In 1975 I was a college freshman at Pennsylvania State University. I spent only a year there, but I couldn't help noticing that football was a big deal on that campus. Two years earlier the Nittany Lions had finished their season undefeated and won the Orange Bowl. But I was pre-med, and my curriculum didn't lend itself to football Saturdays. During my year there I never got close enough to Beaver Stadium to be able to recall what it looked like.
Joseph Vincent Paterno was still in his 40s then, but he had been head coach for a decade and had already collected five bowl victories. His career totals of bowl victories (24) and appearances (37) are records unlikely to be broken any time soon. I'll go out on a limb and say his Division I record of 409 career wins will likely stand through at least the rest of this century.
Paterno spent six decades in coaching at Penn State, having signed on as an assistant in 1950. He built a culture of success in which academic performance was regarded as equal in importance to what an athlete did between the sidelines. He consistently emphasized team over individual, as symbolized by Lions uniforms that had numbers but not names.
In a national culture obsessed with youth, it came as no surprise that many fans thought the grandfatherly Paterno might be getting too old to continue coaching successfully when the team hit a five-year slide, losing more than winning during the 2000-2004 seasons. There were many calls for his retirement. He finally said he would step down if things didn't turn around in 2005. That year the team went 11-1, winning the Big Ten title and the Orange Bowl. In 2006 Paterno was inducted into the college football Hall of Fame, turned 80, and kept right on coaching. The five years from 2005 through 2010 brought a record of 58-19, and few fans remained convinced that Joe was too old to continue as head coach. The term "living legend" has fit few men in organized athletics as well as when it has been worn by Joe Pa.
In 2002 Joe Paterno, in his mid-70s, was informed by Mike McQueary, a young graduate assistant, that McQueary had witnessed Jerry Sandusky sexually abusing a ten-year-old boy in a shower in a university athletic facility. Sandusky, the former PSU defensive coordinator, had retired from that position in 1999 but had continued access to university facilities because of his involvement in youth programs. Paterno reported McQueary's information to university officials, including the athletic director and the administrator who oversaw the university police.
Accounts of how and why it took nine years for there to be a thorough investigation and a grand jury report are a bit hard to follow, and I certainly won't try to make sense of them here. No, what I want to do instead is tell you what troubles me about this story.
McQueary told the grand jury he was very specific, in his conversation with Paterno, about what he saw in the shower. Paterno says otherwise. Both have reasons for biased recall. Should we believe that a man in his mid-20s would describe what he saw in graphic detail to a man in his mid-70s? It is entirely possible that he did exactly that. But I am firmly in the camp of the skeptics on this one.
Should Paterno have taken the information he was given and gone directly to outside (not university) law enforcement? Joe now says that, in hindsight, he wishes he had done more. But that's the thing about hindsight: you never have it when you need it. He did what he was supposed to do and sent it to university higher-ups whose job it was to handle such problems.
Should McQueary have gone straight to outside law enforcement (not to Paterno)? He knew that Sandusky had been Paterno's friend and protégé. What would you have done in his place? I know my answer. There is plenty of blame to go around when we consider the tragedy of Sandusky's shocking behavior, extending over a period of years with an uncertain number of young victims.
If you've read my profile associated with this blog, you know I like to find fault with the work of professional journalists. And now I have a whole sector to go after: the sports writers, commentators, and pundits. It is very difficult to find a Paterno defender among them. When the university's Board of Trustees rejected Paterno's decision to retire after this season and instead abruptly fired him in a public relations damage-control move (that was stunningly ineffective), I heard no sports journalists even suggest the decision might have been hasty or an overreaction. Why? Well, no one wants to jeopardize his career by saying something that might label him as soft on child sexual abuse.
Just look at what happened to Franco Harris. The Steelers' superstar running back was born the year Paterno joined the PSU coaching staff and played for Paterno in college. Somewhere along the line Harris learned something about loyalty and courage under fire and suggested the Penn State Board of Trustees displayed a lack of both. For taking that stand, Franco was criticized by Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, who demanded that Harris step down as chair of the board of the Pittsburgh Promise scholarship program.
Ravenstahl? Really? The same Ravenstahl who wasn't even born yet during the 1970s, when the Steelers, whose fans' affectionate names for the franchise included Franco's Army, were the best team that had ever stepped onto an NFL gridiron. The same Ravenstahl who became the youngest (and arguably least qualified) mayor in Pittsburgh history because the city council had made him Council President in a foolish compromise, and Mayor Bob O'Connor died in office. The same Ravenstahl who, in his five years as mayor, has been the subject of a remarkable number of controversies and criticisms surrounding his apparent lack of any sense of ethics. Biblical sayings in abundance (the ones about judging not and about casting the first stone, among others) apply to this buffoon.
Joseph Vincent Paterno gave six decades of his life to the Pennsylvania State University, helping to make its athletic programs not only successful but famous for character and integrity. The university board of trustees, amid swirling controversy and scandal, fired an 84-year-old legend because he didn't do enough after being informed of a very disturbing incident nearly a decade earlier. They did it because, in their view, letting him finish the season would have further tarnished the university's reputation.
I have often sighed and shaken my head when I've seen a football game end with a result different from what would have happened if the officials had not made a bad call late in the game. The Penn State board of trustees made a bad call. Yes, that is an understatement if ever there was one. Thank you to Franco Harris for telling us the honest truth about that.
And thank you to Joe Pa for giving your best to college football for six decades and inspiring generations of players, fans, and alumni.
Epilogue
And now (January 21, 2012), Joseph Vincent Paterno has been laid to rest. I believe he will be remembered for his many contributions to his university and to collegiate football and that Sandusky will ultimately be nothing more than a footnote. Joe has said he really didn't know how to handle the matter and turned it over to people he believed would take the appropriate steps. For that the PSU Board of Trustees dismissed him nearly a decade later - for PR purposes. May Joe rest in peace. May the Board of Trustees reflect upon their actions and struggle to find the peace they denied him in his final months.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Friday, November 18, 2011
Truth in Advertising
It isn't often that the European Commission does something that I find simultaneously astonishing and hilarious - especially nowadays, when there is so much cause for serious concern in the European Union about the economy on the continent and the lengthening list of member nations having mounting problems with debt. But today's edition of the Telegraph (a London newspaper) brought just that combination of surprise and mirth. Sorry to keep you in suspense, but if you haven't already seen the story, I'll be coming back to that at the end.
"If we can't beat another dealer's price, we'll just GIVE you the car!"
I'm sure you've all heard one like that, and you realize just how ridiculous it is. If one dealer offers you a selling price of $25,000, and you then go to another, the second dealer is sure to offer you a lower price, unless he is short on inventory or for some other reason is just not trying to move cars that day. So the dealer who runs this advertisement will live up to his ad's claim of a $500 difference and sell you the car for $24,500. He will not give you the car.
Not quite so obvious are the ads for dietary aids and supplements that have small print saying the product is not intended to diagnose, treat, or cure any disease or condition.
Really? And you want me to buy it anyway?
Yeah, I know, there's one born every minute. And suckers don't notice the statement that the claims "have not been evaluated by the FDA" - or realize that this disclaimer should put them on notice that the claims are probably baloney.
Then we have direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs. Here the claims have been evaluated by the FDA, which doesn't allow manufacturers to make statements that are blatantly false. Unfortunately, a statement can be remarkably misleading without crossing the line into the territory of blatantly false, and the FDA seems not to take much notice of ads that are misleading. We do get fine print and rapid-fire, monotonous recitation of a litany of side effects. If you read or listen carefully, you will wonder why anyone would take this drug. It may cause your left foot to become permanently lodged in your right ear? Really?
A drug that may cause me to commit suicide? Great. That will cure my depression.
The ones that disturb me the most are the ones that you might suppose are the most accurate, because the audience is well-educated and naturally skeptical. These are the ads in scientific journals and news magazines published for physicians. I have been an ardent critic of the content of these ads for many years, simply because the chasm between accurate information (such as one might expect to find in the peer-reviewed articles in these publications) and promotional information (the content of the ads) is so wide.
Ads in medical journals are subject to a higher level of FDA scrutiny, but a recent study showed that no more than 20% of journal ads were entirely compliant with FDA standards.
You might think the journals themselves would scrutinize the content of these ads. I can tell you, as a reviewer for two major journals in my specialty, that trying to assure high quality in the scientific information presented in the articles is plenty of work. No one is volunteering to review the ads. If we tried to do that, we would soon find ourselves in an adversarial relationship with the advertisers. We could just decide not to accept advertising, but then the journals' subscribers would have to pay a lot more to cover the costs.
By now you can tell that I think we have a lot of work to do in improving truth in advertising. And then along comes the European Union to show, beyond any doubt, that it is possible to get carried away. Earlier this year the European Foods Standards Authority refused to approve a statement for use in advertising by distributors of bottled water, submitted by a pair of German professors, that claims drinking plenty of water is an effective way to prevent dehydration.
This was no claim of superiority of bottled water to tap water. Just plain old water.
According to the article in the Telegraph, "Prof Brian Ratcliffe, spokesman for the Nutrition Society, said dehydration was usually caused by a clinical condition and that one could remain adequately hydrated without drinking water."
A "clinical condition?" Like going to the gym for a workout? Sure, we could make sure we are well hydrated in advance (or rehydrate afterwards) by drinking Coca-Cola, but that doesn't mean water isn't effective for this purpose, and if Ratcliffe really believes water is not a better choice than Coke, he is just as foolish as he sounds.
These days I am anxiously waiting to see what the EU is going to do about the debt crisis spreading across the continent, at the same time our congressional "super committee" is trying to figure out what to do about our own deeply ingrained national habit of spending more money than we have. So comic relief is welcome.
In the words of Roger Helmer, a British politician of the Conservative Party and Member of the European Parliament, "This is stupidity writ large." I fully agree. I am grateful nonetheless, because sometimes stupidity writ large is wicked funny.
"If we can't beat another dealer's price, we'll just GIVE you the car!"
Not quite so obvious are the ads for dietary aids and supplements that have small print saying the product is not intended to diagnose, treat, or cure any disease or condition.
Really? And you want me to buy it anyway?
Yeah, I know, there's one born every minute. And suckers don't notice the statement that the claims "have not been evaluated by the FDA" - or realize that this disclaimer should put them on notice that the claims are probably baloney.
Then we have direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs. Here the claims have been evaluated by the FDA, which doesn't allow manufacturers to make statements that are blatantly false. Unfortunately, a statement can be remarkably misleading without crossing the line into the territory of blatantly false, and the FDA seems not to take much notice of ads that are misleading. We do get fine print and rapid-fire, monotonous recitation of a litany of side effects. If you read or listen carefully, you will wonder why anyone would take this drug. It may cause your left foot to become permanently lodged in your right ear? Really?
A drug that may cause me to commit suicide? Great. That will cure my depression.
The ones that disturb me the most are the ones that you might suppose are the most accurate, because the audience is well-educated and naturally skeptical. These are the ads in scientific journals and news magazines published for physicians. I have been an ardent critic of the content of these ads for many years, simply because the chasm between accurate information (such as one might expect to find in the peer-reviewed articles in these publications) and promotional information (the content of the ads) is so wide.
Ads in medical journals are subject to a higher level of FDA scrutiny, but a recent study showed that no more than 20% of journal ads were entirely compliant with FDA standards.
You might think the journals themselves would scrutinize the content of these ads. I can tell you, as a reviewer for two major journals in my specialty, that trying to assure high quality in the scientific information presented in the articles is plenty of work. No one is volunteering to review the ads. If we tried to do that, we would soon find ourselves in an adversarial relationship with the advertisers. We could just decide not to accept advertising, but then the journals' subscribers would have to pay a lot more to cover the costs.
By now you can tell that I think we have a lot of work to do in improving truth in advertising. And then along comes the European Union to show, beyond any doubt, that it is possible to get carried away. Earlier this year the European Foods Standards Authority refused to approve a statement for use in advertising by distributors of bottled water, submitted by a pair of German professors, that claims drinking plenty of water is an effective way to prevent dehydration.
This was no claim of superiority of bottled water to tap water. Just plain old water.
According to the article in the Telegraph, "Prof Brian Ratcliffe, spokesman for the Nutrition Society, said dehydration was usually caused by a clinical condition and that one could remain adequately hydrated without drinking water."
A "clinical condition?" Like going to the gym for a workout? Sure, we could make sure we are well hydrated in advance (or rehydrate afterwards) by drinking Coca-Cola, but that doesn't mean water isn't effective for this purpose, and if Ratcliffe really believes water is not a better choice than Coke, he is just as foolish as he sounds.
These days I am anxiously waiting to see what the EU is going to do about the debt crisis spreading across the continent, at the same time our congressional "super committee" is trying to figure out what to do about our own deeply ingrained national habit of spending more money than we have. So comic relief is welcome.
In the words of Roger Helmer, a British politician of the Conservative Party and Member of the European Parliament, "This is stupidity writ large." I fully agree. I am grateful nonetheless, because sometimes stupidity writ large is wicked funny.
Saturday, November 5, 2011
The Essayist's Essayist
Thirty-three years and 1,097 commentaries, the last one just a month ago at the age of 92.
Andy Rooney has left us now. He has left us with many memories and many smiles. I often wonder how many people watched the TV news magazine "60 Minutes" mostly because of him. One indication was what happened in 1990, when he made an ill-considered remark about homosexual unions (for which he subsequently issued a public apology). CBS suspended him from the program and in short order lost 20% of its audience.
"A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney" was launched in 1978 as a summer replacement for the short political debate segment called "Point/Counterpoint." A year later the debate segment was gone. This might be an object lesson about the hazards of allowing yourself to be replaced temporarily.
Rooney's subject matter was sometimes trivial and usually whimsical. His presentation was most commonly charming, delivered with a twinkle in the eye, and almost always successful in bringing a smile to his viewers. His essays were of the best form, working well both in print and on the screen.
They have been published in book form as collections. When I read them to myself, I can see and hear Mr. Rooney reading them to me on camera. No doubt when he wrote them, this is exactly what he had in mind. Far too few writers nowadays pay attention to this essential feature of the written word. What will it sound like to my audience when they read it "aloud" in their minds?
One of the things I liked most about Andy Rooney was that he recognized and admitted personal error. The 1990 episode in which he learned how misguided was his remark about homosexual unions was a well-noted example. More meaningful to me, however, was what he learned about war from his experiences as a correspondent during World War II. He was a journalist for Stars and Stripes, the army newspaper, and later wrote a memoir, My War (1995), about his years as a war correspondent. Rooney had been a pacifist and was opposed to America's entry into the war, although he had not sought to avoid service when he was drafted in 1941. But near the end of World War II he was among the first American journalists to enter Nazi concentration camps, and what he saw there forever changed his views on whether there can be such a thing as a just war.
I also liked the fact that he was willing to be politically incorrect without worrying too much about offending people. I agreed with him fully when he said it was "silly" for Native Americans to complain about team names like the Washington Redskins. I'm not sure exactly why he thought that, but I can tell you why I did. With serious social and medical problems like unemployment, alcoholism, tuberculosis, and sudden infant death syndrome all occurring at rates much higher than in the general population, I've always thought the tribal nations had more important things with which to concern themselves.
In the six months since I began putting my thoughts on my computer screen for the essays in this blog, I have occasionally thought that perhaps some day people will be as interested in what I have to say as they have been in the musings of Mr. Rooney. A lofty goal, and quite possibly far out of reach. But his first "few minutes" on "60 Minutes" came when he was older than I am now, so I can dream.
In Rooney's last "few minutes" a month ago he told viewers, "Not many people in this world are as lucky as I have been. All this time I've been paid to say what is on my mind on television. You don't get any luckier in life than that." This reminded me of the Confucian saying, “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” The fact that Andy was still doing that job in his tenth decade says it all.
For those who prefer the television format, I suggest the DVDs released by CBS in 2006 (three of them, available on Amazon and elsewhere), which offer an excellent collection of his later essays. For fans such as I, who like to read his work and who can see him and hear him as we read, I suggest the 2003 collection, Years of Minutes.
Thank you, Mr. Rooney, for thirty-three years of thought-provoking commentary.
Andy Rooney has left us now. He has left us with many memories and many smiles. I often wonder how many people watched the TV news magazine "60 Minutes" mostly because of him. One indication was what happened in 1990, when he made an ill-considered remark about homosexual unions (for which he subsequently issued a public apology). CBS suspended him from the program and in short order lost 20% of its audience.
"A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney" was launched in 1978 as a summer replacement for the short political debate segment called "Point/Counterpoint." A year later the debate segment was gone. This might be an object lesson about the hazards of allowing yourself to be replaced temporarily.
Rooney's subject matter was sometimes trivial and usually whimsical. His presentation was most commonly charming, delivered with a twinkle in the eye, and almost always successful in bringing a smile to his viewers. His essays were of the best form, working well both in print and on the screen.
They have been published in book form as collections. When I read them to myself, I can see and hear Mr. Rooney reading them to me on camera. No doubt when he wrote them, this is exactly what he had in mind. Far too few writers nowadays pay attention to this essential feature of the written word. What will it sound like to my audience when they read it "aloud" in their minds?
One of the things I liked most about Andy Rooney was that he recognized and admitted personal error. The 1990 episode in which he learned how misguided was his remark about homosexual unions was a well-noted example. More meaningful to me, however, was what he learned about war from his experiences as a correspondent during World War II. He was a journalist for Stars and Stripes, the army newspaper, and later wrote a memoir, My War (1995), about his years as a war correspondent. Rooney had been a pacifist and was opposed to America's entry into the war, although he had not sought to avoid service when he was drafted in 1941. But near the end of World War II he was among the first American journalists to enter Nazi concentration camps, and what he saw there forever changed his views on whether there can be such a thing as a just war.
I also liked the fact that he was willing to be politically incorrect without worrying too much about offending people. I agreed with him fully when he said it was "silly" for Native Americans to complain about team names like the Washington Redskins. I'm not sure exactly why he thought that, but I can tell you why I did. With serious social and medical problems like unemployment, alcoholism, tuberculosis, and sudden infant death syndrome all occurring at rates much higher than in the general population, I've always thought the tribal nations had more important things with which to concern themselves.
In the six months since I began putting my thoughts on my computer screen for the essays in this blog, I have occasionally thought that perhaps some day people will be as interested in what I have to say as they have been in the musings of Mr. Rooney. A lofty goal, and quite possibly far out of reach. But his first "few minutes" on "60 Minutes" came when he was older than I am now, so I can dream.
In Rooney's last "few minutes" a month ago he told viewers, "Not many people in this world are as lucky as I have been. All this time I've been paid to say what is on my mind on television. You don't get any luckier in life than that." This reminded me of the Confucian saying, “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” The fact that Andy was still doing that job in his tenth decade says it all.
For those who prefer the television format, I suggest the DVDs released by CBS in 2006 (three of them, available on Amazon and elsewhere), which offer an excellent collection of his later essays. For fans such as I, who like to read his work and who can see him and hear him as we read, I suggest the 2003 collection, Years of Minutes.
Thank you, Mr. Rooney, for thirty-three years of thought-provoking commentary.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Ethics for Kids
Six weeks ago I mentioned in this blog that the College Board reported reading scores on the SAT at an all-time low. A few weeks later the news was of a scandal: cheating on the SAT. Among other stories was one of a 19-year-old college student who was using fake IDs to take the SAT for high school students at $2,500 a pop. Why?
There are answers, both general and specific. The SAT may be viewed as overemphasized. Students (and their parents) may think the stakes are so high that cheating can be justified. If your SAT score is too low it will sink your chances of getting into the college of your choice, even though everything else on your resume indicates you are qualified and would be successful there. This may seem especially unfair if you consider that the "experts," who once agreed that SAT scores foretold academic success in college better than any other single predictor, now say the scores correlate best with family income - and not so well at all with college performance. As family income rises, they say, resources that enable intensive test preparation are more abundant, overwhelming the test's ability to distinguish among students of varying levels of academic talent.
There are also more general arguments used to justify cheating. As with the SAT, all sorts of other tests may be considered unfair. A student may rationalize cheating by deciding that his inability to perform well on tests in a high school or college course reflects poor teaching rather than any lack of effort or aptitude on his part. Or, perhaps, the teacher is competent in the classroom but insists on writing exams that are so difficult as to invite cheating.
Among the more disturbing justifications is that "everyone is doing it." The idea here is that the inclination to seek unfair advantage (or mitigate a disadvantage perceived as unfair) is so widespread that one is placed at a disadvantage by not doing what one believes all his fellows are doing to get ahead.
A well-known example of this is the use of anabolic steroids in competitive athletics. Many players came to believe that "everyone" was doing it. That meant anyone who chose to rely on the combination of innate ability, good nutrition, and hard work through training and practice was placing himself at a competitive disadvantage. Added to that was the rationalization that the logical principles employed to decide which performance-enhancing substances were permitted and which were banned were elusive at best, as this was often a matter of whether there were tests available to discover their use.
Why, you might ask, am I so interested in the justifications used for cheating?
For nearly all of my career I have had an intense interest in ethics, especially biomedical and professional ethics. So many of the most intriguing challenges we face in the practice of medicine relate to ethical dilemmas. That term deserves a definition. An ethical dilemma arises when the right and wrong in a situation are not entirely clear. The dilemma can then be framed in terms of what we call competing interests. Those interests must be described and evaluated and weighed against each other. We try to decide which interests deserve greater weight or higher priority. We have a set of ethical principles to guide our analysis.
When I began looking into the matter of students cheating, I noticed that, for much of the analysis of the problem, journalists went to ethicists. Clearly the thinking is that widespread cheating represents a failure in our society to communicate the well-developed ethical values of one generation to the next. Or does it?
News outlets in recent years have been full of stories about institutionalized cheating in public schools to boost kids' scores on standardized tests and avoid missing benchmark targets set by federal legislation for schools' performance. This means students are getting the message directly from their teachers that cheating is OK.
What about parents? According to a recent report on National Public Radio, two thirds of parents think cheating by students is "no big deal" and "all students do it." Is it any wonder, with these kinds of attitudes among parents and teachers, that most students now cheat? Yes, that's right, most students. Surveys of college students in the 1940s found that 20% admitted to cheating at some time. Today those numbers range from 75-98%. It may be that the real number in the 1940s was higher than the number who admitted it, because of the stigma attached to cheating, which is clearly now much less. But today's percentages are shocking.
It doesn't have to be this way. At the K-12 school attended by my daughters, penalties for cheating were harsh (but appropriate). High school students had an ethics class. I hope my daughters learned nothing in that class they had not already been taught in the home. Cheating does not pose an ethical dilemma. There are no legitimate competing interests. Right and wrong are clear. We must teach our children this; we must demand that their teachers do the same; and we must all consistently model the behavior we know is right.
Update, 10-22-2012
In 1998 Mark McGwire set a new single-season record for home runs with 70, surpassing the longstanding record held by Roger Maris (61 in '61). Everything about McGwire seemed squeaky clean, but rumors of use of anabolic steroids didn't take long to bubble up. McGwire finally admitted it in 2010. Barry Bonds set a new record for home runs in a single season with 73 in 2001. And he passed Hank Aaron and The Babe with 762 career home runs. He is the only major leaguer to have accumulated more than 500 each of home runs and stolen bases in a career. The records go on and on. But in the minds of baseball purists, every one of them should be marked with an asterisk, because Bonds used performance-enhancing anabolic steroids for much of his career.
Unlike baseball, other sports actually take things away from cheaters. Olympic gold medals, for example. Just ask Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson about his 1988 gold in the 100 meters.
And now, after years of swirling controversy, the Union Cycliste International has stripped Lance Armstrong of all seven of his Tour de France championships. The decision follows this month's finding by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency that there is "overwhelming" evidence that Armstrong was involved as a professional cyclist in "the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program."
Really, Lance? After many years of being idolized by everyone for astonishing athletic accomplishments after winning your battle with cancer? What about all those yellow bracelets honoring those fighting similar battles and symbolizing the work of your foundation? What about Athletes for Hope?
Now, more than ever, we must redouble our efforts to teach our kids about playing by the rules in all spheres of life. And we should thank the Union Cycliste International for reminding us all that cheating has consequences.
There are answers, both general and specific. The SAT may be viewed as overemphasized. Students (and their parents) may think the stakes are so high that cheating can be justified. If your SAT score is too low it will sink your chances of getting into the college of your choice, even though everything else on your resume indicates you are qualified and would be successful there. This may seem especially unfair if you consider that the "experts," who once agreed that SAT scores foretold academic success in college better than any other single predictor, now say the scores correlate best with family income - and not so well at all with college performance. As family income rises, they say, resources that enable intensive test preparation are more abundant, overwhelming the test's ability to distinguish among students of varying levels of academic talent.
There are also more general arguments used to justify cheating. As with the SAT, all sorts of other tests may be considered unfair. A student may rationalize cheating by deciding that his inability to perform well on tests in a high school or college course reflects poor teaching rather than any lack of effort or aptitude on his part. Or, perhaps, the teacher is competent in the classroom but insists on writing exams that are so difficult as to invite cheating.
Among the more disturbing justifications is that "everyone is doing it." The idea here is that the inclination to seek unfair advantage (or mitigate a disadvantage perceived as unfair) is so widespread that one is placed at a disadvantage by not doing what one believes all his fellows are doing to get ahead.
A well-known example of this is the use of anabolic steroids in competitive athletics. Many players came to believe that "everyone" was doing it. That meant anyone who chose to rely on the combination of innate ability, good nutrition, and hard work through training and practice was placing himself at a competitive disadvantage. Added to that was the rationalization that the logical principles employed to decide which performance-enhancing substances were permitted and which were banned were elusive at best, as this was often a matter of whether there were tests available to discover their use.
Why, you might ask, am I so interested in the justifications used for cheating?
For nearly all of my career I have had an intense interest in ethics, especially biomedical and professional ethics. So many of the most intriguing challenges we face in the practice of medicine relate to ethical dilemmas. That term deserves a definition. An ethical dilemma arises when the right and wrong in a situation are not entirely clear. The dilemma can then be framed in terms of what we call competing interests. Those interests must be described and evaluated and weighed against each other. We try to decide which interests deserve greater weight or higher priority. We have a set of ethical principles to guide our analysis.
When I began looking into the matter of students cheating, I noticed that, for much of the analysis of the problem, journalists went to ethicists. Clearly the thinking is that widespread cheating represents a failure in our society to communicate the well-developed ethical values of one generation to the next. Or does it?
News outlets in recent years have been full of stories about institutionalized cheating in public schools to boost kids' scores on standardized tests and avoid missing benchmark targets set by federal legislation for schools' performance. This means students are getting the message directly from their teachers that cheating is OK.
What about parents? According to a recent report on National Public Radio, two thirds of parents think cheating by students is "no big deal" and "all students do it." Is it any wonder, with these kinds of attitudes among parents and teachers, that most students now cheat? Yes, that's right, most students. Surveys of college students in the 1940s found that 20% admitted to cheating at some time. Today those numbers range from 75-98%. It may be that the real number in the 1940s was higher than the number who admitted it, because of the stigma attached to cheating, which is clearly now much less. But today's percentages are shocking.
It doesn't have to be this way. At the K-12 school attended by my daughters, penalties for cheating were harsh (but appropriate). High school students had an ethics class. I hope my daughters learned nothing in that class they had not already been taught in the home. Cheating does not pose an ethical dilemma. There are no legitimate competing interests. Right and wrong are clear. We must teach our children this; we must demand that their teachers do the same; and we must all consistently model the behavior we know is right.
Update, 10-22-2012
In 1998 Mark McGwire set a new single-season record for home runs with 70, surpassing the longstanding record held by Roger Maris (61 in '61). Everything about McGwire seemed squeaky clean, but rumors of use of anabolic steroids didn't take long to bubble up. McGwire finally admitted it in 2010. Barry Bonds set a new record for home runs in a single season with 73 in 2001. And he passed Hank Aaron and The Babe with 762 career home runs. He is the only major leaguer to have accumulated more than 500 each of home runs and stolen bases in a career. The records go on and on. But in the minds of baseball purists, every one of them should be marked with an asterisk, because Bonds used performance-enhancing anabolic steroids for much of his career.
Unlike baseball, other sports actually take things away from cheaters. Olympic gold medals, for example. Just ask Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson about his 1988 gold in the 100 meters.
And now, after years of swirling controversy, the Union Cycliste International has stripped Lance Armstrong of all seven of his Tour de France championships. The decision follows this month's finding by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency that there is "overwhelming" evidence that Armstrong was involved as a professional cyclist in "the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program."
Really, Lance? After many years of being idolized by everyone for astonishing athletic accomplishments after winning your battle with cancer? What about all those yellow bracelets honoring those fighting similar battles and symbolizing the work of your foundation? What about Athletes for Hope?
Now, more than ever, we must redouble our efforts to teach our kids about playing by the rules in all spheres of life. And we should thank the Union Cycliste International for reminding us all that cheating has consequences.
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