In Defense of Disinterestedness in the Digital Era

Few have the knowledge and/or the skills to separate the news wheat from the hyperbolic or invented chaff.

I am old enough to remember when the news—what was happening each day in the U.S. and in the rest of the world—was presented in a way that was authoritative, which is completely different than is the case today. Every evening, the three television networks (and there were only three!) would broadcast a half hour of news. There was a trusted anchorman whom much of the nation, often gathered in a family room, listened to and watched. The emblematic figure was Walter Cronkite, who presented the CBS Evening News for almost two decades (1962-1980). At the end of the half hour, Cronkite would declare “That’s the way it is,” and in case you did not quite understand ‘how it is,’ Cronkite would call on Eric Sevareid, his erudite colleague, to explain the news to millions of viewers.

At the time, most of us believed what we heard, most of the time. And that’s because we believed that the anchor man (for a long time, always a man) and the reporters—if not the commentators—were seen as disinterested. In other words, whatever their own views and predilections, they would put them aside and try to secure and present the story in as accurate a fashion as possible. That’s what it meant to be a reporter and a journalist, whether in the field or sitting at a desk. If there were cases in which the disinterestedness—or ‘objectivity’—were called into question, there would be an uproar. So powerful was the anchorman that people called quite seriously for Walter Cronkite to run for president. (I wager that, if he had run in the 1960s or 1970s, he would have been a credible candidate.) And, memorably, when Walter Cronkite visited Vietnam in 1968, and declared on the news that the war in Southeast Asia was unwinnable, President Lyndon Johnson shut off the television in anger and declared, “If I’ve lost Walter Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America!”

Fast forward fifty years. At present, no one in the world of news or journalism has anywhere the credibility that Walter Cronkite (and others, like Edward R. Murrow or Chet Huntley and David Brinkley) had. Indeed, until 2015, when they went off the air, comics Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert were considered, especially by young people, as more credible sources of news than those designated by the broadcast media as journalists or anchorpersons. Nowadays, anyone with access to a computer can create a news blog, and anyone with access to a smart device can transmit a report or a photo from the field. We are deluged with information 24/7, and few of us are able to separate the news wheat from the hyperbolic or distorted or invented chaff.

Also, and perhaps related, the whole notion of objectivity, neutrality, and ‘disinterestedness’ is under severe attack. Some people feel that even if we as individuals try to be disinterested, we will inevitably fail. Others believe that the whole notion of ‘disinterestedness’ is illusory: the world is about power and influence, nothing else, and whoever has the power will determine the reality. As a presidential candidate, Ronald Reagan memorably quipped in a debate in 1980, “I paid for the microphone.”

I take the opposite view. At a time when there is so much misinformation and disinformation around, it is more important than ever that we identify individuals, sources, platforms, and blogs that believe in disinterestedness; that have it as their goal; that seek to achieve it; that reflect on successes and failures, correct errors of any sort, strive to do better the next time around, and at least some of the time succeed in doing so. (I have often noted that those who are most cynical about truthfulness become gleeful when they actually catch someone whom they don’t like uttering a lie!) Those individuals, groups, or sources that keep their eye on this ideal should (and perhaps will) flourish; those that disappoint or deceive should (and perhaps will) disappear. I keep in mind Lincoln’s words: “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all the time.”

But how to make these decisions? How to distinguish the disinterested from the disingenuous or the dishonest? One way is to attend to the ‘power of the crowd’—to see where the largest audience flocks. But how to tell when the crowd is wise, and when it is foolish?

Another is to follow those who seem most trustworthy—whether or not they win in terms of number of ‘likes’ or ‘hits.’ This track requires careful monitoring, to make sure that the candidates-for-your-trust are actually well informed, that they admit when they have erred, make corrections, and—most important—keep their focus on true north. I am reminded of the journalist I. F. Stone who based his reports only on printed sources, never consorted with politicians, and in his publications was for decades the embodiment of journalistic integrity.

But in the end, neither millions nor dozens can make the decision for you. Just as you choose a doctor or lawyer or accountant on the basis of various factors, and may on occasion switch, so, too, you need to determine whom or what you trust—but, to quote Ronald Reagan once more, verify as well.

For more about disinterestedness in the modern age, see my chapter “Disinterestedness in the Digital Era” in Danielle Allen and Jennifer Light’s edited 2015 book From Voice to Influence: Understanding Citizenship in a Digital Era (University of Chicago Press).

Good Work in Academia: A Dutch Perspective

By Wout Scholten MSc., Rathenau Institute

The Good Project has partnered in The Netherlands with the Good Work Hub (Goed Werk Hub), an extension of the Professional Honor Foundation, which seeks to promote Good Work ideas and reflective practices in Dutch professional life. In the second of two blogs, Wout Scholten discusses some of the findings from a research project investigating how professionals achieve Good Work in academia.

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What does Good Work in academia mean according to academics themselves? What threats are academics facing? Following my previous blog post about our research in the Netherlands, I present here three principal ways in which academics conceive of Good Work and its obstacles, each with interesting implications.

The ‘Good’ Ecosystem

Our research participants repeatedly told us that Good Work is not only achieved by good individuals; a good ecosystem made up of many individuals working toward “good” ends is crucial. Good Work is most often seen in terms of good teams, good groups, or, in the ideal, good ecosystems (respondents were reluctant to attribute Good Work solely to individuals). With the synergy of an entire environment that encourages Good Work, academics feel they are able to achieve more together than as individuals. In terms of the Good Work’s framework, various constituents or stakeholders should be well-aligned with one another’s goals.

However, various forces currently hinder the development of a good ecosystem. First, the high demand for new talent means that only multitalented academics who are skilled at project fundraising and publication of many articles can feel secure in their job prospects. In fact, because of the harsh competition inherent in academia at present, only about 30% of Dutch doctoral students will pursue an academic profession; many talented people are driven to work elsewhere. Additionally, assessment of quality has become more and more a matter of individual evaluation despite the significance of collaborative work. As one professor put it, “There is a typical kind of academic that survives in the current culture, and that is not the kind that is concerned with the common interest.”

These pressures result in the hiring of individually ‘excellent’ academics, but the development of a good and diverse overarching ecosystem with synergistic abilities among members is undermined.

Creativity & replicability

In our discussion two qualities emerged as inseparable: creativity and replicability (replicability in this sense means that the research is transparent and the results can be reproduced). Creativity and replicability mutually strengthen each other and, when in balance, allow for Good Work that is both innovative and clear.

Yet academics have observed trends that threaten that balance. Creativity is crucial for scientific progress but seems to be over-valued in the current academic milieu. The opposite holds with respect to replicability. It is essential for researchers to complete work with transparency in order for others to be able to replicate findings, but this value is under-appreciated in the current system. In several disciplines we studied (pharmacy, immunology, social psychology, and economics), the under-appreciation for replicability resulted in a high number of studies that could not be recreated. This is a severe threat to Good Work in the eyes of our participants: “If one cannot replicate a study, science is undermined. When I say to my colleagues, ‘Let’s first try to copy this experiment and see if we find the same results,’ they think I am crazy because we shouldn’t waste our time on an experiment that is already published at the expense of immediate progress.”

Beyond disciplinary demarcations

In order to achieve breakthroughs in research and provide the best education possible for their students, academics must have deep disciplinary knowledge but also possess a broad knowledge that reaches beyond disciplinary lines. Academic professionals who have mastered their own discipline but have wider knowledge of other areas benefit from the ability to connect different topics. Academics need time, space, and autonomy to realize this goal.

However, this pursuit is threatened by overspecialization and severe time pressures that are detrimental to Good Work. In our focus groups, respondents conveyed just how challenging it is to combine the expected breadth and depth required of them: “The managerial climate makes it increasingly difficult. We have very little time for keeping up to date with a broad body of knowledge. So I have to focus strongly on my own discipline to keep on publishing. The system forces me (to do that).”

The tendency towards overspecialization is fueled by a culture encouraging quick and frequent publication, with specialization as a way to reach this goal. Furthermore, participants noted a sharp increase in the number of administrative tasks and other educational duties required of them, consuming time that might otherwise be used to talk with colleagues about ongoing work in other disciplines and with respect to other topics.

Concluding remarks

In the last few years, we have observed a growing resentment among workers in research and higher education; they lament the greater numbers of imposed rules, stricter limitations on professional autonomy, and inappropriate standards with respect to the sheer quantity and superficial flashiness of academic work. The findings from our focus groups go beyond detailing these worries and directly link these factors to notions of how Good Work is being endangered.

We hope that academia and the broader public take note of what our respondents have said about how structural and cultural changes in the field of research and higher education have been detrimental to their ability to do Good Work. Through our research, policy makers, university leaders, and administrators should be alerted to prevailing attitudes and the effects of current policies. Academics themselves can reflect on the observations, pondering how to shape the system in such a way that Good Work can be pursued and fortified in the future.

Truth, Truthiness, and Alice Goffman’s Dramatic Ethnography

How can we judge the validity of research in an academic discipline like anthropology?

If there is such a thing as a “celebrity” young scholar, Alice Goffman comes as close to that characterization as anyone in the social sciences or the humanities today. Her 2014 book On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City was published to excellent reviews and was prominently featured on many print, digital, and broadcast outlets. This intimate examination of life among impoverished black youths in inner city Philadelphia was acclaimed for its insights into the violent and fearful environment which envelops such young people throughout their often truncated lives. Indeed, so well received was the original publication that it was issued in 2015 as a trade publication, a rare distinction for a scholarly book that was adapted from a doctoral dissertation.

But Alice Goffman has also become a celebrity in a less happy sense. Before too much time had elapsed, she was publicly attacked on two fronts. A legal scholar claimed that in her description of a car ride undertaken to catch and punish a presumed murderer of a man with whom she had become friendly, Goffman was actually committing a felony—accessory to attempted murder. Then, when Goffman responded that the car ride was not really destined for revenge, just for releasing tension, she was accused of distorting her data in order to weave a more tantalizing tale.

In a natural or physical science, critics or sympathizers would have asked for the “actual” data, so that one could determine how the incident-in-question had ”actually” transpired. Indeed, viewed through the lens of traditional a science like physics or biology, it should have been possible to ascertain the accuracy of all the facts, figures, statements, and vignettes in Goffman’s book. But when confronted with challenges to her accounts, Goffman readily responded that she had destroyed all of her records from the study in order to protect the identity of her subjects. Moreover, in this claim, she was supported by many—though by no means all—sociologists and anthropologists. These interpretive social scientists pointed out that one cannot carry out such studies unless one commits to protecting the identities of those who have been studied; indeed, it may not even be possible to obtain the necessary “human subjects approval” unless such disguising takes place. And so, in effect, both scientific colleagues and lay readers have to rely on the trustworthiness and truthfulness of the scholar.

I was reminded of a debate that took place over several years at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association. My colleague and friend, Professor Elliot Eisner, argued vigorously that one should be able to submit a novel or some other work of art for a doctoral dissertation in education. I took the ‘con’ side. I said that we inevitably judge novels as works of art, and so there could be a beautifully executed novel that had little or no truth value, as well as a clumsily wrought novel that captured significant educational truths. “Leave novels to the novelist,” I insisted. ”Have doctoral students—future professors and professionals—do scientific (or philosophical or historical) dissertations.”

Those who trained Goffman vouched for her carefulness as a scholar. According to their testimony, she regularly reported to them what she was finding, and her dissertation was consistent with her reports-on-work-in-progress. I have no reason to doubt the veracity of her mentors. Yet they could scarcely claim anything else, without conceding that they had not adequately supervised her dissertation—and her professors at Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania would hardly want to make that concession.

While Goffman, armed with a PhD, is a certified sociologist, her work seems better thought of as anthropology, or ethnography. Particularly in Britain, there is said to be a “tradition” of such scholars conveniently losing their field notes—well before there were human studies committees in place. And even if such field notes had been preserved in full, it would be very difficult for others to judge to what extent the thesis—or the book that grew out of it—took advantage of literary license or simply engaged in concealing revealing information about subjects. Also, ethnographers who visit the same area can fashion radically different portraits: anthropologist Derek Freeman accused his world-famous predecessor Margaret Mead of being duped by her subjects in the South Seas.

Does that mean that universities should not validate ethnographies as fulfilment of the requirements for a doctorate, unless they are as accurate as a news report or a documentary is supposed to be? The academy would be much the poorer if we were deprived of the works of such anthropologists as Bronislaw Malinowski or Clifford Geertz or Tanya Luhrmann, even if they have disguised identities of individuals or communities. Yet I don’t believe that a doctoral degree should be based completely on the perceived trustworthiness of the anthropologist-in-training.

I suggest two steps. First of all, the drafts of the dissertation should be read only by the candidate’s dissertation committee, and the committee should have access to the unadorned notes; the committee’s approval would constitute an assurance to the scholarly community that proper procedures have been followed and that the version of the dissertation that is made public captures the actual data satisfactorily. Second, consistent with the position I took in my debates with Elliot Eisner, the dissertation should make a theoretical or conceptual contribution to anthropology, and that contribution should be spelled out explicitly. Even if the ethnography tells a story so compelling that it deserves a Pulitzer Prize, it should be eligible for the prize in nonfiction—not the fiction prize.

Introducing “The Professional Ethicist”

I am pleased to introduce “The Professional Ethicist.” In this blog, I (and others) will discuss vexed ethical issues that arise in the workplace and also in other sectors of society.

The name of the blog may appropriately raise a few eyebrows. I’ve selected it for two reasons: 1) the blog will largely address questions that arise in one or more professions, ranging from law and medicine to education and journalism; and 2) except for a few philosophers who write generally about ethics, most individuals are interested in the ethics of particular vocations or areas of focus. In the blog, we will deliberately cast our net widely, across the professional landscape and beyond. For the time being, with the help of Danny Mucinskas, I will host and curate the blog. But my aspiration is that others will also contribute; we’ll feature conversations and interactive forums; and this blog will become a “go-to” place for many who crave careful considerations of the most challenging issues that arise in work and life. We want the blog to become interactive in content and form; we plan to structure some blogs as dialogues between us and members of other organizations and seek a robust commentary from readers.

Why The Third E?: Excellence and engagement are not enough

In 1995, Mihaly Csikzentmihaly, Bill Damon, and I embarked on an ambitious line of psychological research, which eventually became the Good Work Project. After ten years of research, involving the efforts of many wonderful colleagues and over 1200 individual subjects drawn from nine different professions, we finally arrived at a succinct definition of Good Work. Indeed, we even captured it in a sleek visual:

On our account, good work in any profession entails three elements:

1. It is technically excellent. The good worker—be she a teacher, a lawyer, an engineer, a nurse— knows her stuff.

2. It is engaging. The good worker likes to go to work, appreciates the institution in which she works, values her colleagues, and relishes the opportunity to practice her craft.

3. It is carried out in an ethical manner. The good worker recognizes ethical quandaries, takes them seriously, consults as appropriate with colleagues, learns from her mistakes, and tries to do better the next time and share her insights, as appropriate.

It would be desirable if the three Es were essentially identical or highly correlated, but they are not.

Consider John, a hypothetical teacher. He might know his material well but has burnt out as a teacher, or he might be an enthusiastic teacher but has not kept up with the field. Or he might be both knowledgeable and enthusiastic but cut every corner in his work, has been insensitive to the needs of his students and colleagues, and is disrespectful of the institution in which he teaches. Or consider Sally, a hypothetical cardiologist. She might be well-informed or out of touch with current medical knowledge. She may be deeply involved in or alienated from her practice. And she might be scrupulous in avoiding conflicts of interest with regard to pharmaceuticals she recommends to patients, or, in return for the regimen than she routinely prescribes, she may take advantage of every favor that the local pharmaceutical company can bestow upon her.

All three Es are important; we’d like all teachers and physicians to exemplify excellence, engagement, and ethics.

In “The Professional Ethicist,” we focus chiefly on ethical facets of work, and particularly work in the professions. It is in the sphere of ethics—rather than in the realms of excellence or engagement—that we encounter a crisis. Professions cannot continue to exist, let alone merit respect, unless those who are honored with that title are constantly vigilant about the effects of their words and deeds on those whom they are supposed to serve.

No need to posit a golden age. It does not matter if professionals in the past did not always live up to this ideal. What does matter is that high-quality professional practice is nowadays in peril. The contributing factors are several: among them, a diminution of public spiritedness; an emphasis on monetary rewards above all else; and the disruptive facets (both energizing and troubling) of ubiquitous digital media. Indeed, if an aspiring lawyer who has only taken online courses can do as well on the bar exam as the graduate of a prestigious three-year law school, by what right can we deny her the title of lawyer and the right to practice law?

We focus here on the professions because it is in this vocational sphere that ethical standards have been explicitly stated. But it is important to stress that any worker—be she the chief surgeon at a major medical center or the waitperson in the local deli—can be a good worker. That person needs to do her job well, like to come to work, and care about the quality of her relations to those with whom she comes into contact as well as the problems that arise on the job. Nor does the awarding of a professional license make one automatically into a good worker. We all know of individuals who, despite their prestigious titles, are blind to the ethical aspects of their work—or who, despite having their eyes wide open, still fail to pass the ethical test.

It may be that professions as we know them will pass from the scene. (Indeed, some professions like barbering have disappeared and others, like journalism, are in jeopardy.) But unless they are replaced by comparable institutions, where the majority of practitioners strive to ‘do the right thing,’ we will have a society in which no one will want to live. And that would indeed be tragic.