ethics news stories on Newser

Secret Service Memo: No Booze 10 Hours Before Work

Mark Russell — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 06:14:00 CDT

Memo to Secret Service agents: no more drinking alcohol within 10 hours of working; no bringing foreigners to your hotel rooms; and, no going to "non-reputable" establishments. Those are just three items in a 10-point list of rules handed out to agency employees yesterday, as the Secret Service tries to...

Majority of Lawmakers Funnel Money to Families

Kevin Spak — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 13:14:05 CDT

Having an uncle in Congress is apparently a pretty sweet gig. More than half of the lawmakers in Congress have bestowed some kind of financial boon on their families, according to the Citizens for Responsibilities and Ethics in Washington, which has released a 346-page report that the New York Times...

Worst Liars and Cheaters: Rich People

Kevin Spak — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 11:15:05 CST

You might think that people who are comparatively well off would be less likely to lie and cheat to make a buck, but you'd be wrong. A series of experiments from UC Berkeley doctoral student Paul Piff found that time and again upper-class people were willing to do shady things...

Ethicists: Killing Babies Should Be Legal

Kevin Spak — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 14:43:05 CST

Two Oxford bioethicists are taking heat for their assertion that there is nothing morally wrong with infanticide—or, as they call it, "after-birth abortion." In an article published in the Journal of Medical Ethics , Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva argue that babies, like fetuses, are only "potential persons" with no...

Santorum Ethics Questions Resurface

Rob Quinn — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 07:25:00 CST

Rick Santorum's rise to the top tier of the GOP race has triggered a search for skeletons in his closet. Ethics questions from Santorum's time as a US senator have resurfaced, including allegations that he received a mortgage at a preferred rate from a bank run by a campaign donor,...

Study Uncovers Big, Fat (Faced) Liars

Rob Quinn — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 06:19:00 CDT

Wide-faced men tend to be a lot trickier than their narrow-faced counterparts, according to researchers who measured the faces of hundreds of business school students before running them through assorted behavioral tests. The study found that broad-faced men are three times more likely to lie and nine times more likely...

Series of Scandals Led to Fall of Ohio State's Tressel

Matt Cantor — Tue, 31 May 2011 09:06:00 CDT

Ohio State’s vaunted football coach Jim Tressel resigned suddenly yesterday , and a new Sports Illustrated story may explain why. The piece on Tressel details a “pattern” of broken rules under his coaching, all amid much praise from other football heavyweights for his “steadiness” and “integrity.” The latest crisis occurred when...

IMF Has Many Ethics Rules ... for the Little Guys Only

Kate Schwartz — Mon, 30 May 2011 14:59:05 CDT

The IMF has gotten tough on ethics over the last four years—well, ethics as they apply to the little guys. In a look at its ethics policy in the wake of Dominique Strauss-Kahn's arrest, the New York Times reports that the fund has tightened the internal methods it uses...

Evolution: Survival of the ... Nicest?

John Johnson — Tue, 17 May 2011 12:42:09 CDT

Our notion of "survival of the fittest" has long held that self-centered aggressors dominate the world and that being an ethical do-gooder is a losing evolutionary bet, writes David Brooks in the New York Times . But that notion is shifting, he argues, and he rounds up a spate of new...