I have to say, it distorts my internal incentives when I am happy to see really blatant examples of ethical lapses. Sort of like when you’re cleaning the attic and searching for roaches: on one hand, you’d be happy if there were none, but, still, there’s a thrill each time you find a roach and catch it—and, at that point, you want it to be a big ugly one!
I can relate to this. I work in the loose area of risk research, so whenever there’s a natural disaster or financial crisis or whatever, I think, yup, there’s a research program in here somewhere.
Or, as a social worker once joked to me – the more kids that get abused, the more money we make.
I do research on prevention of use of drugs, cigarettes and alcohol in teenagers. And (in Southern California) very of them smoke anyway. How am I supposed to stop them if they’re not doing it? And how am I supposed to detect a reduction from 1 percent. In particular, it’s hard to find an Asian teenager who has even smoked a cigarette once.
Makes me want to hang around outside schools handing out packs.
Or move.
Are they immigrants themselves or the descendants of immigrants? I know college students from Asia who are surprised by how anti-tobacco America is with taxes and whatnot. They smoke a lot, and have been doing so since they were young.
Another aspect of the experience is that a positive instance sort of verifies that you are doing your job. If I am proofreading a manuscript, I get nervous if I do not find an error after a while, thinking that I must not be paying attention.
So discovery of an ethical lapse lets you know you are on top of things, and a blatant one says that what you are doing is important.
Beta testing software is like this as well.
Well, here is a sweet surprise for an ethics blogger:
http://goo.gl/omp7f
Ps. The next big tobacco.