Wayne Drash
CNN.com
Originally published September 12, 2018
A pharmaceutical company executive defended his company's recent 400% drug price increase, telling the Financial Times that his company had a "moral requirement to sell the product at the highest price." The head of the US Food and Drug Administration blasted the executive in a response on Twitter.
Nirmal Mulye, founder and president of Nostrum Pharmaceuticals, commented in a story Tuesday about the decision to raise the price of an antibiotic mixture called nitrofurantoin from about $500 per bottle to more than $2,300. The drug is listed by the World Health Organization as an "essential" medicine for lower urinary tract infections.
"I think it is a moral requirement to make money when you can," Mulye told the Financial Times, "to sell the product for the highest price."
The info is here.
Thursday, October 11, 2018
Does your nonprofit have a code of ethics that works?
Mary Beth West
USA Today Network - Tennessee
Originally posted September 10, 2018
Each year, the Public Relations Society of America recognizes September as ethics month.
Our present #FakeNews / #MeToo era offers a daily diet of news coverage and exposés about ethics shortfalls in business, media and government sectors.
One arena sometimes overlooked is that of nonprofit organizations.
I am currently involved in a national ethics-driven bylaw reform movement for PRSA itself, which is a 501(c)(6) nonprofit with 21,000-plus members globally, in the “business league” category.
While PRSA’s code of ethics has stood for decades as an industry standard for communications ethics – promoting members’ adherence to only truthful and honest practices – PRSA’s code is not enforceable.
Challenges with unenforced ethics codes
Unenforced codes of ethics are commonplace in the nonprofit arena, particularly for volunteer, member-driven organizations.
PRSA converted from its enforced code of ethics to one that is unenforced by design, nearly two decades ago.
The reason: enforcing code compliance and the adjudication processes inherent to it were a pain in the neck (and a pain in the wallet, due to litigation risks).
The info is here.
USA Today Network - Tennessee
Originally posted September 10, 2018
Each year, the Public Relations Society of America recognizes September as ethics month.
Our present #FakeNews / #MeToo era offers a daily diet of news coverage and exposés about ethics shortfalls in business, media and government sectors.
One arena sometimes overlooked is that of nonprofit organizations.
I am currently involved in a national ethics-driven bylaw reform movement for PRSA itself, which is a 501(c)(6) nonprofit with 21,000-plus members globally, in the “business league” category.
While PRSA’s code of ethics has stood for decades as an industry standard for communications ethics – promoting members’ adherence to only truthful and honest practices – PRSA’s code is not enforceable.
Challenges with unenforced ethics codes
Unenforced codes of ethics are commonplace in the nonprofit arena, particularly for volunteer, member-driven organizations.
PRSA converted from its enforced code of ethics to one that is unenforced by design, nearly two decades ago.
The reason: enforcing code compliance and the adjudication processes inherent to it were a pain in the neck (and a pain in the wallet, due to litigation risks).
The info is here.
Wednesday, October 10, 2018
Psychologists Are Standing Up Against Torture at Gitmo
Rebecca GordontheNation.com
Originally posted September 11, 2018
Sometimes the good guys do win. That’s what happened on August 8 in San Francisco when the Council of Representatives of the American Psychological Association (APA) decided to extend a policy keeping its members out of the US detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
The APA’s decision is important—and not just symbolically. Today we have a president who has promised to bring back torture and “load up” Guantánamo “with some bad dudes.” When healing professionals refuse to work there, they are standing up for human rights and against torture.
It wasn’t always so. In the early days of Guantánamo, military psychologists contributed to detainee interrogations there. It was for Guantánamo that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved multiple torture methods, including among others excruciating stress positions, prolonged isolation, sensory deprivation, and enforced nudity. Military psychologists advised on which techniques would take advantage of the weaknesses of individual detainees. And it was two psychologists, one an APA member, who designed the CIA’s whole “enhanced interrogation program.”
The info is here.
Urban Meyer, Ohio State Football, and How Leaders Ignore Unethical Behavior
David MayerHarvard Business Review
Originally posted September 4, 2018
Here is an excerpt:
A sizable literature in management and psychology helps us understand how people become susceptible to moral biases and make choices that are inconsistent with their values and the values of their organizations. Reading the report with that lens can help leaders better understand the biases that get in the way of ethical conduct and ethical organizations.
Performance over principles. One number may surpass all other details in this case: 90%. That’s the percentage of games the team has won under Meyer as head coach since he joined Ohio State in 2012. Psychological research shows that in almost every area of life, being moral is weighted as more important than being competent. However, in competitive environments such as work and sports, the classic findings flip: competence is prized over character. Although the report does not mention anything about the team’s performance or the resulting financial and reputational benefits of winning, the program’s success may have crowded out concerns over the allegations against Smith and about the many other problematic behaviors he showed.
Unspoken values. Another factor that can increase the likelihood of making unethical decisions is the absence of language around values. Classic research in organizations has found that leaders tend to be reluctant to use “moral language.” For example, leaders are more likely to talk about deadlines, objectives, and effectiveness than values such as integrity, respect, and compassion. Over time, this can license unethical conduct.
The info is here.
Tuesday, October 9, 2018
Morality is the new profit – banks must learn or die
Zoe Williams
The Guardian
Originally posted September 10, 2018
Here is an excerpt:
Ten years ago, “ethical” investing meant not buying shares in arms and alcohol, as if morality were so unfamiliar to financial decision-making that you had to go back to the 19th century and borrow it from the Quakers. The growth of banks with a moral mission – like Triodos (“quality of life, human dignity, sustainability”) – or investments with a social purpose – like Abundance, which finances renewable energy – has been impressive on its own terms, but remained niche, for baby boomers with a conscience. The idea that all market activity should have a purpose other than profit is roughly where it always was on the spectrum, somewhere between Marx and Jesus – one for the rioters, the subversives, the people with beards, unsuited to mainstream discourse.
But there is nothing more pragmatic and less idealistic than to insist on the social purpose of the market; banking cannot survive without it – not as a corporate bolt-on but as its driving and decisive motivation. The derivatives trade cannot weather the consequences of infinite self-interest, because there really will be consequences – extreme global ones. The planet cannot survive an endless cost-benefit analysis in which nature is pitted against profit. Nature will always lose and so will humanity as a result. Whatever the immediate cause of the next crash, if and when it comes its roots will be environmental. The Financial Times talks about “the insidious danger that pension funds deflate, leaving a generation without enough money to retire”. The most likely cause for that devaluation of pensions – leaving aside the generation that cannot afford to save for the future – will be stranded assets, pension funds having invested in fossil fuels that cannot be excavated.
The info is here.
The Guardian
Originally posted September 10, 2018
Here is an excerpt:
Ten years ago, “ethical” investing meant not buying shares in arms and alcohol, as if morality were so unfamiliar to financial decision-making that you had to go back to the 19th century and borrow it from the Quakers. The growth of banks with a moral mission – like Triodos (“quality of life, human dignity, sustainability”) – or investments with a social purpose – like Abundance, which finances renewable energy – has been impressive on its own terms, but remained niche, for baby boomers with a conscience. The idea that all market activity should have a purpose other than profit is roughly where it always was on the spectrum, somewhere between Marx and Jesus – one for the rioters, the subversives, the people with beards, unsuited to mainstream discourse.
But there is nothing more pragmatic and less idealistic than to insist on the social purpose of the market; banking cannot survive without it – not as a corporate bolt-on but as its driving and decisive motivation. The derivatives trade cannot weather the consequences of infinite self-interest, because there really will be consequences – extreme global ones. The planet cannot survive an endless cost-benefit analysis in which nature is pitted against profit. Nature will always lose and so will humanity as a result. Whatever the immediate cause of the next crash, if and when it comes its roots will be environmental. The Financial Times talks about “the insidious danger that pension funds deflate, leaving a generation without enough money to retire”. The most likely cause for that devaluation of pensions – leaving aside the generation that cannot afford to save for the future – will be stranded assets, pension funds having invested in fossil fuels that cannot be excavated.
The info is here.
Top Cancer Researcher Fails to Disclose Corporate Financial Ties in Major Research Journals
Charles Ornstein and Katie Thomas
The New York Times
Originally published September 8, 2018
One of the world’s top breast cancer doctors failed to disclose millions of dollars in payments from drug and health care companies in recent years, omitting his financial ties from dozens of research articles in prestigious publications like The New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet.
The researcher, Dr. José Baselga, a towering figure in the cancer world, is the chief medical officer at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. He has held board memberships or advisory roles with Roche and Bristol-Myers Squibb, among other corporations, has had a stake in start-ups testing cancer therapies, and played a key role in the development of breakthrough drugs that have revolutionized treatments for breast cancer.
According to an analysis by The New York Times and ProPublica, Dr. Baselga did not follow financial disclosure rules set by the American Association for Cancer Research when he was president of the group. He also left out payments he received from companies connected to cancer research in his articles published in the group’s journal, Cancer Discovery. At the same time, he has been one of the journal’s two editors in chief.
The info is here.
The New York Times
Originally published September 8, 2018
One of the world’s top breast cancer doctors failed to disclose millions of dollars in payments from drug and health care companies in recent years, omitting his financial ties from dozens of research articles in prestigious publications like The New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet.
The researcher, Dr. José Baselga, a towering figure in the cancer world, is the chief medical officer at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. He has held board memberships or advisory roles with Roche and Bristol-Myers Squibb, among other corporations, has had a stake in start-ups testing cancer therapies, and played a key role in the development of breakthrough drugs that have revolutionized treatments for breast cancer.
According to an analysis by The New York Times and ProPublica, Dr. Baselga did not follow financial disclosure rules set by the American Association for Cancer Research when he was president of the group. He also left out payments he received from companies connected to cancer research in his articles published in the group’s journal, Cancer Discovery. At the same time, he has been one of the journal’s two editors in chief.
The info is here.
Monday, October 8, 2018
Purpose, Meaning and Morality Without God
Ralph Lewis
Psychology Today Blog
Originally posted September 9, 2018
Here is an excerpt:
Religion is not the source of purpose, meaning and morality. Rather, religion can be understood as having incorporated these natural motivational and social dispositions and having coevolved with human cultures over time. Unsurprisingly, religion has also incorporated our more selfish, aggressive, competitive, and xenophobic human proclivities.
Modern secular societies with the lowest levels of religious belief have achieved far more compassion and flourishing than religious ones.
Secular humanists understand that societal ethics and compassion are achieved solely through human action in a fully natural world. We can rely only on ourselves and our fellow human beings. All we have is each other, huddled together on this lifeboat of a little planet in this vast indifferent universe.
We will need to continue to work actively toward the collective goal of more caring societies in order to further strengthen the progress of our species.
Far from being nihilistic, the fully naturalist worldview of secular humanism empowers us and liberates us from our irrational fears, and from our feelings of abandonment by the god we were told would take care of us, and motivates us to live with a sense of interdependent humanistic purpose. This deepens our feelings of value, engagement, and relatedness. People can and do care, even if universe doesn’t.
The blog post is here.
Psychology Today Blog
Originally posted September 9, 2018
Here is an excerpt:
Religion is not the source of purpose, meaning and morality. Rather, religion can be understood as having incorporated these natural motivational and social dispositions and having coevolved with human cultures over time. Unsurprisingly, religion has also incorporated our more selfish, aggressive, competitive, and xenophobic human proclivities.
Modern secular societies with the lowest levels of religious belief have achieved far more compassion and flourishing than religious ones.
Secular humanists understand that societal ethics and compassion are achieved solely through human action in a fully natural world. We can rely only on ourselves and our fellow human beings. All we have is each other, huddled together on this lifeboat of a little planet in this vast indifferent universe.
We will need to continue to work actively toward the collective goal of more caring societies in order to further strengthen the progress of our species.
Far from being nihilistic, the fully naturalist worldview of secular humanism empowers us and liberates us from our irrational fears, and from our feelings of abandonment by the god we were told would take care of us, and motivates us to live with a sense of interdependent humanistic purpose. This deepens our feelings of value, engagement, and relatedness. People can and do care, even if universe doesn’t.
The blog post is here.
Evolutionary Psychology
Downes, Stephen M.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
Evolutionary psychology is one of many biologically informed approaches to the study of human behavior. Along with cognitive psychologists, evolutionary psychologists propose that much, if not all, of our behavior can be explained by appeal to internal psychological mechanisms. What distinguishes evolutionary psychologists from many cognitive psychologists is the proposal that the relevant internal mechanisms are adaptations—products of natural selection—that helped our ancestors get around the world, survive and reproduce. To understand the central claims of evolutionary psychology we require an understanding of some key concepts in evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology, philosophy of science and philosophy of mind. Philosophers are interested in evolutionary psychology for a number of reasons. For philosophers of science —mostly philosophers of biology—evolutionary psychology provides a critical target. There is a broad consensus among philosophers of science that evolutionary psychology is a deeply flawed enterprise. For philosophers of mind and cognitive science evolutionary psychology has been a source of empirical hypotheses about cognitive architecture and specific components of that architecture. Philosophers of mind are also critical of evolutionary psychology but their criticisms are not as all-encompassing as those presented by philosophers of biology. Evolutionary psychology is also invoked by philosophers interested in moral psychology both as a source of empirical hypotheses and as a critical target.
The entry is here.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
Evolutionary psychology is one of many biologically informed approaches to the study of human behavior. Along with cognitive psychologists, evolutionary psychologists propose that much, if not all, of our behavior can be explained by appeal to internal psychological mechanisms. What distinguishes evolutionary psychologists from many cognitive psychologists is the proposal that the relevant internal mechanisms are adaptations—products of natural selection—that helped our ancestors get around the world, survive and reproduce. To understand the central claims of evolutionary psychology we require an understanding of some key concepts in evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology, philosophy of science and philosophy of mind. Philosophers are interested in evolutionary psychology for a number of reasons. For philosophers of science —mostly philosophers of biology—evolutionary psychology provides a critical target. There is a broad consensus among philosophers of science that evolutionary psychology is a deeply flawed enterprise. For philosophers of mind and cognitive science evolutionary psychology has been a source of empirical hypotheses about cognitive architecture and specific components of that architecture. Philosophers of mind are also critical of evolutionary psychology but their criticisms are not as all-encompassing as those presented by philosophers of biology. Evolutionary psychology is also invoked by philosophers interested in moral psychology both as a source of empirical hypotheses and as a critical target.
The entry is here.
Sunday, October 7, 2018
Transparency in Algorithmic and Human Decision-Making: Is There a Double Standard?
Zerilli, J., Knott, A., Maclaurin, J. et al.
Philos. Technol. (2018).
Abstract
We are sceptical of concerns over the opacity of algorithmic decision tools. While transparency and explainability are certainly important desiderata in algorithmic governance, we worry that automated decision-making is being held to an unrealistically high standard, possibly owing to an unrealistically high estimate of the degree of transparency attainable from human decision-makers. In this paper, we review evidence demonstrating that much human decision-making is fraught with transparency problems, show in what respects AI fares little worse or better and argue that at least some regulatory proposals for explainable AI could end up setting the bar higher than is necessary or indeed helpful. The demands of practical reason require the justification of action to be pitched at the level of practical reason. Decision tools that support or supplant practical reasoning should not be expected to aim higher than this. We cast this desideratum in terms of Daniel Dennett’s theory of the “intentional stance” and argue that since the justification of action for human purposes takes the form of intentional stance explanation, the justification of algorithmic decisions should take the same form. In practice, this means that the sorts of explanations for algorithmic decisions that are analogous to intentional stance explanations should be preferred over ones that aim at the architectural innards of a decision tool.
The article is here.
Philos. Technol. (2018).
Abstract
We are sceptical of concerns over the opacity of algorithmic decision tools. While transparency and explainability are certainly important desiderata in algorithmic governance, we worry that automated decision-making is being held to an unrealistically high standard, possibly owing to an unrealistically high estimate of the degree of transparency attainable from human decision-makers. In this paper, we review evidence demonstrating that much human decision-making is fraught with transparency problems, show in what respects AI fares little worse or better and argue that at least some regulatory proposals for explainable AI could end up setting the bar higher than is necessary or indeed helpful. The demands of practical reason require the justification of action to be pitched at the level of practical reason. Decision tools that support or supplant practical reasoning should not be expected to aim higher than this. We cast this desideratum in terms of Daniel Dennett’s theory of the “intentional stance” and argue that since the justification of action for human purposes takes the form of intentional stance explanation, the justification of algorithmic decisions should take the same form. In practice, this means that the sorts of explanations for algorithmic decisions that are analogous to intentional stance explanations should be preferred over ones that aim at the architectural innards of a decision tool.
The article is here.
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