Voting for Trump Makes You a Bad Person

Voting for Trump is immoral. It is unamerican. It is unchristian. If you haven't already arrived at this conclusion over the last 1343 days, there is nothing I can say to convince you.

Trump is a bad person and a poor president.

If you vote for him, you are complicit.
It is not enough to just not vote for Trump. Not voting for his opponent (because we have a terrible two-party system) is the same as casting half a vote for him. 

Voting for Biden does not make one a good person, but voting for Trump most definitely makes one a bad person.

By all means, though, give me a signal that you plan to vote for Trump so I can unfriend you, both in real life and on social media. I will not pretend, in the name of some imagined civility, that reasonable people can disagree on this. There is nothing to disagree over. This is not partisan. There is nothing partisan about racism, misogyny, and authoritarianism.

Should I Be a Football Fan?

As I am trying to enjoy baseball season, I return to a debate about another sport, football. When my wife and I got pregnant with our first child nearly three years ago, we both agreed that our children would not be allowed to play football. It turns out that we're part of a growing number of Americans with that opinion:

Nearly one-third (31%) of Americans say that if they had a young son today they would not allow him to play football, while about two-thirds (66%) say that they would. The number of Americans who would prohibit their child from playing has increased since 2015, when only 22% said they would not allow their son to play (source).

That first child ended up being a girl so the likelihood of that becoming an issue is pretty small, but if we decide to have another child, and he's a boy, we might have to address it head on.

I am also troubled by the ethical extension of that, though. Is it OK for me to be entertained by others' sons playing football? Slate has a very sociological take on this that I'll close with:

The horror at the heart of the future of football—one that’s already begun to reveal itself, and will only continue to—is that for as long as the sport’s popularity endures against the harsh light of what we’re coming to learn about it, the NFL will increasingly come to rely on a starkly class-based labor force. Football will be something that poor kids will play but rich kids won’t, because their parents won’t let them, even as the rich kids and their parents will continue to watch.

Disciplines and Application: The Illusion of a Divide between Research and Praxis

Suppose you're an astronomer studying the motion of objects in the asteroid belt, and in your course of study, you discover evidence, with a very high level of confidence, that a large asteroid is on a trajectory that will bring it into contact with the earth, causing widespread environmental and biological destruction.[1] Would you say, "Huh, that's interesting," and continue your study of the asteroid belt with dispassionate objectivity or would you feel moved as a human being to scream your finding from the proverbial mountaintop, rallying your fellow humans to take action to avoid the otherwise inevitable calamity? I think that virtually all reasonable people would agree that learning certain facts compels people to specific actions. Moreover, if one learned such things and failed to put them to action, most would agree that he was behaving unethically--or even criminally.

Now, imagine that instead of an astronomer, you are a sociologist, and you discover undeniable evidence that real, material suffering is happening to people of certain identities? Should you continue your dispassionate, objective research or might you be motivated to facilitate social change?

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[1] I guess a more parallel analogy would be that you discover an asteroid just large enough to cause only the death and destruction of a particular group of people in an isolated geographical area.

How Not to Succeed in Being a Human without Really Caring

I have always been averse to the idea of "networking." People who work in "business" (as if that is an actual field) talk about networking opportunities as a means of self-advancement and treat each other in disturbingly instrumental ways.* Case in point from the current issue of my alumni magazine:

Always Scale Up: Never set a lunch date with people who are less powerful than you.... I always ask myself...Can the person I am meeting benefit me directly (Rice 2014)?

First, I hope that the irrationality of this is self-evident. If everyone followed this advice, no one would ever eat lunch. Seriously, it's just asinine. Even worse, this kind of self-serving advice value's one's time and advancement above that of others, including those whom one is supposed to see as superior. The author even drops the phrase "selfish altruism." Ick! This is the worst of business thinking absurdity.

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* - As a sociologist, I of course understand the benefits of social ties, weak ties in particular; there is a difference, however, in recognizing the accidental utility of ties and in cultivating ties solely for purposeful utility.

Rice, Eric. 2014. "Your Midday Break Can Have a Big Impact." Indiana University Alumni Magazine fall:32.

IRB Chair Extraordinaire

So, today I begin my tenure as the chair of our college's IRB. I've written before on IRB's (here and here). Orgtheory has quite a bit on IRB's that's worth checking out as well. In general, I think it is safe to say that social scientists, and likely researchers of virtually all ilks, do an unfair amount of kvetching and gnashing of teeth about IRB's and human subjects committees. I've starting brainstorming about ways to alleviate the causes of the frustration that many of us, including me, experience with the IRB process. So far, I can see two places for improvement. First, most reviews that spend a prolonged amount of time in the machine do so because researchers inadvertently leave out requirements (e.g. supervisor approvals), fail to attach important documents (e.g. informed consent forms), or fail to provide enough detail about their protocol. A little more attention to detail at the front end can dramatically reduce the time to approval. Second, reviewers need to be regularly reminded to be mindful of the level of risk involved in proposed research. Clarification and revision is often unnecessary when it is clear that the protocol will only pose minimal risks to human subjects. We reviewers can often and easily lose sight of our purpose in the haze of our own institutional bureaucracy. I'm going to try to make these points-of-emphasis early in my stint as chair. I'll report back on how it all goes.

IRB Comments on Methodology

The primary purpose of the human subjects committee is to protect the people whom we are studying. It is that simple. (While it is not our intention and should certainly not be our concern, by protecting subjects, we also shield the university from litigation.) Among the things that we need to ensure are the following: all human subjects who are part of research done at or in conjunction with a given institution must consent to participate, must have the ability to refuse to participate and to withdraw their participation, can expect that they will not be exposed to unreasonable risks, and can expect that their identity will be protected as either anonymous or confidential.

Beyond that, it is not the IRB's job to ensure that the research that we review is good research. It should be the policy of IRB's that we should not critique our colleagues' methods. While it can sometimes be tempting to do so, it is problematic for several reasons. First, the IRB is a black box so any animosity that a researcher harbors for her reviewer gets transferred to the board. We do ourselves--and ultimately would-be human subjects--no favors by garnering the contempt of our peers. IRB's are despised enough without us further fanning the flames. Second, we are busy people with competing demands; unsolicited methodological critique should not be another. Finally, we have a duty to be good neighbors. We must respect the training, intelligence, and expertise of our colleagues, and in the case of student research, we must respect the abilities of the student's faculty adviser. Unless you are asked directly for your scholarly opinion, do not give it. Peer reviewers for conferences, university presses, and academic journals as well as annual faculty evaluation committees, department chairs, and tenure and promotion committees are more appropriate bodies for the review of faculty research.

That said, there are some circumstances under which poor research design may spill over into our commission to oversee the ethics of that research. For example, imagine a protocol that proposes to stick subjects with needles to gauge their favorite color. This research design is flawed since it would not be testing what it claimed to be, but since the subjects are being exposed to pain and an increased risk of infection and because the research design is flawed, the pain and risk would be pointless. In other words, the study could be conducted in a less invasive manner with equal or better results. However, not all methodological errors are equally dangerous. A question on a survey that asks, "What is your favorite color? (a) blue (b) bright (c) dull (d) green," might be poorly written but, because it does not expose the participant to any additional risk, it falls outside of our purview.

Making and Breaking ObL

The same culture of fear and violence that created ObL "brought him to justice." For this reason--among others--we should be very hesitant to celebrate this victory.

Two Ethical Precepts

I stole this from an NPR interview with the NYTimes house ethicist (but can't track down a link for it). These are two ethical precepts by which I'm trying to live these days:

1. Do to others as you would have them do to you.


2. If the consequences of everyone in the world behaving in a given manner would be deleterious, do not behave in that manner.

The first of the two is of course the Golden Rule. It's tough to argue against that one, but the second is unique. I'm sure there is a title for it, and if anyone know what that is please share it with me because I can't find it. Regardless, it adds a social aspect to the all-too-often individual nature of our ethical considerations. The best example I can come up with is buying an automobile. Does it directly affect me when another person buys an SUV? No, so it passes precept one, but what if everyone in the world bought an SUV? That clearly would not be sustainable given the cost and geopolitical entanglements of petroleum (not to mention the environmental impact); ergo, I should not buy an SUV. Too often we look at the world as a collection of rational actors with perfect agency. The reality is that our lives are all interconnected in nonobvious ways that lead to irrationality and structural constraint. By adding precept two to our moral maps, we might better be able to hedge some of our destructive tendencies.