Hey!, Wanna See Some Sin? "Cry aloud, spare not, lift up your voice like a trumpet and show my people their transgressions and . . . their sins." Isa. 58:1
22. Lies
22.3b. Who lies to whom?
1. We, as individuals, lie to each other.
"One person, when questioned, explained, "Lying is a way of gaining power over other people through manipulating them in various ways. It's something that everybody does.""
"As a rule:
· men lie more than women,
· young men lie more than older men,
· and unemployed people lie more than those with jobs.Who do people lie to?
· 86% lie to parents,
· 75% to friends,
· 73% to siblings,
· 69% to spouses,
· 58% to best friends,
· 49% to neighbors,
· 32% to doctors,
· 21% to ministers, and
· 20% to lawyers.I have had a number of people in my office over the years that have lied to me, and I KNEW that they were lying! The hard part is not their lying, though. It was their thinking that I am dumb enough to believe them that really bothers me!
Americans lie about everything -- and usually for no good reason. In fact, the majority of Americans today (two in every three) believe that there is nothing wrong with telling a lie. Only 31% of us believe that honesty is the best policy. In fact, Business News magazine reported recently, "People feel like suckers if they're honest.""
http://www.nlag.net/Sermons/Transcripts/mjdeadmendont.htm
"Basically, for civilians, America's policy seems to be: Lies within the home are fine as long as the government doesn't know. Lies within the government are fine as long as large religious organizations don't know. Lies within large religious organizations are fine as long as you ask God to forgive you."
Liar, Liar, The Lost Art of Truth-Telling
Keith M. Zafren, March 7, 1999
http://www.the-river.org/resources/messages/1999/990307keith.html
2. Women lie to men. Men lie to women.
"Women tend to lie to protect more than men. "You are a great lover." Women use the lie of "Everything is all right", to gloss over problems they are having in a relationship. When a woman catches a man in a lie, they tend to think they are at fault. What am I lacking, that he felt he needed to lie to me?
Men, on the other hand, lie to protect themselves and use the lie as a "power" tool. Men lie to protect their freedom and autonomy. Men lie to get what they want, or because it is easier than telling the truth.
The top 10 lies Men tell Women:
1. I'll call you.
2. I love you.
3. You're the only one.
4. I've never felt this way about anyone else.
5. I've got to work late in the office tonight.
6. That's the best sex I've ever had.
7. You've got the most beautiful eyes.
8. No, I'm not married.
9. Sorry, I must have left my wallet and credit cards at home."
101 Lies Men Tell Women: And Why Women Believe Them.
review by Kristi Richardson
http://www.epinions.com/content_19333287556
"In a recent survey by a University of Virginia professor, a quarter of people's "most serious lies" related to an affair.""The Bitter Truth: From Politicians to History Professors, Lies Are All Around", By Oliver Libaw
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/lying010702.html
3. Children lie:
By the age of 3, two-thirds of kids have learned to lie. By age 7, up to 98% lie.
Source: Dr. Michael Lewis“I can show you studies,” Lewis says, “where the kids with lower IQs were the ones who always told the truth. Healthy, intelligent, well-adjusted kids learn to lie.”
Everyone Loves a Liar, By Claudine Chamberlain, ABCNews.com
http://more.abcnews.go.com/sections/living/dailynews/lying0220.html
4. Parents lie to their children:
"Children, too, are often lied to by adults in the guise of protecting them. They are lied to about who their father was, about the true nature of a parent or grandparent's illness, about whether they were adopted. While these lies may be told with the intent of protecting children, often they produce great resentment when the truth is finally known."
"Lying", Peter Morales, Senior Minister, June 3, 2001
http://www.dimensional.com/~juc/sermons/lying.html
"Strict accuracy is simply not very high on the list of essentials in speaking to children. Their level of comprehension, their trust and dependency, the joys of imagination, invention and play, all argue for leaving the conventionally realistic world out of many communications with children. The danger arises whenever those who deal with children fall into the trap of confusing "truth" with "truthfulness". It may lead them to confuse fiction and jokes and all that departs from fact with lying. And so they may lose track of what it means to respect children enough to be honest with them. To lie to children then comes to be much like telling stories to them or lies sharing their leaps between fact and fantasy.
Often, it also means that the adult needs to lie more and more in order to keep up the appearance or avoid loss of credibility. In addition, the "translation" of the facts into a language the child can understand may be mixed with deception, to play down, for instance, dangers about which nothing can be done. A child told that dressing her wound will not hurt may be reassured enough to lose her anxiety, an over-casual child may be appropriately "scared" into caution in dangerous situations, but they are also learning that grownups bend the truth when it suits them.All these factors -- the need for shielding and encouragement, the low priority on accuracy, and the desire to get meaningful information across in spite of difficulties of understanding or response -- contribute to the ease with which children are deceived. The very privacy of parent-child communication, make paternal deception no small matter, and an extremely grave matter when there is as a result the risk of mental or physical harm to the child."
http://www.uia.org/index.html, Mar. 2002
© Union of International Associations 1997 - 2000
5. Taxpayers lie to the government:
"The income tax has made liars out of more Americans than golf.", Will Rogers.
http://www.madwed.com/quotes/Quotations/Newsletters/Leadership_Lies/body_leadership_lies.html
More than 10,000,000 taxpayers "lie on their tax forms" according to the IRS.There are 13,675,000 "avid" golfers according to the National Golf Foundation. Probably considerably more than when Will Rogers made his observation in the 1930's.
Of course, all golfers are preoccupied with "lies" and "lying". ;~} [It's a golfing joke.]
6. Fishermen lie:
"Winners of the annual Big Rock Blue Marlin Tournament in Morehead City, N.C., for example, must submit to a polygraph before collecting any prize money (to make sure they haven't stuffed rocks in the gut of their prize catch)."
http://www.eatstress.com/polygraph.htm
7. Hunters lie:
"Telling lies in the parking lot is a time honored, and venerable, southern tradition that takes place during the mid-day, around tailgates of old rusty, dog filled, mud covered trucks. Lying about the last few hours of hunting success, or more than likely, missed shots, is a fine art form that takes years of subtle training."
http://www.southeasternoutdoors.com/articles/lies.html
8. Job applicants lie to employers:
6,640,000 job applicants based on "80% of all resumes are misleading"
(The numbers above are based partially on information at the 2000 Census web site and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.)"How Rampant Is Resume Fraud?"
"So why are people so desperate that they’re lying on their resumes? And what are they lying about? One company working to detect resume fraud is HireRight (www.HireRight.com), an Internet-based company that checked out the resumes of more than 200,000 applicants last year. Your resume could very well have been one of them.
The whole process is quite simple. When you fill out an application, you put your John or Jane Hancock on the bottom of the page, stating that all the information you provided was factual, and you give permission to your potential employer to prove otherwise.
HireRight recently released some interesting statistics that show how rampant resume fraud is in the United States. The company’s numbers show that 80 percent of all resumes are misleading, 20 percent state fraudulent degrees, 30 percent show altered employment dates, 40 percent have inflated salary claims, 30 percent have inaccurate job descriptions, 25 percent list companies that no longer exist, and 27 percent give falsified references."
Resume Fraud: Don’t Lie to Get That Job! By Sally Richards
http://www.hightechcareers.com/doc699/nextstep699.html (Emphasis ours.)
Applicants also lie about skills, performance, experience, training, reasons for leaving previous jobs, periods of unemployment, health, absenteeism, criminal record, driving record and more.
"If you think that most people tell the truth during job interviews, I've got this beautiful bridge to sell you. The American Psychological Association found that two out of three candidates lied on their job applications."
Liar! Liar! by Tahl Raz
http://www.myprimetime.com/work/jobs_hiring/content/liar/index.shtml
"Employment specialists estimate that anywhere from 25 percent to 80 percent of resumes harbor some degree of embellishment."Job Sleuths, By Donna Hemmila, Business Times staff writer,
San Francisco Business Times, Volume 12, Number 29,Feb. 27 to Mar. 5, 1998
http://www.esrcheck.com/IntheNews/business_times_article_feb98.htm
"The increasingly deceptive nature of society was recently revealed by the Association of Search and Selection Consultants (ASSC), which warned companies that a quarter of job seekers now tell straightforward falsehoods on their CVs, lies that include non-existent or exaggerated qualifications, hidden career gaps and inflated past pay levels.And these are not examples of people who are merely boosting their achievements in some mild way, by claiming dubious sporting abilities or slightly overstated dedication to various charities. These are individuals who slice years, sometimes decades, from their ages, claim non-existent degrees, and cover up bankruptcies and prison sentences.
The practice is becoming more and more serious because people believe that 'everyone else is doing it', say psychologists Liz Walley and Mike Smith in their book, Deception in Selection ."
"Maybe you can fool the people but science is on your trail" by Robin McKie
Observer, Sunday March 12, 2000
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,3973046,00.html
"The Liars Index, a semiannual survey conducted by Jude M. Werra & Associates, a Wisconsin-based executive search firm, found that about one in every seven executive candidates lie about their credentials.Resume puffery can take many forms, but the most common is the claim of a degree that was not earned -- 35.9 percent of the liars made that claim."
"Hiring an executive? One in seven is lying to you."
http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/biz/thumb/20010117a.asp
9. Employees lie to employers:
67,050,000 workers based on 50% or "half of American workers".
(The numbers above are based partially on information at the 2000 Census web site and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.)Employees lie about absenteeism, illness, job incidents, performance, thefts, embezzlement, schedules, timesheets, timecards, and more.
10. Companies and Employers lie to employees:
"Help Wanted" and "Position Open" ads are "misleading", "exaggerated", or otherwise "lies", such as the "headhunter" company ads which list positions that don't exist in order to get resumes with which they will go "fishing" for possible openings with employers. Employers' own Personnel Departments also do this to stockpile resumes for possible future hires.
"Work for us cheap now and we'll make it up to you later when the company is more profitable."
"This position will lead to management."
"The perks and benefits make up for the low salary we are offering."
"The company cannot afford to give you a raise."
"We treat all our employees equally.""We are cutting back so we have to let you go."
"Your company retirement fund is safe."
Employers also lie about company stability, plans for hiring or layoffs, company profitability, workplace safety, plant openings, plant closings, and reasons for an individual's termination.
"Don't lie to applicants"
"If you are ever tempted to downplay the bad news in an interview, the California Supreme Court has bad news for you. The Court ruled that making misrepresentations to applicants is grounds to sue for punitive damages. You should reveal any material information that would affect a reasonable person's decision whether or not to accept employment. And don't make promises about future compensation, job security or promotional opportunities."
Case Excerpts
http://www.fairmeasures.com/whatsnew/archive/spring96/new13.html
11. Companies, businesses, merchants and their employees lie to customers:
They don't all do it, all the time. But try to find anyone who has never been lied to by a business, a service provider, or by their employees. Sometimes it's incompetence. Sometimes it's simply an error or mistake. Sometimes it is a deliberate lie.
They lie about their products.
They lie about their service.
They lie about shipping and delivery.
They lie about warranty.
They lie about refunds.
Deliberate lying by corporation officials:
Misrepresentation of facts by corporate leaders
Deliberate distortion of corporate news and information
Corporate over-reporting and under-reporting
Perjury by corporation representatives
Fabrication of reports on corporate competitors
Corporate slander
Institutional lying
Misrepresentation
Terminological deception
Corporate human rights crimes
Libeling another
Distorting corporate news and information
Fabricating reports on corporate competitors"A company makes false and defamatory statements about a competitor which are harmful to the competitor's reputation.
The global pharmaceutical companies and dozens of generic firms, that make and sell the less-expensive, generic versions of big companies' drugs, are engaged in a fierce competition over the markets. The big companies have underwritten scientific studies damning the safety of generic medicines, spread unsubstantiated tales of ill effects of these drugs."
http://www.uia.org/index.html, Mar. 2002
© Union of International Associations 1997 - 2000
12. In some companies, everyone lies to everyone else:
"From Fibs to Fabrications
Is it just human nature to prevaricate? Perhaps. But these threads of deception quickly weave together into a modus operandi by which company liars con and manipulate their work associates and clients. Employees accustomed to telling small lies have no trouble inventing medium-size falsehoods for the client: Well, we had a major computer failure that backed everything up. The technicians are here right now fixing a hard drive and we should be able to finish the site plan by tomorrow, or the day after at the very latest.
Medium-size lies are particularly prevalent in three work arenas: 1. Managing by deception: "If it were up to me, I would say yes. But the big boss is dead set against your proposal. I'll keep trying, but it doesn't look good." In fact, the big boss never heard about your proposal. Your manager is lying as a convenient way to dodge your issues and questions. Because you don't have easy access to the big boss, there's no politically safe way to check out your manager's assertions. You're being managed by deception.
2. Distorting the sales and customer satisfaction process: "No matter what the master contract says, you just call me directly if you have any problems down the line. Here's my card with my direct extension." A few weeks after the deal closes, the client does indeed call with a significant problem not covered by the contract. Then the lie must be extended: "There must have been some misunderstanding. We don't have authority to change contract terms through my department. Let me take your number and have someone call you back." What tangled webs we weave.
3. Disguising performance failure: "My numbers may be down, but it isn't my fault. I didn't receive thorough training for my position" (or, if you prefer, "The boss played favorites," "The competition cheated," etc.).
Dealing with the rippling consequences of these medium-size lies consumes untold hours for managers. Management, in fact, has been wryly described as "figuring out which of your workers you can trust."From Fabrications to Fantasy Fiction
A worker adept in medium-size lies soon graduates to the real whoppers. These are the elaborate, calculated deceptions that often send the major players to court, set worker against worker, and shatter client relationships beyond repair. Whoppers usually occur in these business arenas:
Desperate efforts to survive: I'm about to get demoted or fired? Let's see which whopper will suffice. "I have been sexually harassed (or discriminated against or psychologically stressed) in the workplace." (Of course, these charges are often true and always deserve careful scrutiny. But at times they are also used as trump cards by players willing to attack others unfairly to save themselves.) Or, "I have a condition that requires accommodation." (Again, appeals to the terms of the Americans with Disabilities Act - ADA - should always be investigated carefully. But if ADA provisions are distorted by some manipulative employees to support whopper lies, everyone in the company suffers - especially those whom ADA was intended to protect.)
Excuses for disastrous decisions: I miscalculated the developer's share of environmental expenditures for a major contract? We have to fulfill the contract, even though there's no profit left? It's time for a whopper: "I based my decision on data provided to me by someone at the client's headquarters. No, I don't have a name and everyone there denies talking to me. But I now see how inaccurate that information was - and heads should roll." (Not mine, of course; I was a victim of others' mistakes.)
Explanations for gross insubordination and interpersonal conflict: My boss gave me yet another poor performance review. Only a whopper can turn the tables: "He has disliked me from day one in this company because I spoke my mind and wouldn't be a yes-man." How can the boss disprove this bald falsehood? Many exemplary bosses have been tarred with the brush of calculated lies from underperformers. In response, bosses sometimes shy away from calling a spade a spade in companies that don't support straight talk and frank judgments. Many good bosses aren't willing to risk their careers by getting into a spitting match with unscrupulous accusers.""Once company personnel realize the detrimental effects prevarication exerts on the business, it becomes in their own best interest to tell the truth."
"Truth or Consequences in the Workplace", By Arthur H. Bell, Ph.D.
http://www.area-development.com/past/0500/features/truth.html
13. Drug Companies lie:
$14 Million Headache
Bayer Settles Federal Charges It Lied About Drug Price"The Associated Press, New York, Sept. 18 — A U.S. unit of German pharmaceutical giant Bayer AG has tentatively agreed to pay the federal government $14 million to resolve allegations that it lied about the wholesale prices of certain drugs, including those to treat AIDS, The Wall Street Journal reported today.
More than 20 drug companies are under investigation, including Abbott Laboratories, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., Glaxo Wellcome PLC’s U.S. unit and SmithKline Beecham PLC. The companies have denied wrongdoing.
Prosecutors, who are seeking similar agreements with the other major drug makers, say the federal government pays $1 billion or more in inflated drug claims every year."
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/living/DailyNews/bayer000918.html
14. Doctors lie:
- 304,864 doctors, based on "70% of all doctors lie on their bills to health insurance providers".
(The numbers above are based partially on information at the 2000 Census web site and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.)" . . . nearly 78 percent of physicians said that they had indeed withheld information from a patient's record due to privacy concerns. While only 19 percent admit to lying to protect a patient's privacy, 74 percent state that they have withheld information for that reason."
http://www.aapsonline.org/press/nrnewpoll.htm
15. Doctors conspire with patients to lie to insurance providers:
" In a new survey in the Journal of the American Medical Association , 39 percent of the doctors admitted to stretching the truth and even lying to help patients get health care coverage. More than half of the doctors surveyed also said they had used these tactics more often now than five years ago."
"Physicians' Attitudes and Experiences
Out of all the doctors who responded to the survey:
28.5 percent agreed that: "Today it is necessary to game the system to provide high-quality care."
37.0 percent agreed that: "Patients request that I deceive their third-party payer."
56.5 percent agreed that: "Worry about prosecution for fraud prevents me from exaggerating patients' conditions to third parties."
15.3 percent agreed that "In general, it is ethical to game the system for your patients' benefit."
Source: Journal for the American Medical Association."Doctors Get Away with Fraud
While the survey suggests health insurance fraud is common, few doctors are ever caught. In New York State, for example, of the 22,000 physicians practicing in the state, only about 0.5 percent last year were investigated for fraud, and only a fraction of those were convicted.
By one estimate, health care fraud is costing American taxpayers nearly 100 billion a year, with much of it in the form of higher premiums. But there are other potential costs, including the ethical slippery slope. As doctors increasingly deceive insurers, are they also more willing to deceive patients?
“It is very difficult in my view to compartmentalize and use deceit and manipulation in one aspect of your professional life and not let it slip into other aspects of your professional life,” says Wynia."
Doctors' Admissions: Lying To Healthcare Providers Is Common, Study Finds
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/living/DailyNews/docslying000411.html
16. Doctors lie to patients:" ( . . . a third of patients undergoing a sham bypass procedure will actually experience symptomatic improvement via the placebo effect, so strong is the power of suggestion in such serious matters.)
A variety of remedies for pain work exclusively via placebo effect. The irony is that the more convinced the physician is that his unproven treatment is of value, the more likely it is to have this non-specific benefit. A conscientious physician who is honest ("I don't know if this will work or not; there's no firm evidence") is less effective than the cavalier doc who ignores statistics ("I know this will work. All my patients get better. You will be fine.").
Both good medicine and quackery rely in part on this peculiar, paradoxical relationship between lying and patients' health. Honesty is not always in a patient's best interest, yet dishonesty always puts the doctor in an ethically difficult position. There are no guidelines. Even the best of intentions can have an unexpected outcome."
"If he will lie to help me, will he also lie to save his a--, or to save the insurance company, or even to get a bigger year-end bonus? Doesn't the very knowledge that your physician is willing to lie undermine the doctor-patient relationship?
"Lying is everywhere; it is as intrinsic to daily life as any search for truth. The ethical problem of the lie now is subjective, self-referential, in the eye of the beholder.Health and Body: Ask Dr. Bob, Salon.com
http://www.salon.com/health/col/bob/1999/11/01/dr_bob/
"Other lies told for benevolent reasons are more serious, however. For example, it used to be common practice for physicians to lie to patients with fatal illnesses about their prospects for recovery. Physicians would justify this on the grounds that they were saving their patients needless suffering that might only worsen their medical condition. But in so doing, physicians denied their patients of the chance to know the truth about their life prospects. (If you don’t have a right to know this, what do you have a right to know about?) This is not of course to say that physicians should be callous in the way they dispense such information, or to deny that there are better and worse ways of informing people of such awful truths. (Also, the case looks very different if the patient has made it clear that she doesn’t want to know the truth about her condition.) The typical rationale of physicians in such cases though was also quite self-serving – it spared them the discomfort of disclosure and didn’t force them to acknowledge the fact that they are often powerless over death and disease."http://ocean.otr.usm.edu/~sbruton/Lying.html (Emphasis ours.)
"Many physicians resort to prescribing a placebo when confronted by a patient who insists on medication even though there is no medical reason to prescribe one. Often people report feeling better after taking the placebo. It seems innocent, even compassionate. However, there can be troubling consequences. For example, it is now clear that the over prescription of antibiotics, often essentially as placebos, has helped produce resistant bacteria that are now a serious medical problem. And of course, some patients learn they have been duped, perhaps when getting a refill and asking about the drug. When this happens the relationship of trust between doctor and patient, and between that patient and all doctors, is shattered. There are horror stories even of using placebos in clinical trials, when the desire for a scientific breakthrough has been used to justify manipulating the poor and uneducated into giving informed consent that is no more than a cover for using people as laboratory animals. Deception is indeed a slippery slope. Sadly, it was once normal medical practice to lie to patients about their diagnosis, especially if it was terminal."
"Lying", Peter Morales, Senior Minister, June 3, 2001
http://www.dimensional.com/~juc/sermons/lying.html
Medical deception
"Doctors use information as part of the therapeutic regimen; it is given out in amounts, in admixtures, and according to timing believed best for patients. Accuracy, by comparison, matters far less. The patient may be told nothing at all or only part of the story, or relevant information may be couched in technical or euphemistic language, calculated to deceive. There are instances where medical researchers have withheld information about the possible effects of an experimental drug or procedure, and at least one in the USA where researchers undertaking a drug testing programme, owned shares in the biotechnology company manufacturing the drug.In Japan, doctors are often so revered and secretive that they do not tell a patient that he has terminal cancer. Most doctors in a number of 1970s surveys in the USA said that they would not, as a rule, inform patients that they have cancer. However, 80% of patients with potentially serious illnesses said they would want to be told of such a diagnosis. Growing numbers are now signing statement know as "living wills", in which they can specify whether or not they would want to be informed about a serious condition; also to specify conditions under which they do not want to have their lives prolonged.
Patients are generally in favour of being told the truth about their condition. Uncertainty and confusion can often be more unsettling than the truth, which is crucial to the restoration of some control over one's affairs. There also is evidence that people recover faster from surgery and tolerate pain with less medication if they understand what ails them and what can be done for them.
Honesty from health professionals matters more to patients than almost everything else that they experience when ill. Yet the requirement to be honest with patients has been left out altogether from medical oaths and codes of ethics, and is often ignored, if not actually disparaged, in the teaching of medicine. Many physicians talk about patient deception, as in the use of placebos, in a cavalier, often condescending and joking way, whereas patients often have an acute sense of injury and of loss of trust at learning that they have been duped.
The main argument against a policy of deliberate, unvariable denial of unpleasant facts is that it makes communication extremely difficult, if not impossible. Once the possibility of talking frankly with a patient has been admitted, it does not mean that this will always take place, but the whole atmosphere is changed. The fact that a patient does not immediately ask does not mean that he has no questions. It is only by waiting and listening, waiting for clues from the patient, that we can gain an idea of what we should be saying and discover they are individuals from whom we can expect intelligence, courage and individual decisions.
Counter-claim 1. It is meaningless to speak of telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth to a patient. It is meaningless because it is impossible. Physicians know only too well how uncertain a diagnosis or prognosis can be. They know how hard it is to give meaningful and correct answers regarding health and illness. Medicine is a profession which traditionally has been guided by a precept that transcend the virtue of uttering truth for truth's sake: so far as possible, do no harm. You can do harm by the process that is quaintly called telling the truth. You can do harm by lying. But try to do as little harm as possible.
2. Medical ethics require that the doctors are concerned for the well-being of their patients, and this is not constrained by the demand for truthfulness. It is better that the patients are able to enjoy what time they have left free from anxiety and fear. In addition, revealing grave risks, no matter how unlikely it is that these will come about, may act like a self-fulfilling prophesy.
3. A certain amount of lying is necessary in a busy practice. Sitting down to discuss an illness truthfully and sensitively may take much-needed time away from other patients. Also, there are many patients with language problems, the uneducated and the unintelligent, who simply cannot form an informed opinion."
http://www.uia.org/index.html, Mar. 2002
© Union of International Associations 1997 - 2000The arguments given above for lying or deceiving patients can be summarized as follows:
1. It is "impossible" for doctors to tell the truth because they are only guessing at what is wrong. At the same time, telling the truth may do harm and lying does less harm that telling the truth.
2. "Medical ethics" is not concerned with "truthfulness". Patients are "better off" ignorant of their own health. If we tell them they are dying, they might actually die.
3. Physicians are too busy with patients to give time to patients. Lying takes less time than telling the truth. Some patients don't speak the native language of the Physician, some are ignorant, and some are stupid, therefore they are not worth the time to tell the truth.
17. Young Doctors lie to Supervising Doctors:
"A total of 222 American hospital residents responded to the survey that was carried out by researchers led by Dr. Michael J Green from Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine. The survey results found that if residents were questioned about patients lab report by a senior colleague, 14% would lie instead of admitting that they did not know. This figure rose to 19% if it was likely that the senior doctor would humiliate and embarrass the resident.
Results also found that 36% of those surveyed would lie to avoid taking on a colleague's on-call duty and 6% would substitute their own urine for that of a colleagues on order to protect them. 15% would lie in a medical record to protect a patients privacy and 5% would lie about checking a patient's stool for blood in order to cover up a medical mistake."
Jenny Blythe, Clegg Scholar
http://www.studentbmj.com/extra/archive/0900/news/0109news04.html
18. Patients lie to Doctors:"I ran across a book on patient falsification. Here's an amazing statistic: Three percent of "kidney stones" passed in emergency rooms are fictitious (bits of gravel, pieces of concrete, even flecks of paint), the purpose being for the patient to get immediate narcotics."
Health and Body: Ask Dr. Bob, Salon.com
http://www.salon.com/health/col/bob/1999/11/01/dr_bob/
19. Attorneys lie:
- 489,530 attorneys. They mostly "work to benefit their clients, not to arrive at truth".
(The number above is based partially on information at the 2000 Census web site and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.)
20. Criminals lie:
Nearly all of them claim they are innocent.
21. Authorities lie (Official fabrication of evidence):[Public safety workers, which includes firemen, police officers, patrolmen, and emergency medical workers are overworked, underpaid and underappreciated. They are sometimes under-trained, overly administrated, under supported, and overly criticized. A few among them are in the wrong professions. As in any profession, a few commit criminal acts. This should not diminish our appreciation of the faithfulness, courage and unselfish services of the many. This should not be an excuse for those who choose to commit crimes.]
"Lying by public authorities includes:
Police frame-ups
Planting of evidence
Police falsification of evidence
Official misinterpretation of evidence
Concealment of evidence by police
Lying of police in court
False evidence
Falsification of evidence"http://www.uia.org/index.html, Mar. 2002
© Union of International Associations 1997 - 2000
22. Students lie and cheat on tests:
The first is "copying and communication," which consists mostly of the old over-the-shoulder play. " . . . .—it's the old fashioned wandering eye, the kid who's sitting one seat away looking at the answers," Nicosia says. This category also includes collusive cheating, in which students use hand signals to pass answers back and forth during exams. In one case in the early 1990s, students brought M&Ms into the SATs, and used a color-coded system of arranging the candy on their desks to pass answers. . . . Category Number Two is impersonation, in which a smart kid offers (or is paid) to take the test for someone else, and uses a fake ID to impersonate him. . . .The third category is pre-knowledge, where someone gets access to questions ahead of time. This is the rarest form, and usually involves rings of people. In the most recent example several years ago, a ring of conspirators telephoned answers from New York to California and took answers into an exam center on coded pencils.
. . . ETS uses computers to flag suspicious test scores. Each year 5,000 of the 2.5 million test scores are investigated, and roughly a third of those are invalidated.
Learning from the SATs: Tips Stopping Test Cheating By Daniel McGinn, Newsweek, June 13, 2000
http://discuss.washingtonpost.com/nw-srv/printed/us/sr/a21011-2000jun13.htm
"Studies conducted since 1941 estimate that college cheating has increased from about 23% of students in 1941 to 75% of students in the 1980s. Almost 59% of students in one study admitted to cheating on unit tests and 28% admitted to cheating on mid-term and final examinations.
Controlling test cheating, particularly when 30 or more individuals are tested at one time, is often a problem. Copying from someone else's answer sheet during a test or otherwise obtaining test information from other students are two of the five most common forms of cheating found from surveys of American college undergraduates who admit to cheating. In a study of medical school students, 87% admitted that they had cheated on tests as undergraduate students and 58% admitted to cheating while in medical school!"
http://www.assess.com/Software/scrutiny.htm (Emphasis ours.)
"Teens Tested on Character
Study Finds Students Lie and Cheat, A Lot
By Gisele Durham, The Associated Press
Los Angeles, Oct. 16 — Many of the nation’s high school students lie and cheat a lot, and many show up for class drunk, according to preliminary results of a nationwide teen character study released today.
Among those surveyed, seven in 10 students admitted cheating on a test at least once in the past year, and nearly half said they had done so more than once, according to the nonprofit Joseph & Edna Josephson Institute of Ethics.
The Report Card on the Ethics of American Youth found that 92 percent of the 8,600 students surveyed lied to their parents in the past year. Seventy-eight percent said they had lied to a teacher, and more than one in four said they would lie to get a job.
The survey, conducted this year, involved students in grades nine through 12 in both public and private schools. Participating schools handed out surveys with 57 questions that students could submit anonymously.
The results had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points."
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/living/DailyNews/teen_morality001016.html
"In 1993 it was reported in the USA that 83% of all undergraduates at MIT cheated at least once in their college careers. The 1994 investigation into one of the largest cheating scandals at the USA Naval Academy, renowned for its sacred Honour Code, implicated 133 midshipmen, or about 15% of the graduating class of 1992. The incident was followed by a campaign of lying and collusion in cover-up involving even its superintendent. Officials were alleged to have mishandled the subsequent investigation to foster an impression of favouritism toward football players who cheated."
http://www.uia.org/index.html, Mar. 2002
© Union of International Associations 1997 - 2000
23. Teachers help Students cheat on tests:
"In recent years, state accountability rules have increasingly pressured school administrators to prove that their students are learning, often at levels that exceed previous expectations. The main measure has been state- and district-sponsored tests.
Rewards vary from financial bonuses to positive press in the local newspaper. The consequences differ as well, from unwanted state intervention to the loss of jobs.
As a result, principals and teachers feel under the gun to boost test scores. Occasionally, they take the easiest route: They cheat.
The Woodland, Calif., Joint Unified School District suspended seven high school science teachers for photocopying a version of the Stanford Achievement Test- 9th Edition—the state's high-stakes test—and teaching the content that appeared in it.
School officials are investigating whether teachers at Chicago's Carpenter Elementary School erased students' test forms, filled in correct answers, and completed test sheets that students had left unfinished.
A special investigator for the New York City school system has issued two reports since December alleging that 61 principals and teachers conspired to raise test scores on state and district tests by handing out answer sheets, correcting students' work as they took the test, and other clearly illicit procedures.
Across the Potomac River from Reston, Va., the Montgomery County, Md., district suspended one teacher and accepted the resignation of the principal of Potomac Elementary School for testing irregularities. The school, in an affluent suburban area, had performed at or near the top of Maryland's testing program for several years."
As Stakes Rise, Definition of Cheating Blurs, By David J. Hoff, June 21, 2000
http://www.edweek.org/ew/ewstory.cfm?slug=41cheat.h19
24. Institutional lying:Confidence in public officials and in professionals has been seriously eroded. Incidence problems like Watergate, the covert American bombing of Cambodia, France's Greenpeace Affair, and numerous other political scandals have served to undermine public confidence, thereby affecting governments' images in the world, perhaps fostering further deception and cover-up.
[Note: "Institutions" includes governments, political parties, corporations, educational institutions, professional organizations, special interest groups, church organizations, etc. Specific examples of institutional lying include Democratic fundraising, the Enron collapse, Catholic priest sex crimes coverups, etc.]
If the spread of ideas, people or products is too rapid for existing institutions to adjust to them, these institutions will try to put up barriers to preserve themselves.
Includes:
Institutional compromises in the constitution of international organizations
Deception by government
Historical misrepresentation
Deliberate lying by corporation officials
Manipulation
Disinformation
Paternalistic lies
Irrational religious beliefs
Propaganda
Religious deceptionhttp://www.uia.org/index.html, Mar. 2002
© Union of International Associations 1997 - 2000
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25. Deceptive misuse of research:
Often, it is a matter of using the term "research" as a cover for illegal, unpopular or secretive activity.
"The most striking example is the insistence by the governments of Japan and Iceland that continuation of whaling is essential for research purposes. More generally, space research is frequently used as a cover for missile development. A number of countries engage in research on nuclear physics which, despite denials over an extended period, subsequently becomes apparent as being the means through which they were able to develop nuclear weapons. It is reported that experimental uses of drugs on convicted criminals has been used as means for developing biochemical weapons."
Includes:
Misrepresentation of socially unacceptable activity as research
Misuse of research as a cover for illegal activity
Research as disinformation
Monitoring as a cover for inaction
Abuse of science
Deception by government
Unethical industrial practices
Unethical intellectual practices
Unethical practice of health professionals
Deceptive survey research
Investigatory malpractice
Misapplication of research results
Misrepresentation of information to consumers
Misuse of societally-endorsed professions to conceal socially unacceptable initiativeshttp://www.uia.org/index.html, Mar. 2002
© Union of International Associations 1997 - 2000
26. Lying for the purpose of conducting or covering up abusive experimentation on humans:
Experimental exposure of humans to radiation
Irresponsible research using human subjects
Medical experimentation on institutionalized subjects
Unethical experiments with radioactive materials
Forced non-therapeutic research on people
Human Radiation Experiments"Human subjects for experimentation (in order to acquire knowledge rather than improve the subject's condition) may be coerced into participation or participating unknowingly. Scientific researchers may be able to obtain institutional facilities for research on humans who are not always in a position to give their free consent. Subjects may be ill-informed of potential effects; they may be unable to end their participation once the experiment has begun, even though there is a chance of permanent damage; and they may be unable to receive compensation should they be injured.
Research has been conducted using mentally retarded children, prisoners, or military personnel without adequate regard for the social, moral and ethical implications. Because of the controversial nature of such research methods they tend to be used in an atmosphere of total or semi-secrecy.
Past examples of specific abusive experimentation on humans include experiments on twins, dwarves and pregnant women in Nazi concentration camps; and Unit 731, a Japanese biological warfare centre during World War II, where experiments were carried out on Asian and allied prisoners. Soldiers have been experimental subjects in experiments on atomic bomb testing. Moral codes to be followed when human subjects are used for experimentation have been adopted by the Nuremberg Tribunal, the Helsinki Declaration, and USA, UK and French medical associations.
The American government claims that radioactive medical tests on unknowing subjects (around 1,000) during the Cold War in the USA have for the most part involved little or no risk. There are a number of American experiments which are more dubious, including radiation of prisoner genitals, plutonium or radioactive iodine injection and feeding radioactive material to mentally handicapped people. The tests were all done on people the Atomic Energy Commission considered "disposable": black newborns, prisoners, mental patients, indigents, the terminally ill, and black and pregnant women who were soon to give up their children for adoption.
More than 43,300 American military and industrial sites may have suffered radioactive contamination.
The US government continued experimenting on ill-informed troops and prisoners, as well as unsuspecting civilians, well into the 1970s. In one example, bacteria assumed harmless were released in airports and subways.
In 1993 it was confirmed that Americans were used in radiation experiments in the 1940s without being informed of the health risks. It was claimed that some 800 experiments on 600 individuals were conducted properly. In 1994 evidence surfaced that parental consent forms for radiation experiments run in the 1960's did not mention radiation. Between 1944 and 1961 in the USA there were about 250 experiments involving deliberate release of radioactive materials into the atmosphere. In addition, the American government conducted 204 secret underground nuclear tests between 1963 and 1990, whose potential effects can only be guessed at.
In high nuclear fall-out areas in Utah, childhood leukemia rates are 2.5 times the American average.
There are a frightening number of studies that have failed to meet the most basic ethical requirement: namely, telling subjects what the experiment involves and what it is trying to discover. This is disturbing even in cases where no physical harm ensued."
References
Katz, Jay Experimentation with Human Beings (1972)
Papal Writings The moral limits of medical research and treatment (1952)
Moreno, Jonathon D Undue Risk: secret state experiments on humans (1999)
Spicker, Stuart F, et al The Use of Human Beings in Research (1988)Broader problems:
Official secrecy
Unethical practice of radiology
Misdirected research and development
Unethical practice of health professionals
Irresponsible scientific and technological activityNarrower problems:
Denial of the right to medical consent
Unethical medical experimentation on prisoners
Unethical experiments with drugs and medical devices
Medical experimentation on socially vulnerable groups
Medical experimentation on pregnant women and fetuses
Subordination of the individual to the medical interests of the collectivehttp://www.uia.org/index.html, Mar. 2002
© Union of International Associations 1997 - 2000
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Everyone lies to someone. Some lie to everyone. Many lie to themselves.