Technology and Privacy

How conflict minerals make it into our phones
“Tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold. All of these minerals are found in our electronics and all are considered conflict minerals, due to their potential origin in the Democratic Republic of Congo. While the African country contains an estimated $24 trillion in untapped mineral resources, it remains mired in poverty and violence, and mining these four metals can help fund armed conflict in the region.”

AI Lawyer: It’s Starting as a Stunt, but There’s a Real Need
“DoNotPay CEO Josh Browder says expensive legal fees have historically kept people from hiring traditional lawyers to fight for them in traffic court, which typically involves fines that can reach into the hundreds of dollars. So, his team wondered whether an AI chatbot, trained to understand and argue the law, could intervene.”

Lawsuit Pushes Addiction Case Against Social Media Firms
“DoNotPay CEO Josh Browder says expensive legal fees have historically kept people from hiring traditional lawyers to fight for them in traffic court, which typically involves fines that can reach into the hundreds of dollars. So, his team wondered whether an AI chatbot, trained to understand and argue the law, could intervene.”

When Does Posting Photos of Students Become a Data Privacy Problem?
“DoNotPay CEO Josh Browder says expensive legal fees have historically kept people from hiring traditional lawyers to fight for them in traffic court, which typically involves fines that can reach into the hundreds of dollars. So, his team wondered whether an AI chatbot, trained to understand and argue the law, could intervene.”

Cinema has helped ‘entrench’ gender inequality in AI
“Study finds that just 8% of all depictions of AI professionals from a century of film are women — and half of these are shown as subordinate to men. Cinema promotes AI as the product of lone male geniuses with god complexes, say researchers. Cultural perceptions influence career choices and recruitment, they argue, with the AI industry suffering from severe gender imbalance, risking development of discriminatory technology.”

Science and Research

What Do We Owe Lab Animals?
“The advancement of animal-free methods for developing drugs and testing product safety does raise the possibility that, at least in some cases, the use of animals can be avoided. But it will take years for that to happen, and few researchers think the use of animals will cease altogether. So long as animals are used, then, the question remains: What do people owe them?”

Young Physicists say Ethics Rules are Being Ignored
“The study, conducted in 2020 by the American Physical Society (APS) and published in this month’s Physics Today, reveals alarming rates of unethical research practices and harassment in the physics community, including data manipulation and physical abuse.”

Ethical ancient DNA research must involve descendant communities, say researchers
“The analysis of ancient DNA allows scientists to trace human evolution and make important discoveries about modern populations. The data revealed by ancient DNA sampling can be valuable, but the human remains that carry this ancient DNA are often those of the ancestors of modern Indigenous groups, and some communities have expressed concerns about the ethics of sampling by outside parties. A group of scientists make the case for involvement of descendant communities in all aspects of the research process.”

Willard Gaylin, a Pioneer in Bioethics, Is Dead at 97
“In 1969, Dr. Gaylin, a psychiatrist, and Daniel Callahan started the Hastings Center, devoted to the study of bioethics, in Hastings-on-Hudson, north of New York City. Dr. Gaylin brought his psychiatric lens to the center’s exploration of issues like physician-assisted suicide, cloning and the financing of research on human embryonic stem cells.”

When a Visit to the Museum Becomes an Ethical Dilemma
“Western museums are major tourist attractions, drawing travelers from around the world. But what responsibility do we bear as spectators for patronizing institutions that display what critics say are stolen works?”

Healthcare

The ethical dilemmas behind plans for involuntary treatment to target homelessness, mental illness and addiction
“Over the past year, cities across the United States have unveiled new policy plans to address homelessness amid rising concerns about health and crime – for homeless people themselves, as well as for surrounding communities. Notably, several proposals include civil commitment, also referred to as involuntary treatment, for people with severe mental illness or substance use disorders.”

A Deadly Epidural, Delivered by a Doctor With a History of Mistakes
“When rare complications from epidural anesthesia — which provides pain relief during “childbirth — began occurring unusually often at Woodhull, the cases went unreported. Not until a patient died did hospital administrators even notice a pattern. While medical mistakes can happen at any hospital, the case of Dr. Shelchkov was extreme, both in the sheer number of errors he made and in the fact that it took so long for someone to intervene.”

Telehealth patients are scrambling for in-person care amid crackdown on online controlled substances
“Even if a patient is able to find a qualified doctor with openings, it’s not certain they will simply pick up with the same prescription a telehealth company offered. “From the patient’s perspective, they’re looking for somebody who can fulfill their need,” said Sibley. “But what they’re going to find, I think, is that traditional providers are going to be doing a higher level of due diligence,” possibly reconsidering stimulant prescriptions altogether.”

Nurses Still Viewed as Most Ethical Professionals
“Nurses, who have held the top spot in the poll for more than two decades, were seen as having “high” or “very high” standards by 79% of U.S. adults – down from a peak of 89% in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, but still considerably higher than any of the other professions included in the survey.”

Global H.I.V. Leaves Children Behind
“The focus for a decade in the global AIDS response has been controlling the epidemic, and it’s amazing that treatment has reached so many adults,” said Anurita Bains, who heads global H.I.V./AIDS programs for UNICEF. “But children aren’t going to spread H.I.V., so they dropped down the priority list. They’ve been almost forgotten”

Law and Politics

Supreme Court Weighs Ethics Code as Critics Push for Change
“Leaders of the American Bar Association this week added their voices to a chorus of others urging the justices to adopt an ethics code. “The absence of a clearly articulated, binding code of ethics for the justices of the court imperils the legitimacy of the court,” a report accompanying the bar association’s resolution said.”

George Santos Is Accused of Sexual Harassment in His Capitol Office
“A prospective congressional aide has accused Representative George Santos of ethics violations and sexual harassment, according to a letter the man sent to the House Committee on Ethics and posted to Twitter on Friday”

Hochul’s Vow to Boost Ethics and Sexual Harassment Training Falls Flat
“State officials in charge of implementing the new ethics training mandate say they lack the money and infrastructure to offer live classes that the law now says must be provided to roughly 300,000 people, about 10 times the number of state workers who previously received the training, according to records and interviews.”

N.Y. Lawmakers Request House Ethics Investigation of George Santos
“Representatives Daniel Goldman and Ritchie Torres, both Democrats of New York, filed an official complaint on Tuesday asking the House Committee on Ethics to investigate Representative George Santos, the Republican who admitted to lying about his background after a report last month in The New York Times. The congressmen requested that the House committee explore whether Mr. Santos, a first-year lawmaker representing parts of Long Island and Queens, broke the law when he filed his required financial disclosures late and without key details about his finances.”

How Republicans are overhauling the Congressional Ethics Office
“House Republicans are already making some big changes in Congress, including an overhaul of the Congressional Ethics Office. That’s an independent, nonpartisan watchdog separate from the House Ethics Committee. They have not entirely ended OCE, but have changed how the office will work, making it harder to hire new staff, making it impossible to replace people who leave in the next couple of years, also imposing term limits on members of the board.”

Sloppy handling of classified documents is very serious, ethics lawyer says
“We do have responsibility for the work of our staff and – whether it’s the vice president’s office or, on the other hand, the people over at the Penn Biden Center, who also should have made sure that they only had that which they were entitled to have. And the president does bear responsibility, the boss does.”

Standards of Conduct 

At the Supreme Court, Ethics Questions Over a Spouse’s Business Ties
“The chief justice’s wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, has made millions in her career recruiting lawyers to prominent law firms, some of which have business before the court. Now, a letter sent to Congress claims that may present a conflict of interest.”

My Co-op Board President Is a Lawyer Representing Sellers. Is That Allowed?
“A co-op board president can legally work as a lawyer for shareholders selling their units in the building. But just because something is legal doesn’t make it a good idea. This arrangement leads, at the very least, to the appearance of conflicted loyalties.”

Women’s Soccer Bans Ex-Coaches and Fines Teams After Misconduct Report
“The league will continue to prioritize implementing and enhancing the policies, programs and systems that put the health and safety of our players first,” Berman said.“These changes will require leadership, accountability, funding and a willingness to embrace this new way of conducting business.”

3 Rikers Officers Charged With Covering Up Attack on a Detainee
“We must hold correction officers to a high standard,” Darcel D. Clark, the Bronx district attorney, said in announcing the charges. “These defendants violated the trust put in them by allegedly filing false instruments about an officer’s assault on an inmate.”

71 Commands in 13 Minutes: Officers Gave Tyre Nichols Impossible Orders
“We must hold correction officers to a high standard,” Darcel D. Clark, the Bronx district attorney, said in announcing the charges. “These defendants violated the trust put in them by allegedly filing false instruments about an officer’s assault on an inmate.”

Business

2023 Edelman Trust Barometer: Business is only institution viewed as ethical, competent
“Business is 54 points ahead of government in terms of competence and has a 30-point lead on ethics. Factors including the treatment of staffers during the pandemic and return to work have helped to fuel a 20-point jump on ethics over the past three years.”