Executive Beware: The SEC Now Wants To Police Unethical Corporate Conduct

By John Carney and Jenna Felz

Forbes

Originally posted on June 26, 2014

With the appointment of Chairwoman Mary Jo White, President Obama made clear that a tough cop would run the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) and make enforcement a top priority.  This pro-enforcement, “tough cop,” stance is nothing new to an agency with a storied history of investigating and civilly prosecuting some of the biggest frauds on Wall Street.  But what is new is the Chairwoman’s tactical decision to redeploy significant enforcement resources on small, non-criminal violations.  Chairwoman White underscored the importance of the SEC’s role as “tough cop” especially in cases “when there is no criminal violation,” declaring that the SEC “is the only agency that can play that role.”  These bold statements signal the SEC’s renewed focus on policing not only illegal, but also unethical, conduct.

The entire article is here.

Behavioral Ethics

PBS
Originally posted June 27, 2014

Why are people dishonest? From Main Street to Wall Street, at home and at work, questionable behavior defies people’s best intentions. Now experts in the social sciences are examining why people so often behave contrary to their own ethical aims and what can be done about it, especially in the world of business. “What we find is that when people are thinking about honesty versus dishonesty,” says Dan Ariely, a professor of behavioral economics at the Duke University Fuqua School of Business, “it’s all about being able, at the moment, to rationalize something and make yourself think that this is actually okay.”




The entire page is here.

Moral bioenhancement: a neuroscientific perspective

By Molly Crockett
J Med Ethics 2014;40:370-371
doi:10.1136/medethics-2012-101096

Can advances in neuroscience be harnessed to enhance human moral capacities? And if so, should they? De Grazia explores these questions in ‘Moral Enhancement, Freedom, and What We (Should) Value in Moral Behaviour’.1 Here, I offer a neuroscientist's perspective on the state of the art of moral bioenhancement, and highlight some of the practical challenges facing the development of moral bioenhancement technologies.

The science of moral bioenhancement is in its infancy. Laboratory studies of human morality usually employ highly simplified models aimed at measuring just one facet of a cognitive process that is relevant for morality. These studies have certainly deepened our understanding of the nature of moral behaviour, but it is important to avoid overstating the conclusions of any single study.

The entire article is here.

Sexual Assault and Rape Culture

Constructive liberal discourse has been a source of important gains on these issues. The alternatives are toxic.

By Conor Friedersdorf
The Atlantic
Originally posted June 27, 2014

The description of "rape culture" that sums up its insidiousness better than any I've ever seen was published several years ago at the Washington City Paper by Amanda Hess.

"Rape culture does not just encourage men to proceed after she says 'no,'" she wrote. "Rape culture does not simply teach men that a lack of physical resistance is an invitation. Rape culture does not only tell men to assert ownership over whichever female body they desire. Rape culture also tells women not to claim ownership over their own bodies. Rape culture also informs women that they should not desire sex. Rape culture also tells women that saying yes makes them bad women."

The entire article is here.

Episode 11: Why Marketing is our Ethical Duty (and why Public Education is an ideal way to do it)

In this episode, John talks with Pauline Wallin, PhD, expert in marketing, public education, and media as well as a cofounder of The Practice Institute, where she helps clinicians build their practices.  It is important for psychologists to understand why marketing a psychological practice helps protect the public and raise awareness of how psychotherapy can improve people's lives.  Pauline makes the distinction between marketing and selling.  We also discuss four ethical ways to market psychological services via public education.

The end of this podcast, the listener will be able to:

1. Describe two ways that marketing your practice benefits the public.
2. List four ways to use public education to market your practice.
3. Describe two potential ethical pitfalls in marketing via public education, and how to avoid them.

Find this podcast on iTunes

For 1 APA-approved credit, click here.

Listen directly on this site here.



Resources

Dr. Pauline Wallin's website  @DoctorWallin

The Practice Institute  @PracticeHelp

APA Code of Conduct: Standard 5 - Advertising and Other Public Statements

National Institute of Health Information on Mental Health

American Psychological Association Media Referral Service

"Psychology Works" Facts Sheets - Canadian Psychological Association

Help a Reporter Out

Using informed consent to save trust

By Nir Eyal
J Med Ethics 2014;40:437-444
doi:10.1136/medethics-2012-100490

Abstract

Increasingly, bioethicists defend informed consent as a safeguard for trust in caretakers and medical institutions. This paper discusses an ‘ideal type’ of that move. What I call the trust-promotion argument for informed consent states:

1. Social trust, especially trust in caretakers and medical institutions, is necessary so that, for example, people seek medical advice, comply with it, and participate in medical research.

2. Therefore, it is usually wrong to jeopardise that trust.

3. Coercion, deception, manipulation and other violations of standard informed consent requirements seriously jeopardise that trust.

4. Thus, standard informed consent requirements are justified.

This article describes the initial promise of this argument, then identifies challenges to it. As I show, the value of trust fails to account for some commonsense intuitions about informed consent. We should revise the argument, commonsense morality, or both.

The entire article is here.

Who’s Googled whom?

Trainees’ Internet and online social networking experiences, behaviors, and attitudes with clients and supervisors.

By P. Asay and Ashwini Lal
Training and Education in Professional Psychology, Vol 8(2), May 2014, 105-111.
doi: 10.1037/tep0000035

Abstract

The ubiquity of the Internet and online social networking creates rapidly developing opportunities and challenges for psychologists and trainees in the domains of relationships, privacy, and connection. As trainees increasingly are natives of an Internet culture, questions arise about the ways in which developing psychologists may view Internet issues and the guidance they receive from professional psychologists for whom the Internet is a significant cultural shift. A national survey of graduate students (n = 407) assessed student Internet behaviors (e.g., “Googling” clients, online social networking), training about online issues, attitudes toward online social networking and client or supervisor contact via these networks, and fears and comfort about making decisions regarding these networks. The survey also assessed what students reported they would do and what they would think if clients and supervisors contacted them via social networks. Results indicate that most trainees have changed and monitored their online presence since beginning graduate school. A quarter of respondents had “Googled” clients, and almost half had “Googled” supervisors. A small number indicated that both clients and supervisors had reported “Googling” the trainee. Students expressed concerns about making ethical decisions about online social networks. Half reported discussing Internet issues in their graduate training programs, whereas a quarter indicated they had discussed Internet issues at their training sites. Implications for training are discussed, with recommendations of program disclosure of Internet policies to students, discussion of Internet issues before trainee clinical work, role plays of ethical issues, and supervisor-initiated discussions of Internet issues.

The entire article is here.

Why haven't more states expanded Medicaid yet?

By California Healthline
www.philly.com
Originally posted June 26, 2014

Two years after Roberts issued the majority opinion upholding the Affordable Care Act, the decision to expand Medicaid is far from settled. Despite predictions that all states will eventually embrace Medicaid expansion, a significant number continue to hold out.

At last count, 26 states and the District of Columbia intend to expand Medicaid, while four are actively considering it and 20 have no plans to expand the program at this time.

The Medicaid expansion was considered the sleeper issue in the legal case against the ACA that ultimately made its way up to the Supreme Court. Stakeholders were closely watching issues like the constitutionality of the individual mandate, not thinking Medicaid would be significant. And yet, in a surprise decision, the Supreme Court effectively took the teeth out of one of the law's major efforts to expand health insurance, by making it illegal to penalize states for not participating in the Medicaid expansion.

The entire article is here.

Replication Crisis in Psychology Research Turns Ugly and Odd

By Tom Bartlett
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Originally published June 23, 2014

Another salvo was fired recently in what's become known...as "repligate."

In a blog post published last week, Timothy D. Wilson, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia and the author of Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change, declared that "the field has become preoccupied with prevention and error detection--negative psychology--at the expense of exploration and discovery."

The evidence that psychology is beset with false positives is weak, according to Mr. Wilson, and he pointed instead to the danger of inept replications that serve only to damage "the reputation of the original researcher and the progression of science."

While he called for finding common ground, Mr. Wilson pretty firmly sided with those who fear that psychology's growing replication movement, which aims to challenge what some critics see as a tsunami of suspicious science, is more destructive than corrective.

Still, Mr. Wilson was polite. Daniel Gilbert, less so.

The entire article is here.