The Business Ethics Blog

Who is (or was) your father? Are you sure? How would you react to finding out that your biological father was actually a different individual than the one you’d always been told was your biological father?

Regular readers will know that I’ve blogged before about genetic tests sold direct-to-consumers. Most of the hullabaloo over genetic testing recently has focused on tests for particular diseases (like Myriad’s BRACAnalysis or on broad, “gene association” tests (like Navigenics’ Health Compass). But at least some attention has also been focused on good ol’ fashioned paternity testing. Paternity testing has been around for years (using blood-type, analysis of HLA antigens, etc.) but modern genetic testing has made it more accurate and reliable.

And now, gene-based paternity testing is available to consumers directly, without clinicians and without prescriptions. See these two items:

• Scientific American: Who’s Your Daddy? The Answer May Be at the Drugstore
• Press Release: Identigene Expands Sales of First-ever Over-the-Counter DNA Paternity Test Kit to Discount Stores and Supercenters

The press-release above blithely asserts that “the Identigene DNA Paternity Test Kit has provided peace-of-mind to tens of thousands of people across the country.” Probably true. Indeed, the Identigene press release gives details of the story of one happy father —”Clayton Hall” — who confirmed that his little girl, Chloe, was in fact his biological daughter. To its credit, the press release makes clear that such engaging in such testing is not a small matter:

Hall’s experience is poignant. He held the envelope containing a sample of his DNA and one from Chloe–the child he is raising as his daughter–over the open slot of a U.S. Mail drop box for more than five minutes, deciding. If he let go of the envelope, in a few days he may learn something upsetting about that relationship.

Hall’s story has a happy ending. But the Identigene press release omits the obvious: at least some customers’ stories won’t end so happily. In at least some cases, the truth will rip families apart. It seems to me that the risks of paternity testing are considerably more serious than the risks of most other kinds of genetic testing.

Here’s a news item about ethical issues arising from findings of non-paternity: Paternity Testing: Truth Can Hurt.

The implications are huge, the study authors noted, because such revelations often lead to divorce and increased mental health problems for both the man and woman involved, including the threat of violence by the man.

In addition, children whose lives are changed by this genetic information can struggle with low self-esteem, anxiety, and increased antisocial behavior, such as aggression.

Not exactly a harmless product. Of course, the risks of paternity tests — risks to the person buying the test, and risks to their entire family — the are pretty obvious, which is something that can’t be said for other kinds of genetic tests. But still, the marketing of these tests ought to take into consideration that this is a product that can have enormous impact on people’s lives, for better or for worse.

Academic work on this topic:
My friend Bryn Williams-Jones has been writing about the ethics of genetic testing since before it was the hip topic it is today. Here’s an older paper of his that talks about paternity testing, among other kinds of genetic testing: “Re-Framing the Discussion: Commercial Genetic Testing in Canada.”

I’ve just ordered this book on the topic: Genetic Ties and the Family: The Impact of Paternity Testing on Parents and Children.

Enron collapsed 7 years ago, and my page of Enron links & news is still one of the most popular pages on BusinessEthics.ca.

For those of you with an enduring interest in the Enron saga, here are a handful of mostly recent stories that I’ve just added to my Enron ethics page…

• “U.S. Supreme Court to hear Enron figure’s appeal” (Houston Chronicle, November 15, 2008)
• “Gramm and the ‘Enron Loophole'” (NY Times, November 14, 2008)
• “Why Surprises Still Lurk After Enron” (NY Times, February 29, 2008)
• “Enron shareholders may see cash soon” (Houston Chronicle, Nov. 15, 2008)
• “Enron Investors to Share $7.2 Billion Settlement” (Washington Post, September 10, 2008)
• “Enron lawyers in record $688m payday “ (Times Online, September 10, 2008)
• “The man who sued Enron” (Times Online, December 4, 2007)

Not new, but still great:
Book: Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (hardcover)

Video: Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (DVD) (See also: My review of the video.)

It is, I think, overall a very good thing that corporations provide funding for university-based health research. But it’s worth at least thinking about the effect that funding has on professors’ relationships with their students.

Here’s an interesting story about just that issue:

From The Harvard Crimson: Harvard Medical School Students Push to Codify Conflict of Interest Polices

Addressing a weekly clinic for “The Molecular and Cellular Basis of Medicine,” a required introductory course for first-year medical and dental students, Medical School professor Paul G. G. Richardson was accompanied by a patient diagnosed with myeloma, a potentially deadly blood cancer.

The patient was being successfully treated with a bortezomib-based therapy, a drug marketed as Velcade by the Cambridge-based Millennium Pharmaceuticals. Students said that during the clinic discussion, Richardson suggested bortezomib can now be used as a first-line treatment—meaning that physicians can prescribe use of the drug at diagnosis, rather than only as a second or third-line therapy when the disease has recurred.

Intrigued by his presentation, several students later looked up some of his peer-reviewed articles and found that Richardson was on Millennium’s advisory board—a potential conflict of interest that was not disclosed during the session with Richardson and his patient.

The story continues:

In response to the student concerns, the school’s curriculum committee revised the school’s student handbook last month to include a section of new policies mandating that faculty and students disclose all financial ties to pharmaceutical companies when discussing drugs developed by those companies.

But this being a blog about business ethics, I’m curious about how this looks, ethically speaking, from the point of view of the corporation providing the funding. Is it unethical — or even just ethically questionable — to put someone else in a conflict of interest? Granted, being in a conflict of interest is not, in itself, unethical. What matters is what you do about it. But it’s clearly best to try to avoid COI altogether — though that, admittedly, is just not always possible.

I guess this falls very generally into the very broad category of doing things that encourages, promotes, makes more likely, that someone else will do something bad. Think of suborning perjury. The lawyer who puts a witness on the stand, knowing that witness is planning to lie, is doing something very bad, even if she herself isn’t the one doing the lying. Now, I’m not saying there’s a direct parallel here. Far from it. As I said at the very beginning, it’s generally a good thing that companies sometimes fund professors’ research. The COIs that result are probably — often, at least — acceptable costs. But it’s at least worth asking: just how serious would a COI have to be before a drug company said, “No, we’re just not going to put you in that situation”?

Four books that I recommend highly on this topic:

• Conflict of Interest in the Professions, edited by Michael Davis and Andrew Stark
• Ethics and the University, by Michael Davis
• Conflict of Interest in American Public Life, by Andrew Stark
• Conflicts of Interest: Challenges and Solutions in Business, Law, Medicine, and Public Policy, edited by Don A. Moore, Daylian M. Cain, George Loewenstein , and Max H. Bazerman (This book focuses on really intriguing work on COI coming out of experimental psychology and experimental economics.)

I know. Picking on psychics from a business ethics point of view is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel. The poor dears are hardly equipped to defend themselves. At least they can’t claim they didn’t see it coming.

I have a long-term interest in the ethics of selling goods and services that are on the borderline between fraud and entertainment. But today’s posting is inspired by this story from Wired.com: In Troubling Economic Times, Consumers Flock to Online Psychics

While it doesn’t take a psychic to see that tough times lay ahead for the economy, online practitioners of the divination arts say they’re seeing a marked sift in the questions posed by their clientele, with anxious consumers increasingly asking what’s in store for them financially in the months ahead. Believers who normally seek psychics for advice on a cheating spouse are now asking whether a pink slip is in their future, and internet psychics across the board saw a spike in traffic in the days following the initial market crash.

This is pretty troubling. These psychics and fortune-tellers — businesses — are taking money in return for…well, what? Certainly not reliable information or guidance. Entertainment? Maybe. I know lots of people find it fun to read their horoscopes, and some might take a visit to a fortune-teller as an opportunity for introspection, and that introspection might make the trip useful. But here’s the problem: people are relying on so-called psychics and fortune-tellers in a situation where good financial decision-making might be crucial. “Buyer beware?” Again, maybe. But sometimes fools need to be protected from themselves, and the fact that their customers are fools (or simply uneducated) doesn’t make these scam-artists any more ethical.

We should, of course, entertain the possibility that at least some of these psychics, fortune-tellers, etc., are delusional rather than unethical. They might actually believe their own nonsense. Fair point. Likewise, some scientists are delusional about the promise their discoveries hold to cure cancer, save the world, etc. But at least scientists — even delusional ones — generally (but admittedly not always) have the good sense to know that they’ve got to actually test their hypotheses, and look for good evidence that their products work, before selling them to an unwary public.

See also: Skeptic Revamps $1M Psychic Prize
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Update:
This book link is too funny not to post: Psychic Counselor’s Handbook : Ethics, Tools, and Techniques, by Ralph D. Jordan
See also: So you want to be a Medium: A Down to Earth Guide, by Rose Vanden Eynden.
LMAO!

Newsflash! Not everything on the internet is true!

OK, but seriously. The internet may well be pretty much the ‘wild west’ when it comes to honesty in advertising. But false claims are still false claims. Here’s a story about a man suing a prominent social networking site over false claims.

From Wired.com: Classmates.com User Sues; Schoolmates Weren’t Really Looking for Him

When Classmates.com told user Anthony Michaels last Christmas Eve that his former school chums were trying to contact him, he pulled out his wallet and upgraded to the premium membership that would let him contact long-lost fifth-grade dodge-ball buddies and see if his secret crush from high school had looked him up online.
But once he’d parted with the $15, Michaels learned the shocking truth: No one he knew was trying to contact him at all. Classmates.com’s come-on was a lie, and he’d been scammed.

I blogged this morning about a WSJ story on executives exaggerating academic credentials. One of the questions left open by that story was the apportionment of blame across the executives themselves and the organizations they work for. Now here’s a story about an organization going to extreme lengths to verify job applicants’ credentials.

From the NYT: For a Washington Job, Be Prepared to Tell All

Want a top job in the Obama administration? Only pack rats need apply, preferably those not packing controversy.

A seven-page questionnaire being sent by the office of President-elect Barack Obama to those seeking cabinet and other high-ranking posts may be the most extensive — some say invasive — application ever.

The questionnaire includes 63 requests for personal and professional records, some covering applicants’ spouses and grown children as well, that are forcing job-seekers to rummage from basements to attics, in shoe boxes, diaries and computer archives to document both their achievements and missteps.

Also:

The first question asks applicants not just for a résumé, but for every résumé and biographical statement issued by them or others for the past 10 years — a likely safeguard against résumé falsehoods….

Here’s a link to the entire questionnaire.
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Tip of the hat to Wayne!

From the WSJ: Inflated Credentials Surface in Executive Suite

Inflated academic credentials in the nation’s executive suites may be more common than generally thought.

A survey of 358 senior executives and directors at 53 publicly traded companies has turned up at least seven instances of claims that individuals had academic degrees they don’t have. In some cases, the slip-ups don’t appear to have been intentional, and may have been caused by misunderstandings.

Among the executives whose credentials don’t check out: Dennis Workman, chief technical officer at Trimble Navigation Ltd., a big maker of global-positioning-system devices; and James DeHoniesto, until Wednesday the chief information officer at Cabot Microelectronics Corp., a supplier of chemicals and pads used to polish microchips.

The details are not exactly eye-popping. A few execs said they completed degrees they only started, one said he got a Bachelor’s degree when all he really got is an Associate’s degree. But still. Their information was inaccurate, and that’s bad. It’s dishonest (though the WSJ acknowledges that some cases might best be chalked up to misunderstandings) and it sets a lousy example for people lower down the corporate ladder.
Perhaps this story speaks some combination of the following things:

1. People’s general willingness to exaggerate on their CV’s. (Note that it’s not a scientific survey, and only 1.9% of execs had exaggerated.)
2. The willingness of people at the executive level to exaggerate on their CV’s.
3. The willingness to exaggerate on education in particular. Is that a sign that education matters (“It matters enough to lie about!”) or a sign that it’s held in low esteem (“Oh, it’s just a college degree!”)

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Thanks to Laura for the tip!

Here’s another story closely related to last week’s posting about ethical conduct in the sale of ethically controversial products and services. In that posting, I suggested the possibility that one could look at an industry that is morally dubious, but still make distinctions about the ethical conduct of various companies within that industry.

Here’s a case in point, about age-discrimination in the adult entertainment industry. From the Mississauga News: Another stripper files suit against club owner.

A second adult dancer has come forward to file a human rights complaint against the owner of a Mississauga strip club, alleging she too was fired because of her age.
Barbara Sanderson, 45, a divorced mother who lives in the area of Hurontario St. and Bristol Rd. with her two teenaged children, is the second person to complain to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario in recent weeks about John Sit, owner of the New Locomotion Strip Club on Matheson Blvd.
Both she and Kimberlee Ouwroulis, 44, say they were fired from the club because they were too old.
Both cases are now before the tribunal, but a hearing date has yet to be set for either.

So, what can we say about the ethics of age discrimination in a case — in an industry — like this? For many, the answer will be obvious: stripping is a young woman’s occupation. No one goes into a strip club expecting to see 60 year old women on stage, and in fact the cut-off sure to be considerably lower than that. But in general, discriminating based on age is a bad thing. How do we sort this out?

Here are a few points to consider:

1. Workplace discrimination is generally ethically problematic, but it’s also widely recognized that there are such things as bona fide occupational qualifications. To be an airline pilot, you have to have good vision, so “discriminating” against the visually impaired when hiring pilots is not unethical. I imagine the argument will be similar, here. Patrons of strip clubs expect young (or young-looking), conventionally-attractive, primarily large-breasted women. Having those characteristics is pretty much a necessity to be an exotic dancer. Being young & sexy should not be a job requirement for secretaries, but maybe it’s OK for exotic dancers.

2. One standard way of justifying age-based discrimination is to look at lifetime opportunities, rather than at a particular point in time. At a particular moment, a 45-year-old dancer is not going to be treated the same as a 25-year-old dancer. But over their respective lifetimes, it’s likely the two women will be treated the same — recruited into the industry at 18, and dumped at 30-something or 40-something. One could argue there’s a kind of formal fairness in that.

3. On the other hand, the case is much more troubling if we think of other — perhaps equally plausible — grounds for discrimination at strip clubs. What about race? Patrons of clubs are likely to have a preference, there, too. But I imagine that lots of people who can laugh off the age discrimination charge would be more hesitant if a club simply said, “We don’t hire black dancers.” Part of the difference might well be that racial discrimination can’t be defended the way age discrimination can in terms of lifetime opportunities (as in #2 above). When you discriminate based on race, you discriminate for life.

4. If we were to accept that, in this industry, conventional beauty is crucial, we can still question the equating of age with beauty. Lots of women (and men) in their 40’s, for example, can pass for substantially younger, and lots of women (and men) gain sufficient charisma and charm (not to mention dance moves) to more than make up for what they’ve lost in smoothness of skin or firmness of thigh. So perhaps employers who want to discriminate should be asked to back up their prejudice, by providing some sort of metric that shows that a given dancer is not just older, but is actually less popular than others.

5. I think, in this general topic, there’s grounds for a further criticism of this industry. Let’s accept, for the sake of argument, something that might not be true, namely that the demands (i.e., preferences) of patrons of strip clubs essentially pressure club owners into lamentable forms of discrimination. Maybe the final word should be that if your industry forces you to do morally reprehensible things, the only ethical course of action is for you to go out of business.

Here’s a quick one about the use of lie-detectors in hiring new personnel (in the town where this blogger normally resides).
From CBC News: Halifax thinks again about subjecting applicants to lie-detector tests

Halifax Regional Municipality is reviewing its practice of using a polygraph test on job applicants after critics questioned why applicants were asked whether they had ever thought of killing themselves or had sex with animals.

Mayor Peter Kelly said Monday that while it’s important to screen potential employees, he felt some of the questions were inappropriate.

“We should be asking what are the valid questions that should be asked and what is important or imperative to the outcome of the job,” Kelly said.

Um, yeah. No need to add much, except that the validity of polygraph results is sufficiently in question to make their use in hiring decisions pretty dodgy. In Canada, polygraphs can be used in criminal investigations, as an investigative tool, but cannot be used in a court of law. Rejecting a job candidate based on a polygraph test seems awfully close to rendering a verdict of “guilty.”
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Addendum:
Here’s the American Polygraph Association’s Code of Ethics.
Here’s the British and European Polygraph Association’s Code of Ethics.

The headline here is self-explanatory. From the Chronicle of Higher Education:
Professor Risks Job by Refusing to Be Trained in Preventing Sexual Harassment

Here are the first few lines of the story.

A molecular biologist at the University of California at Irvine faces the possibility of being put on unpaid leave because he won’t attend training sessions on preventing sexual harassment, the Orange County Register reported.

Such training, Alexander McPherson told the newspaper, is a “sham,” and he has consistently refused to take it because, among other things, it “violated my rights as a tenured professor” and “cast a shadow of suspicion on my reputation and career.”

The university says a 2004 state law, Assembly Bill 1825, requires two hours of training in sexual-harassment prevention every two years for supervisors at businesses that regularly employ 50 or more people. If Mr. McPherson, 64, doesn’t take the training by November 12, he could be placed on unpaid leave from a job that pays nearly $150,000, the paper reported.

A lot of the debate in the Comments section of the Chronicle page have focused on just how useful or useless such training might be. Some chalked the requirement to have such a course as silly political correctness. Others suggest that even though preventing sexual harassment is a good thing, courses of this kind are / are likely to be / usually are / have a history of being silly wastes of time, given their style. After all, how much good can a 2-hour on-line course really do?

All of which, of course, totally misses the point. Whether the course is effective or not is mostly irrelevant, here. I mean, I hope the course is useful; at very least, it puts sexual harassment on people’s ‘radar screens.’ But the question here is really whether this professor’s employer — a business that falls within the purview of Bill 1825 — is justified in requiring the professor (and all its other employees) to take the course. And of course, the university is justified. If it wants to have its employees spend 2 hours on something significantly less important than sexual harassment awareness, it can do that. If employees disagree strongly about the waste of time, they can (together) put their case to management. The university has the authority to have some say over how its employees spend some of their time. Universities (and other businesses) have a legitimate interest in a range of restrictions on the way employees behave & spend their time while at work. This isn’t a matter of usefulness, but of authority. (Disagree, if you will, about whether the employer has that authority, in this case, but please see that that is where the issue lies.)

Professors, one might say, are not exactly typical employees. We are accorded exceptional freedoms within our work (we claim something called “academic freedom,” and the lucky ones among us get tenure) so that we can seek truth & beauty without being hassled by the Man. But it’s pretty hard to see anything in a mandatory-for-everyone course on the dangers of a serious social problem that jeopardizes that.