Hate crimes down in 2011, but anti-gay violence up, FBI says

More than 6,000 were reported, with nearly half of them racially motivated. Crimes targeting gays and lesbians increased about 2.6%.

By Danielle Ryan
The Los Angeles Times

Originally published December 10, 2012

 

More than 6,000 hate crimes were reported to U.S. law enforcement agencies in 2011 — a 6% decrease from 2010, the FBI said Monday. But crimes based on the victim's sexual orientation increased slightly.

 

Nearly half of the 6,222 hate crimes reported in 2011 were racially motivated, the FBI said, with nearly three-fourths directed at African Americans. More than 16% were motivated by anti-white bias.

About 59% of the known offenders for all reported hate crimes were white, and 21% were black, the agency said.

The Anti-Defamation League, which monitors and seeks to combat bigotry, welcomed the overall decrease in hate crimes but highlighted those motivated by sexual orientation.

"The increase in the number of reported hate crimes directed against gays and lesbians, now the second most frequent category of crime, is especially disturbing," the ADL said in a statement.

There were 1,508 reported sexual orientation hate crimes in 2011, up from 1,470 in 2010, an increase of about 2.6%. Overall, nearly 21% of hate crimes were motivated by sexual orientation bias, the FBI said, with men victimized the majority of the time.

Religious bigotry accounted for nearly 20% of reported hate crimes — the majority anti-Semitic, and another 13% anti-Islamic.

The entire story is here.

UK government says it will legalize gay marriage, but bar Church of England from involvement

Article by: JILL LAWLESS
Associated Press
Originally posted December 10, 2012

The British government announced Tuesday that it will introduce a bill next year legalizing gay marriage — but banning the Church of England from conducting same-sex ceremonies.

Equalities minister Maria Miller said the legislation would authorize same-sex civil marriages, as well as religious ceremonies if religions decide to "opt in."

"I feel strongly that, if a couple wish to show their love and commitment to each other, the state should not stand in their way," Miller said.

"For me, extending marriage to same-sex couples will strengthen, not weaken, this vital institution."

Some religious groups, such as Quakers and liberal Jews, say they want to conduct same-sex ceremonies. But others, including the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches, oppose gay marriage.

Miller said the legislation would make it unlawful for the Church of England — the country's official church, symbolically headed by Queen Elizabeth II — and the Anglican Church in Wales to conduct gay weddings. The government does not have the same legal authority over other churches, but hopes that the ban for the Church of England will reassure religious opponents of same-sex marriage that they will not be forced to take part.

The entire story is here.

Behavioral Ethics: Toward a Deeper Understanding of Moral Judgment and Dishonesty

Annual Review of Law and Social ScienceVol. 8: 85-104
Max H. Bazerman and Francesca Gino


What makes even good people cross ethical boundaries? Society demands that business and professional schools address ethics, but the results have been disappointing. This paper argues that a behavioral approach to ethics is essential because it leads to understanding and explaining moral and immoral behavior in systematic ways. The authors first define business ethics and provide an admittedly biased history of the attempts of professional schools to address ethics as a subject of both teaching and research. They next briefly summarize the emergence of the field of behavioral ethics over the last two decades, and turn to recent research findings in behavioral ethics that could provide helpful directions for a social science perspective to ethics. These new findings on both intentional and unintentional unethical behavior can inform new courses on ethics as well as new research investigations. Such new directions can meet the demands of society more effectively than past attempts of professional schools. They can also produce a meaningful and significant change in the behavior of both business school students and professionals. Key concepts include:

• Shifting the modes of thought can lead to profound differences in how we make ethical decisions. This has implications at the individual and at the societal level.
• Until recently, little empirical attention was given to how people actually behave when they face ethical dilemmas and decisions or to how their behavior can be improved.
• A behavioral ethics approach does not teach students how they should behave when facing ethical dilemmas, nor inform them about what philosophers or ethicists would recommend. Instead it sees an opportunity in helping students and professionals better understand their own behavior in the ethics domain, and compare it to how they would ideally like to behave.
• Behavioral ethics identifies levers at both the individual and the institutional level to change ethically questionable behaviors when individuals are acting in unethical ways that they would not endorse with greater reflection.
• Prior to the 1990s, it was rare for professional schools to have a significant focus on the area of ethics (or business ethics more specifically) in the courses offered to students. Courses that were taught used philosophical approaches or suggested that morality is a rather stable personality trait that individuals develop by going through differences phases of development.

Abstract

Early research and teaching on ethics focused on either a moral development perspective or philosophical approaches, and used a normative approach by focusing on the question of how people should act when resolving ethical dilemmas. In this paper, we briefly describe the traditional approach to ethics and then present a (biased) review on the behavioral approach to ethics. We define behavioral ethics as the study of systematic and predictable ways in which individuals make ethical decisions and judge the ethical decisions of others that are at odds with intuition and the benefits of the broader society. By focusing on a descriptive rather than a normative approach to ethics, behavioral ethics is better suited than traditional approaches to address the increasing demand from society for a deeper understanding of what causes even good people to cross ethical boundaries.

A version of the paper is here.

Is Psychotherapy Too Expensive?

By Pauline Wallin, Ph.D.
Guest Blogger

The cost of a typical course of psychotherapy (12 sessions or fewer) is generally under $2000. That’s certainly more than pocket change. But is it too much? Well, it depends on how you figure it.

If you use your health insurance, you’ll be paying only a fraction of that cost. But even if you pay completely out of pocket, $2000 for psychotherapy could turn out to be a bargain.

First, we know that emotional problems and stress can make you more vulnerable to serious medical illness – which can lead to additional medical bills, time lost from work and higher health insurance premiums. These factors can add up to well over $2000.

Next, consider how depression and anxiety affect your day-to-day quality of life. You not only feel sub-par; you may also have trouble with focus and concentration – which can lead to costly mistakes, omissions and accidents.

When you feel miserable, the people around you are also affected. You cannot be the parent or spouse or friend that you want to be. And if you let things go too far, you may even lose your will to live. That’s pretty scary!

The good news is that psychotherapy helps the majority of people who enter into treatment. Psychologists are trained to help you discover better ways to deal with what life throws at you.

“$2000 is way out of my budget. What are my options?”

If you have health insurance there’s a good chance that it covers psychotherapy by a licensed mental health professional. You’ll probably need to pay a copay, which will be higher for out-of-network therapists.

But don’t decide on the basis of cost alone. Get recommendations from family members, friends or your physician. It’s very important that you have confidence in your therapist and that you feel comfortable with him or her.

Keep in mind that you don’t need to come up with the entire therapy fee all at once. You’ll be paying by the session. Many therapists accept credit card payments. You may also consider taking out a loan. After all, psychotherapy is an investment in yourself (similar to education) where you anticipate a brighter future as a result of the time and money you spend.

Don’t put it off

Although it’s never to late to get help, the longer you wait, the more time is wasted.  Investing in your own psychological well-being is a good plan for both yourself and for your loved ones.

Conflict of Interest: Disclosure to Whom? And How?

By Jane Robbins
Inside Higher Ed - Sounding Board
December 11, 2012

Conflict of interest in academic science is a controversial, but most of all a highly emotional, issue in the academy. Scientists and administrators disagree vehemently about whether it is a good or bad thing, and many aver that it has no impact on research—or that it is no one’s business. The thing is that the term conflict of interest is descriptive of a state, not a quality, and its effects or impacts can only be known, sometimes tragically and always far beyond the individual involved, after-the-fact. This is why disclosure is generally considered to be a poor means of avoiding bias or harm—it is too little, too late, and we are left with not knowing who or what to trust, and may need to run around retracting articles, shutting down trials, imposing sanctions, firing people, or engaging in yet another political effort to rein in a growing ill. Physician, heal thyself: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

At the moment, though, disclosure is the modus operandi. Even that took decades to put in place, and efforts to make disclosure, let alone enforcement, more robust have been disappointing exercises in which the whole point—the integrity of science and scientific institutions—bows to external pressure and resistance. One of the many disappointments in the recent (2009-2011), largely failed effort to strengthen conflict of interest rules and enforcement was the rejection of additional reporting to the federal government. In making my public comments at the time, I for one had called for reporting of all disclosures, patent/royalty data, equity values, contract terms, management plans, and other conflict-specific data to a central website created and maintained by the Public Health Service (HHS/PHS), the funding agent soliciting comments on proposed new rules. Some others made similar recommendations, as discussed below. In a rationalized interpretation of lessening the administrative and financial burden to institutions, the final rules instead called for each institution to create its own site and/or respond to requests for information on a case-by-case basis.  Appeasement often yields the irrational.

The entire story is here.

Drug Executive Faces Manslaughter Charges

By SCOTT SAYARE
The New York Times
Published: December 11, 2012

A French court brought manslaughter and injury charges on Tuesday against a drug executive and six companies in a case involving a diabetes and weight-loss drug that caused cardiovascular damage, the Paris public prosecutor’s office said.

The executive, Jacques Servier, 90, and six companies of the Servier group are accused of having known the risks associated with the drug, Mediator, which they produced and marketed until French authorities ordered it withdrawn in 2009, the spokeswoman, Agnès Thibault-Lecuivre, said.

The entire article is here.

Supreme Court slates generic drug 'pay-for-delay' case

By Joe Carlson
ModernHealthcare.com
Posted: December 8, 2012

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments in a "pay-for-delay" case that has the Federal Trade Commission accusing generic drugmakers of violating competition laws by agreeing to accept $42 million in annual payments in exchange for not selling generic versions of a more-expensive brand-name testosterone gel.

The FTC says (PDF) the companies—lead respondent Watson Pharmaceuticals, along with Paddock Laboratories, Par Pharmaceutical Cos. and Abbott Laboratories subsidiary Solvay Pharmaceuticals—conspired illegally to keep cheaper drugs off the market, to the detriment of consumers of the brand-name drug.

The companies, meanwhile, say their actions were legal and immune from FTC scrutiny (PDF). However, they did not oppose a hearing before the U.S. Supreme Court, because they said differing interpretations of federal law had led to split legal reasoning in various U.S. circuits on a controversy of national significance.

The entire story is here.

Violent Video Games: More Playing Time Equals More Aggression

Ohio State University
News Release
Originally released on December 10, 2012


A new study provides the first experimental evidence that the negative effects of playing violent video games can accumulate over time.

Researchers found that people who played a violent video game for three consecutive days showed increases in aggressive behavior and hostile expectations each day they played. Meanwhile, those who played nonviolent games showed no meaningful changes in aggression or hostile expectations over that period.

Although other experimental studies have shown that a single session of playing a violent video game increased short-term aggression, this is the first to show longer-term effects, said Brad Bushman, co-author of the study and professor of communication and psychology at Ohio State University.

“It’s important to know the long-term causal effects of violent video games, because so many young people regularly play these games,” Bushman said.

“Playing video games could be compared to smoking cigarettes. A single cigarette won’t cause lung cancer, but smoking over weeks or months or years greatly increases the risk. In the same way, repeated exposure to violent video games may have a cumulative effect on aggression.”

Bushman conducted the study with Youssef Hasan and Laurent Bègue of the University Pierre Mendès-France, in Grenoble, France, and Michael Scharkow of the University of Hohenheim in Germany.

Their results are published online in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology and will appear in a future print edition.

The study involved 70 French university students who were told they would be participating in a three-day study of the effects of brightness of video games on visual perception.

They were then assigned to play a violent or nonviolent video game for 20 minutes on each of three consecutive days.

Those assigned the violent games played Condemned 2, Call of Duty 4 and then The Club on consecutive days (in a random order). Those assigned the nonviolent games played S3K Superbike, Dirt2 and Pure (in a random order).

After playing the game each day, participants took part in an exercise that measured their hostile expectations. They were given the beginning of a story, and then asked to list 20 things that the main character will do or say as the story unfolds. For example, in one story another driver crashes into the back of the main character’s car, causing significant damage. The researchers counted how many times the participants listed violent or aggressive actions and words that might occur.

The press release is here.

Most Professors Say They've Considered Quitting Over Work-Life Conflicts

by Audrey Williams June
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Originally published December 10, 2012


Work-life conflicts have caused roughly three out of every four assistant professors to think about leaving their institution, according to the results of a new survey.

For some assistant professors, leaving their institution isn't enough to solve their work-life problems.

Almost 45 percent of those surveyed said they could see themselves leaving academe altogether.

Meanwhile, 65 percent of full professors surveyed said that they had considered leaving their university in the last year.

<snip>

The survey found that nearly 80 percent of faculty members would consider leaving their institution in search of a more-supportive work environment.

About 60 percent would consider leaving where they now work to spend more time with their families.

About 35 percent of respondents would think about leaving to deal with elder care, while about one-fourth would consider leaving their institution because of problems related to child care.

The entire story is here.

Thanks to Ken Pope for this information.