By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Ethics in Government, Other

As a Massachusetts taxpayer, I resent this. The Boston Globe reports that several Boston-area hospitals have wildly overcharged the state on charges for caring for indigent patients.

Two among several examples cited:

[Cambridge Health Alliance] charged the pool $6,469 for 100 tablets of the anticholesterol drug Lipitor, for which it should have charged $224. In total, overcharges for Lipitor amounted to $1 million.

Boston Medical Center dramatically marked up charges for CT scans: $2,677 for a specific type of scan compared to $272 to $436 that Medicare or a private HMO would pay.

Hmph. It almost sounds like these folks borrowed some procurement “experts” from the Pentagon. You’d think the Mitt Romney administration, which ran on a campaign of fiscal responsibility, would pay more attention.

Now, keep in mind, these are only allegations–note the question mark in my headline. But they’re serious allegations, and I hope the Riley probe is thorough and fast.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government

George C. Deutsch worked at NASA until yesterday. This was the guy who didn’t want to let reporters talk to NASA scientists who believe that there is in fact a climate change problem–or other science issues that did not follow the Bush administration line. He’s also the one who would not let the agency utter the phrase “Big Bang” without following it with “Theory.”

According to his resume, he graduated from Texas A&M University in 2003. According to the university, however, in a document released yesterday, he did no such thing. He attended, but never finished.

He’s only 24, but you’d think by now he’d have figured out a cardinal rule: never lie on your resume. Not only is it unethical, but it’s awfully easy to catch if anyone bothers to check.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government

My congratulations to Noel L. Hillman, chief of the Department of Justice’s public integrity division, and until the other day, lead investigator in the Abramoff scandal. President Bush just named him to a judgeship.

Unfortunately, this rather too conveniently leaves this crucial probe, which has reached into many corners of the Washington bureaucracy, a rudderless ship.

Is this a coincidence? I rather doubt it. I am in no way impugning the integrity of Mr. Hillman, but I do wonder if he would have been promoted had he not been uncovering this nasty bit of business.

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By Posted on Posted in Media Ethics

I wrote on January 29,

Meanwhile, the author claims he originally submitted it as fiction, the publisher–no tiny little outfit but Doubleday, one of the biggest in the nation–first called in creative nonfiction and when that didn’t fly, said that Frey had hoodwinked them.

It would be very illuminating to see Frey’s original book proposal and see where the truth lies. Meanwhile, the thing stinks.

Yesterday, Publishers Weekly interviewed Frey’s agent, Kassie Evashevski, who had this to say:

I think the confusion over fiction vs. nonfiction may stem from the fact that early in the submission process, James raised the issue of whether he could publish it as an autobiographical novel–ONLY, he said, to spare his family undue embarrassment, NOT because it wasn’t true. I told him I would bring it up with a few publishers, which I did, and the response was unanimous:if the book is true, it should be published as a memoir.

James personally explained to his editor that the events depicted in the book took place as described. Based on the information given us by the author, [editor] Sean McDonald and [publisher] Nan Talese believed in good faith they were buying a memoir, just as I believed I was selling them one.

I guess the only way we’ll know for certain is if someone can turn up his original correspondence–but of course, even that will have to be scrutinized, as in this case, it would be all-too-easy to pull the kind of faked-memo shenanigans that got Dan Rather in so much trouble back in ’04.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics

Yesterday, ExxonMobil announced its 2005 profits–the largest of any corporate entity in any year in history.

$36.13 billion, of which $23.2 billion was distributed to shareholders (up $8.3 billion over last year’s distribution.

The company obviously feels embarrassed by its riches. The press release, linked above, is full of all sorts of justifications and rationalizations.

The simple truth is that this is simply an obscene amount of money, and ExxonMobil should be embarrassed!

Especially since this was the year where gas prices shot up by over 30 percent for a while, before settling down. Especially considering the impact in the Gulf of Mexico of environmental damage wreaked by hurricanes going through the offshore oil rigs. Especially considering the wretched fate of New Orleans’ poor. Even Wal-Mart, not exactly a paragon of corporate virtue, managed to dedicate significant resources to the relief effort. But for ExxonMobil, it’s just another chance to line the pockets of its shareholders.

While no oil companies have totally clean hands, I will continue to buy from more responsible companies like Citgo and BP whenever possible.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics

Let’s see…if I’m not mistaken, it is now 2006. If I recall correctly, we are talking about an indictment that was handed down in 2004, for crimes allegedly committed in 2001 and earlier.

You’ve got to wonder–would it have taken so long to come to trial if Ken Lay hadn’t had so many “friends in high places?”

Oh, and I think a fair punishment for Lay and his ilk would be some jail time and then strip him of all assets, use them to at least partially reimburse the innocent Enron employees who watched their retirement nest eggs go up in smoke, make him get a job in a factory somewhere, pay him minimum wage, and let him see if he could support himself in the style to which he’s accustomed. Oh yes, with community service in the form of unpaid presentations to b-school kids on how he “done us wrong” and what the human consequences were. It might be rather educational, don’t you think. And cheaper for us taxpayers than throwing away the key.

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By Posted on Posted in Media Ethics

I’ve been quietly following the James Frey flap for a couple of weeks now. This is the guy who got Oprah’s endorsement for his “memoir” of addiction, jail time, and so forth (I will not make it easier to locate by naming the book here)–only it turned out to be fiction.

When this was revealed, Oprah first defended him for creating a gripping read that addressed deep issues, etc. The other day, she snapped out of the trance and tore him apart on camera.

Meanwhile, the author claims he originally submitted it as fiction, the publisher–no tiny little outfit but Doubleday, one of the biggest in the nation–first called in creative nonfiction and when that didn’t fly, said that Frey had hoodwinked them.

It would be very illuminating to see Frey’s original book proposal and see where the truth lies. Meanwhile, the thing stinks.

Best commentary I’ve seen on it is from Pat Holt of Holt Uncensored–she is always worth reading.

As of this writing, she hasn’t archived the column yet, but she has some great suggestions:

  • Offer a refund for any reader who wants one, and make that process very easy
  • Hire website muckrakers like smokinggun.com to vet any book that claims to be nonfiction
  • Get Frey to rewrite the book and send him out on tour to flog the vastly different rewrite, which would be priced at half of the original
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    By Posted on Posted in Media Ethics

    We’ve all shared a laugh as improbable images cloned together in Photoshop make their way across the Internet. The problem is that image manipulation can be used very unethically–to fudge scientific results, for example

    A Boston Globe story documents how editorial staff at the Journal of Cell Biology is running all submitted photos through Photoshop to detect fraud. (The New York Times ran a rather clearer article, but it requires paid access.)

    And they’ve discovered fraud is rampant enough that they’ve had to yank 14 accepted papers. In some cases, they’re even notifying the institutions sponsoring the research to check into the accuracy of the researchers’ findings.

    After the scandal with Hwang Woo Suk and his faked stem cells, such caution is unfortunately necessary. And form a science point of view, I find it fascinating that Photoshop can not only alter images, but tell you if an image is already altered.

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    By Posted on Posted in Other

    A bit off-track for this blog, but this has to be shared: these pictures of elephants, eagles, whales, etc seem so human, and the organizers claim they’re unretouched. Those in southern California may want to seek out the exhibit in Santa Monica.

    I pass on the post from my good friend Nenah Sylver:

    Subject: Ashes and Snow – extraordinary California photography exhibit on the
    web

    This is what I’ve been told:

    In the Ashes and Snow exhibit, there is no digital layering. All the images are as the photographer saw them and have not been digitally enhanced. All of the animals are wild and people friendly.

    The new exhibit will be shown at the Santa Monica Pier mid January through May. Many of the actual photographs are about
    5 feet by 8 feet in size.

    You can see them on the web here:
    https://www.ashesandsnow.org

    Follow these directions: click on “Portfolio” and then double click on the image. To see more images, keep double clicking, and the images will change.

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    By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics

    This from a financial currency exchange newswire:

    A corporate scandal involving Livedoor, a Japanese high tech company caused such a big drop in the stock market that trading had to halt on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

    People get hurt when other people cheat. Ethics crimes are not victimless. Just ask those poor Enron employees who saw their retirement funds go up in smoke as the company stock turned worthless.

    Run your company the right way… Sign the Ethics Pledge so you can brag about it. And build a company that grows itself and the economy instead of shooting it in the foot.

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