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When it’s unethical to be a well-published academic

When it’s unethical to be a well-published academic

by Charles Foster

There’s a huge number of journals publishing papers about ethics. Would the world be poorer, less ethically well adjusted, or less wise, if half of them went out of business? I doubt it. Quite the opposite, in fact. Less, famously, is more. Let’s face it: there’s little or nothing that’s new in most of the papers we write. We write them because we feel that we should; because our ‘career’ or our self-esteem demands it, or, more likely, because the department needs to put in a long list of publications in order to justify its existence.  The fact of a publication is more important than its quality.

In order to justify the recycling of old thoughts, and to convince ourselves and our readers that we’re really smart, we write our papers in impenetrable jargon. Whole papers are devoted to saying in new technical language what was simply and accessibly said in words of one syllable in the 1930s. Academic enterprise has become a process of obfuscation.Read More »When it’s unethical to be a well-published academic

The Ethics of Etiquette

It is of course nearly the ‘silly season’, but the amount of attention paid in recent days to Carolyn Bourne’s critical email to her future daughter-in-law Heidi Withers about her manners is remarkable. Most of the rules Bourne mentions concern the table manners of guests: 1) Don’t declare what you will and will not eat.… Read More »The Ethics of Etiquette

Ban the beets?

The hot new performance-enhancing drug is…beetroot juice!? (original paper)

Nitrates in food reduces the oxygen cost of some forms of exercise and improves high-intensity exercise tolerance. So the researchers gave half a litre of beetroot juice (which is rich in nitrate) or a nitrate depleted placebo to club-level competitive cyclists. The nitrate juice produced better cycling performance when compared to the placebo. On a 16.1 km race beet juice reduced the total time by 2.7% – not much, but presumably enough to matter in a competition.

In any case, this is fun for doping discussions. Should we ban athletes from quaffing beet juice?

Read More »Ban the beets?

Artificial meat – the best idea you’ve heard all year!

Last week scientists from Oxford and Amsterdam announced the results of an investigation into the environmental impact of growing meat artificially in labs rather than keeping livestock. They found that greenhouse gases would be reduced by up to 96%. In addition, cultured meat production would only require 1% of the land and 4% of the water that conventional meat does. They estimated that if more resources were put into the research, it would take about five years to produce artificial meat with the consistency of mincemeat, and another five years to produce steaks. Their conclusion is modest: “We are not saying that we could, or would necessarily want to, replace conventional meat with its cultured counterpart right now.”  This modesty is misplaced – it should be considered not just desirable, but hugely important to replace conventional with artificial meat.Read More »Artificial meat – the best idea you’ve heard all year!

“Tourists are ambassadors in bathing suits” – On the ethics of choosing a holiday destination

Michael Allmaier, an Austrian journalist, wrote a controversial article in the German newspaper “Die Zeit” (http://www.zeit.de/2011/26/Reiseziele). It is devoted to the question, on why to pick an “ethical” holiday destination. He claims, that tourists should have a political attitude towards choosing a country to travel to. This inspired me to write this post on the ethics of selecting a holiday destination:

Read More »“Tourists are ambassadors in bathing suits” – On the ethics of choosing a holiday destination

Shocking behavior: Government scare tactics, smoking, and public health

Coming to a mini-mart near you. The FDA has just approved nine very grisly looking warning labels—to be slapped on cigarette packs throughout the USA. But will they work to cut smoking … or will they backfire?

Here are some of the top reasons why these labels may not only fail to achieve the FDA’s desired outcome, but could actually do the opposite – leading to more smoking, not less.Read More »Shocking behavior: Government scare tactics, smoking, and public health

A Reflection on Confronting Evil

The New York state legislature has nearly approved a bill endorsing same-sex marriage, finally bringing the state in line with such bastions of extravagant liberalism as Argentina, Nepal, and Iowa. Taking to the airwaves in the tradition of Father Charles Coughlin, New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan declared the legislation an “ominous threat”. Same-sex marriage is “detrimental for the common good,” said the Archbishop; it violates “the natural law that’s embedded in every man and woman”.

This post is not about gay marriage; I will not present a positive argument for the moral necessity of marriage equality. Similarly, I will not write a post about the moral necessity of racial integration in public education, or about the moral necessity of women’s suffrage. The mere raising of such issues, in a context of argument, implies an open question about the simple human dignity of the people affected. My starting point is that marriage equality is such an issue. My question, instead, is this: how we are we to deal with those among us most responsible for our collective failure to decisively conclude this argument, the very existence of which is morally repugnant?

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What is it like to be a bee?

Do bees have feelings? What would that mean? And if they do have feelings, how should we treat them? Do we have a moral obligation toward insects?

Honeybees “exhibit pessimism” according to a recent study published in Current Biology, and summarized in this Wired Science article. Pay attention to the Wired headline – “Honeybees might have emotions” – and to these choice clippings as well: “You can’t be pessimistic if you don’t have an inner life.” And, “invertebrates like bees aren’t typically thought of as having human-like emotions.” The implication, of course, is that these invertebrates have been shown to have them.

Inner life? Human-like emotions? Is there “something it is like,” then, to be a bee?

From an ethics standpoint, questions like these make a big difference. Read More »What is it like to be a bee?

Choosing To Die

Matthew Rallison is a sixth-form student who is visiting the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics for his work experience placement.

Sir Terry Pratchett’s documentary, “Choosing to die” and the recent deaths of Ann McPherson and Jack Kevorkian (inventor of the Mercitron) have recently raised the debate of the legalisation of euthanasia, alongside criticism of the BBC’s bias favour towards the subject.

The latter of these issues is, to an extent, accurate as the programme echoes Pratchett’s support of euthanasia. Yet the conclusion of the programme, for me, offered personal reflection, rather than an affirmation that euthanasia (or assisted suicide) is morally correct. Watching, on screen, the death of Peter Smedley was not a compelling argument but humbling. Peter was unassuming as he fell out of consciousness. “A good death,” as Pratchett describes it. The scene offered a powerful impression of human dignity and spirit, rather than promoting death, or suicide. It supported virtue in life (or in leaving it). I reject the ex-Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir Ali’s claim that it the programme depicted “glorified suicide.” It did not.

Read More »Choosing To Die