Personal and Professional Ethics in Forensic Science
Excerpts from my chapter in an upcoming book, Introduction to Bloodstain Pattern Analysis, edited by Toby Wolson, to be published by Taylor & Francis in 2024.
Also, be sure to attend the American Chemical Society’s Spring Conference in New Orleans to attend my talk on ethics in forensic science and a special session food fraud and forensics.
Ethical dilemmas confronting forensic professionals are far reaching and prevalent in today’s criminal justice system. Inherent within the criminal justice system is the power to make discretionary decisions that impacts the offenders, victims, society, as well as the forensic professional.
Ethical behavior is not acquired naturally: It must be learned or taught. Learning about proper behavior only through personal experience is inefficient and painful for the learner and others. Learning how to make ethical decisions is necessary in order to avoid the pain of unethical conduct, especially in professional situations. Manners and etiquette are precursors to morals: Etiquette tells how people should interact with others in social relations and morals express ethical obligations toward others in behavior. Professional ethics involve not only the daily interactions with others but discipline-specific behaviors that may have outsized effects, especially for those in public service.
Morals are good conduct; they constitute permissible behavior, the rules that prescribe proper action, and the principles of right and wrong. Ethics, on the other hand, is the discipline and study of morality, that is, the study and analysis of what constitutes good conduct. Social questions that include any controversy over the "right" thing to do are called ethical issues. Situations in which it is difficult to make a decision, either because the right course of action is not clear or the right course of action carries some negative consequences, are called ethical dilemmas.
But what about laws? Do laws not prescribe appropriate behavior, like prohibitions against stealing and killing? Moral behavior requires more than the law requires: A law may not exist for a particular ethical situation. Ethics is central to criminal justice because morality is what helps to distinguish between right and wrong. Laws reflect and reinforce the morals and ethics of a community but do not create them. It is important to differentiate the government's moral authority to enforce the law from the immorality of the crime itself. Laws provide only the baseline or boundaries of civil behavior. Therefore, a person of good character is one who engages consistently in moral conduct, regardless of what the law demands. This is also true of a forensic organization’s procedures and quality processes: It does no good to merely parrot, “I was only following the protocols,” if it results in unethical behavior.
Values are judgments of worth about attitudes, statements, and behaviors. Value judgments can be verified only through reason. Value judgments are any judgment that expresses whether something is “good” or “bad”. Factual judgments, however, can be verified based on provable evidence; they can be verified empirically through observations. For example, saying a particular model of a car gets 35 miles per gallon is a factual judgment but saying the car is economical is a value judgment. Stating that an actor is 58 years old is factual, whereas offering that they are talented is a value judgment. Same-sex marriage being legal is factual; saying it is morally wrong is a value judgment. Remember, a statement of preference (“I like pizza with anchovies”) is a statement about the speaker’s values, not the thing; the person is stating their likes or dislikes, not the factual value of something.
People often confuse value judgments with factual judgments, claiming one set of beliefs, whereas they actually endorse the opposite. It is important to clarify which is being offered. Just because moral claims are sometimes offered as fact doesn't mean that they really are factual. When dealing with morality, our moral obligations tend to be what we consider to be of greater importance than other things we ought to do; this is known as the Is-Ought problem. For example, a person might feel that they morally ought to give half of their money to charity, but it is not wrong if they do not. That same person may also feel that it is morally wrong to steal from a charity and feel obligated not to do that. It is difficult or impossible to say with any certainty that because something is some way (a fact) that it ought to be that way (a value), thus the Is-Ought problem. Generally, it is not obvious how one can shift from descriptive statements (how the world is) to prescriptive ones (how we feel it ought to be). Cultural and institutional facts about what is right can still vary by society; without an objective moral goal, a “ought” is difficult to establish. The greater challenge of ethical systems remains to define the essence and origins of the good and to what extent it should be pursued.
Because of this, some feel that all values, including moral ones, are merely matters of opinion and preference (“I like anchovies; don’t ‘yuck’ my ‘yum”), relative to the person and their culture. Moral relativism, sometimes called situational ethics, is the belief that morals can be different, but none are better than another; therefore, there are no universal moral standards. Relativism can be confused with tolerance. Tolerance accepts that there are moral principles, but people should not have the views of others imposed on them. Relativism sees nothing wrong with imposing views on others because there are no general principles (so nothing can be wrong). Ethical relativism attempts to justify the way people behave, rather than focusing on how people ought to behave, which is the real subject matter of ethics. But moral relativism has an unappealing consequence: if all value judgments are subjective, then it is possible to justify any action, including the worst one can imagine.
As discussed, morals and ethics are not acquired naturally; they must be taught, whether it is at home or from outside sources, like education. Learning about ethics only through personal or professional experience is inefficient and painful. Being taught proper methods to make ethical decisions helps to avoid the pain of unethical conduct. Morals, either personal or professional, express ethical obligations toward others through behavior. Decisions that lead to unethical behaviors can be avoided by recognizing some of the more common fallacies in ethical thinking.
A common fallacy in ethical thinking is “mine is better,” as in “My _____ is (better, smarter, more correct, etc.) than your _____.” As children, we do this all the time. As adults, we avoid it but the effects linger and it poses an obstacle to open-mindedness. We mistakenly assume our perspective is correct and others’ is wrong. Getting yourself or others to articulate their objection can help get beyond this roadblock.
Related to this selfish perspective is the tendency for people to place an undue emphasis on internal characteristics of someone (their character or intention), rather than on external factors in explaining another person's behavior in a given situation. This is called fundamental attribution error. When interpreting one's own behavior, however, external factors are more easily recognized and are taken into account. For example, if a person sees someone running a redlight, they might think, “Look at that jerk! He’s in such a rush, he could have killed someone!” If the same person runs a redlight themselves, they would instead think, “Wow! I didn’t see that light change; I didn’t have a chance to stop!” Fundamental attribution error can lead to misperception of the intent and actions of others.
If we use one set of criteria for judging ourselves and another for others, that is called a double standard. People may selectively consider or twist evidence to serve their self interests. Setting aside guiding principles, people may rationalize arguments to justify their actions or decisions. Double standards are especially common in situations where a choice was made (they don’t want to be wrong) or a close relationship is involved (assuming the best/worst of someone).
If a person argues that what they’ve done, although wrong, is still acceptable because others are either doing it or worse things, they have fallen into the ethical fallacy called tu quoque, Latin for “You also.” It is completely irrelevant whether others are guilty of acting unethically: That person still committed the (unethical) act they are arguing against. Mother’s who scold their children by saying, “Because your friend Bobby jumped off the swing set doesn’t mean it’s ok for you to do it,” are arguing against tu quoque. This fallacy is related to the slippery slope, where the perception is that allowing one action will necessitate and lead to a further extreme and undesirable consequence. “If we allow _____ to happen, then [an even worse action] will occur.” Slippery slopes are fallacious because people do not establish that the undesirable consequences must occur, or are causal, given the action they argue against.
The last (as far as this chapter goes) fallacy in ethical decision making is called moral prudentialism. Being prudent means to act wisely when pursuing one’s own interests, like wearing seatbelts, tying their shoes, and similar acts. The error of moral prudentialism occurs when someone argues in moral favor of some activities because those behaviors benefit an individual or group, that is, the action is considered moral because it is prudent for them. If a person says, “I have a right to happiness just like anyone else, and if finding happiness means I have to have a good career, and if having a good career means I have to lie on this application form, then there cannot be anything wrong with that because it results in my happiness.” The person has forsaken their duty to honesty for their personal or professional gain.
So what to do? How can organizations take steps to reduce or mitigate the chance of employees behaving inappropriately? First and foremost, drive out fear of retribution for calling out bad behavior. Deming made this clear regarding quality (Point # 8: Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company) but it applies as well to ethics.18
An excellent example of this is the story related about an enlisted seaman who discovered that he had misplaced a tool during a combat exercise. The danger was the tool could be sucked into a jet engine during the exercise but admitting his mistake would shut down the exercise involving hundreds of military personnel and lots of expensive military equipment, as well as bring possible punishment to him. The sailor nevertheless did the right thing; reported his error, and the exercise was stopped at considerable expense. The sailor was not punished, however; rather, he was commended by his commanding officer in a formal ceremony acknowledging his bravery for acting properly. If the military can do that, why not smaller organizations? By making it safe for employees to point out potential lapses in ethical behavior, organizations make it less likely for the lapses to become significant or severe.
Training employees to recognize the severity of outcomes from misconduct can also help. Most employees may not see the second- or third-order events that a single unethical action can have. Using specific examples linking the unethical behavior to the damage it causes helps the employees realize the implications of poor ethical choices. The benefits achieved by those who act unethically are usually short-term gains that are either quickly exhausted, must remain secret, or are not easily shared, and they result in pain or penalty when the conduct becomes known. The implications for the organization, however, can be magnified and extend well beyond the walls of the workplace. Managers, as visible and vital examples, should evaluate the ethical consequences of their decisions; employees will see the hypocrisy right away and any further attempts by the manager to set an example will be damaged or futile.
Organizations should develop and enforce a code of conduct that clearly states what constitutes acceptable and inappropriate behavior. The code should have consequences. The code should emphasize positive behaviors, rather than listing a litany of offenses. While ethical behavior should be its own reward (as Aristotle would remind us), specific actions that avert significant negative outcomes should be praised and that praise should be public (like the previous sailor example). Praising in public (and punishing in private) is an old management saying but it is true: Making the community aware of what good behavior is tends to elicit better behavior from others.