprisingly, most of the time, people picked the higher number.

The article and the video is here.

The phenomenon of “unethical amnesia”

Francesca Gino and Maryam Kouchaki
Quartz
Originally published December 29, 2016

Here is an excerpt:

In fact, psychological research on morality shows that we hold an overly optimistic view of our capacity to adhere to ethical standards. We believe that we are intrinsically more moral than others, that we will behave more ethically than others in the future, and that transgressions committed by others are morally worse than our own.

So, how do these beliefs of our moral selves play out in our day-to-day actions? As researchers who frequently study how people who care about morality often behave dishonestly, we decided to find out.

Unethical amnesia

One key result of our research is that people engage in unethical behavior repeatedly over time because their memory of their dishonest actions gets obfuscated over time. In fact, our research shows that people are more likely to forget the details of their own unethical acts compared with other incidents, including neutral, negative, or positive events, as well as the unethical actions of others.

The article is here.

Programmers are having a huge discussion about the unethical and illegal things they’ve been asked to do

Julie Bort
Business Insider
Originally published November 20, 2016

Here is an excerpt:

He pointed out that "there are hints" that developers will increasingly face some real heat in the years to come. He cited Volkswagen America's CEO, Michael Horn, who at first blamed software engineers for the company's emissions cheating scandal during a Congressional hearing, claimed the coders had acted on their own "for whatever reason." Horn later resigned after US prosecutors accused the company of making this decision at the highest levels and then trying to cover it up.

But Martin pointed out, "The weird thing is, it was software developers who wrote that code. It was us. Some programmers wrote cheating code. Do you think they knew? I think they probably knew."

Martin finished with a fire-and-brimstone call to action in which he warned that one day, some software developer will do something that will cause a disaster that kills tens of thousands of people.

But Sourour points out that it's not just about accidentally killing people or deliberately polluting the air. Software has already been used by Wall Street firms to manipulate stock quotes.

The article is here.

From porkies to whoppers: over time lies may desensitise brain to dishonesty

Hannah Devlin
The Guardian
Originally posted October 24, 2016

Here is an excerpt:

Now scientists have uncovered an explanation for why telling a few porkies has the tendency to spiral out of control. The study suggests that telling small, insignificant lies desensitises the brain to dishonesty, meaning that lying gradually feels more comfortable over time.

Tali Sharot, a neuroscientist at University College London and senior author, said: “Whether it’s evading tax, infidelity, doping in sports, making up data in science or financial fraud, deceivers often recall how small acts of dishonesty snowballed over time and they suddenly found themselves committing quite large crimes.”

Sharot and colleagues suspected that this phenomenon was due to changes in the brain’s response to lying, rather than simply being a case of one lie necessitating another to maintain a story.

The article is here.

Three Ways To Prevent Getting Set Up For Ethical Failure

Ron Carucci
Forbes.com
Originally posted

Here are two excerpts:

To survive the injustice of unresolved competing goals, leaders, usually middle management, become self-protective, putting the focus of their team or department ahead of others. Such self-protection turns to self-interest as chronic pain persists from living in the gap between unrealistic demands and unfair resource allocation. Resentment turns to justification as people conclude, “I’m not going down with the ship.” And eventually, unfettered self-interest and its inherent justification become conscious choices to compromise, usually from a sense of entitlement. People simply conclude, “I have no choice” or “I deserve this.” Says Jonathan Haidt, Professor of Business Ethics at NYU and founder of Ethical Systems, “Good people will do terrible things when people around them are even gently encouraging them to do so.” In many cases, that “gentle encouragement” comes in the form of simply ignoring what might provoke poor choices.

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3. Clarify decision rights. Organizational governance – which is different from “Corporate Governance” – is the distribution of authority, resources, and decision rights across an organization. Carefully designed, it synchronizes an organization and ensures natural tensions are openly managed. Knowing which leaders are accountable for which decisions and resources removes the uncertainty many organizations suffer from. When there is confusion about decision rights, competing priorities proliferate, setting the stage for organizational contradictions to arise.

The article is here.

Deutsche Bank's $10-Billion Scandal

By Ed Caesar
The New Yorker
Originally published August 29, 2016

Here is an excerpt:

Scandals have proliferated at Deutsche Bank. Since 2008, it has paid more than nine billion dollars in fines and settlements for such improprieties as conspiring to manipulate the price of gold and silver, defrauding mortgage companies, and violating U.S. sanctions by trading in Iran, Syria, Libya, Myanmar, and Sudan. Last year, Deutsche Bank was ordered to pay regulators in the U.S. and the U.K. two and a half billion dollars, and to dismiss seven employees, for its role in manipulating the London Interbank Offered Rate, or libor, which is the interest rate banks charge one another. The Financial Conduct Authority, in Britain, chastised Deutsche Bank not only for its manipulation of libor but also for its subsequent lack of candor. “Deutsche Bank’s failings were compounded by them repeatedly misleading us,” Georgina Philippou, of the F.C.A., declared. “The bank took far too long to produce vital documents and it moved far too slowly to fix relevant systems.”

The article is here.