News and Views

For the first time, a majority of U.S. medical schools have implemented strong conflict-of-interest policies, according to the 2010 American Medical Student Association (AMSA) PharmFree Scorecard.  The Scorecard, developed by AMSA and the Pew Prescription Project, finds that 79 of 152 medical schools (52 percent) now receive a grade of A or B for their policies governing pharmaceutical industry interaction with medical school faculty and students, compared with 45 last year.  Related resource: AMSA Scorecard with grades for each medical school.

Speaking of the pharmaceutical industry, the public ranks it with oil, health insurance and tobacco as industries needing more regulation, according to a new poll by Harris Interactive. Together with the telecommunications and automobile industries, these are the least trusted businesses in America. "When asked which of a list of 17 industries are generally honest and trustworthy, almost half (48%) of all adults say 'none of these' which is the highest number giving this negative response since we first asked this question in 2003," the firm reported. The findings confirm a number of other studies showing that public trust of institutions is in decline. Related resource: Press release on survey findings, Dec. 2, 2010.

Can empathy be learned?  And if so, can it be taught?  An innovative project at Capital University in Ohio aims to find out by immersing six selected students in activities designed to let them "walk a mile in someone else's shoes."  The Empathy Project was conceived by Capital President Denvy Bowman, who calls it a "monumental undertaking" but is not willing to divulge many details while students are applying for the chance to participate.  Below is a short video of Bowman describing the project:



A University of Michigan study concluded several months ago that today's college students are not as empathetic as students of the 1980s and 1990s.  Sara Konrath, a researcher on the 30-year study of 14,000 students, suggests that exposure to media and social networking could be a reason: "Compared to 30 years ago, the average American now is exposed to three times as much nonwork-related information. In terms of media content, this generation of college students grew up with video games, and a growing body of research, including work done by my colleagues at Michigan, is establishing that exposure to violent media numbs people to the pain of others."  Related resources:  University of Michigan research on students and empathy; sample questions from the University of Michigan study.

One in every four people in the world paid a bribe to a public official during the last year, according to a study by Transparency International released this week on International Anti-Corruption Day.  The Berlin-based non-governmental agency reported data on small-scale bribery from polls of more than 91,000 people in 86 countries and territories.  While bribes were frequently paid to health, education and tax authorities, it was law enforcement that proved most corrupt, with 29 percent of people who had dealings with police saying they paid a bribe. Worldwide, sub-Saharan Africa was the region reporting the greatest incidence of bribery with more than one person in two saying they had bribed government officials in the last year.  The Middle East and North Africa was the next most corrupt region, followed by the former Soviet republics, South America, the Balkans and Turkey, the Asia-Pacific region, the European Union, and North America.  Related resource: Transparency International 2010 Global Corruption Barometer.

News and Views

Nurses once again are the professionals Americans trust most. Eighty-three percent of Americans say nurses have either very high or high ethical standards, positioning them at the top of Gallup's annual ranking of various professions. They have retained the No. 1 spot in the poll for the last decade. Rounding out the top five are pharmacists, medical doctors, police officers and engineers. The bottom five - or least trusted - are members of Congress, car salespeople, United States Senators, stockbrokers and HMO managers. The December 2009 survey marked the first time the honesty and ethical standards of members of Congress were ranked as "low" or "very low" by a majority (55 percent) of Americans.

Only 28 percent of global companies – and less than half of those with market capitalizations of more than $10 billion – have labor and human rights policies covering their global supply chains, according to an analysis of 2,500 companies by Harvard Law School's Pensions Project and ASSET4. “Benchmarking Corporate Policies on Labor and Human Rights in Global Supply Chains,” finds that even "fewer have follow up procedures; only 15 percent have issued a detailed LHR code of conduct for their suppliers." About 43 percent of companies based in Europe have labor and human rights policies for suppliers, compared to only 23 percent of US companies and 20 percent of Asian firms. The industries most likely to have such policies are those that have experienced negative publicity about abuses by suppliers.

Incidents of health-care fraud are increasing with the downturn in the economy, according to a survey of ethics and compliance professionals by the Health Care Compliance Association. One quarter of respondents reported an increase in the last year in the number of incidents of actual or attempted fraud. By comparison, 13 percent had seen fewer such incidents. The study asked about five types of fraud: illegal kickbacks and Stark (self-referral) violations; services not provided as claimed; services not medically necessary; hospital stays not supported by medical necessity; and reimbursement claims for durable medical equipment.

News and Views

People are as willing as ever to inflict pain on innocent strangers in blind obedience to authority, according to recent experiments replicating the infamous 1963 study by psychologist Stanley Milgram. In the original experiment, familiar to many who have taken undergraduate psychology courses, ordinary citizens were told they were participating in a study of the effects of punishment on learning. The subjects were instructed to administer electric shocks to a "learner" (who was strapped to a chair and fitted with electrodes) whenever test questions were answered incorrectly. Eighty percent were willing to deliver what they believed were 150-volt shocks; 65 percent continued as the level increased to 450 volts and appeared to cause great harm to the learners. The new study, published in the current issue of American Psychologist, yields similar results, though the researcher at Santa Clara University modified the methodology somewhat to comply with ethics rules regarding human subjects. Additional resource: Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View, New York: Harper & Row, 1975.

On his first full day in office, President Obama issued an executive order designed to limit the influence of special interests by closing the revolving door of lobbyists in and out of the executive branch of government. Though the order is entitled, "Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Personnel," its scope is limited to specific matters involving lobbyists: a ban on gifts by lobbyists to employees; recusal of political appointees from participating in matters relevant to the interests of past employers or clients; and restrictions on lobbying access to the executive branch by political appointees after they leave their government jobs. Not surprisingly, the policy is already proving difficult to maintain in a city with a tradition of cozy relationships between lobbyists and public officials. Additional resources: Office of Government Ethics internal memorandum on the policy; the ethics pledge signed by political appointees; and a publication from the Council on Excellence in Government describing a broader range of ethical principles and issues relevant to public-sector institutions.

Companies in China, India and Russia are among the most likely to bribe public officials when doing business abroad, according to a new report by Transparency International, a non-governmental organization working to combat corruption. By contrast, businesses based in Belgium, Canada, The Netherlands and Switzerland are among the least likely to engage in bribery. The industries most prone to bribe officials are construction, real estate, oil/gas, mining and heavy manufacturing. Financial services and technology rank among the least corrupt. TI Chairman Huguette Labelle said, “The inequity and injustice that corruption causes makes it vital for governments to redouble their efforts to enforce existing laws and regulations on foreign bribery and for companies to adopt effective anti-bribery programmes."

Is intense competition for online "eyeballs and page views" is eroding the ethical and quality standards of journalism? Bob Steele of The Poynter Institute thinks so. Writing last month in a publication of Harvard University's Nieman Foundation for Journalism, he argues that the "time-honored journalistic values of accuracy and fairness are eroded" when information is posted online, in real time, without verification. As editors increasingly encourage reporters to blog and Twitter, and as traditional media rely on non-journalistic blogs and web posts as sources, the resulting errors undermine credibility. Steele concludes, "The intense financial forces, the thinner staffs, and the risk-taking culture create a mixture where heightened quality control measures are all the more essential."

News and Views

For the seventh straight year, Americans consider nurses the most ethical of all professionals. In Gallup's annual Honesty and Ethics of Professions survey, eighty-four percent of respondents rate the honesty and ethical standards of nurses as either "high" or "very high." Meanwhile, public respect for bankers fell significantly in the wake of the current financial crisis and the ethical failures that precipitated it.

Regardless of how they voted in the recent presidential election, more than 80 percent of Americans agree that the federal government lacks ethical leadership. In a recent Harris Poll, three-fifths of adults and teenagers say most political leaders are dishonest, with a majority believing most politicians would accept a bribe if offered one -- a perception likely to be reinforced by recent news involving such figures as the governor of Illinois, the senior U.S. senator from Alaska and the mayor of Birmingham. Other studies indicate that trust in political leaders worldwide has been declining steadily for several years.

"Are We Safe Yet?" was the theme of the annual conference on moral leadership at the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. This year's program considered the global threat posed by nuclear weapons. Transcripts and webcasts from the conference are available online.

Will the economic downturn prompt more ethical misconduct in business? Possibly. In a national survey of 300 CEOs of large companies, conducted this year by Mann Center Director John Knapp and Clemson University's Daniel Wueste, a majority agreed that executives are more likely to make ethical compromises in times of economic difficulty. Click for a snapshot chart.

Google, Campbell Soup and Johnson & Johnson are perceived by the public to be the most socially responsible companies, according to the 2008 Corporate Social Responsibility Index by Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship and the Reputation Institute. According to the principal researcher, "The U.S. findings show that corporate governance — ethics and transparency — are increasing in their importance to overall corporate reputation.”