Archive for 2024

Assessing your “conflict-of-interest discount”

In The Conflict-of-Interest Discount in the Marketplace of Ideas https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4979205  John Barrios of Yale University, together with other scholars, conducted a survey of “economists and a representative sample of Americans to infer the reduction in the perceived value of a paper when its authors have conflicts of interest (CoI), i.e., […]

A Conflict of Interest thought experiment  for Joseph Biden – and others

The pardon by President Joseph Biden of his son Hunter for weapons and tax charges was the subject of near universal condemnation as a conflict of interest.  We at the COI Blog share that concern, but are less interested in the facts  of individual cases as we are about what […]

Conducting Ethics Interviews

My latest from CEP https://bit.ly/3V6yL9l

Dealing with Ethics Slobs

The various investigations of President Trump and some members of his administration and others have focused attention on an age-old debate:  whether careless wrongdoing is as reprehensible as is the intentional sort. The answer is, I believe, Yes.  Indeed, crimes of carelessness may in some ways be even more perilous […]

Where law and ethics meet

https://www.kaplanwalker.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Where-Law-and-Ethics-Meet-Selected-Postings-from-the-Conflict-of-Interest-Blog.pdf

Do dogs have conflicts of interest?

What is new at the Conflict of Interest Blog

Since it was launched in 2011 the COI Blog has covered six somewhat related areas: Below are some of the more notable recent posts on these topics. COI https://conflictofinterestblog.com/2024/06/conflicts-of-interest-whats-the-cost.html https://conflictofinterestblog.com/2024/03/actual-versus-apparent-conflicts-of-interest.html Risk assessment https://conflictofinterestblog.com/2024/08/the-four-dimensional-risk-assessment-https-ideasandanswers-com-the-four-dimensional-compliance-risk-assessment.html https://conflictofinterestblog.com/2024/08/loyalty-as-an-ethics-risk-2.html https://conflictofinterestblog.com/2024/03/what-is-the-opposite-of-right-trick-question.html Compliance and ethics programs https://conflictofinterestblog.com/2024/07/what-is-the-full-promise-of-compliance-and-ethics-programs.html Behavioral ethics https://conflictofinterestblog.com/2024/06/behavioral-ethics-compliance-risk-assessment.html https://conflictofinterestblog.com/2024/05/ben-franklin-behavioral-ethicist-2.html Moral hazard https://conflictofinterestblog.com/2023/09/compliance-incentives-risk-assessment-and-moral-hazard-2.html Ethical culture https://conflictofinterestblog.com/2024/08/climate-change-and-the-ethical-duty-of-open-mindedness.html […]

Loyalty as an ethics risk

Movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn famously said: “I’ll take fifty percent efficiency to get one hundred percent loyalty.”  But too much loyalty can be bad for reasons that go beyond inefficiency, as shown by ex-President Trump’s call for then FBI director Comey to be loyal to him personally. On the other […]

Climate change and the ethical duty of open-mindedness

In 2013 Professor Robert Prentice of the University of Texas argued “that it is the ethical obligation of citizens of any democracy to seek out factual evidence on both sides of important policy debates, to study it carefully, and to evaluate it as objectively as possible.” See https://conflictofinterestblog.com/2013/01/an-ethical-duty-of-open-mindedness.html. I agree, […]

The four-dimensional risk assessment https://ideasandanswers.com

The Four-Dimensional Compliance Risk Assessment