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Conflicts Arising from the Desire to Succeed and to Be Right
Monday, October 26th, 2009
Robert Wechsler
Can grades be evidence of a conflict of interest? This is what the Cook
County prosecutor's office is effectively arguing, according to an
article in the Chicago Tribune.
Northwestern University journalism students spent three years researching a criminal case, in which they believe that a man was wrongfully convicted. They presented a great deal of evidence to the prosecutor's office, and in return the prosecutor's office has apparently determined that they are not journalists, but investigators, and as investigators you need to turn over all your notes, not only audio- and videotapes of their interviews.
In addition, the prosecutor's office has subpoenaed the students' grades and e-mails, grading criteria, and student evaluations. What's that about?
The prosecutor's chief of staff said, "Suppose we detect an account that said the students were guaranteed to get a higher grade if they went and located more witnesses. That then threatens the integrity of the information they got from the witness because there's this incentive or this bias that exists."
In other words, there might be a conflict between doing justice to the case and the students' interest in getting good grades. To get better grades, they might skew justice by trying too hard to find injustice.
This is not completely a specious argument, but there are two principal problems with it. First, according to this argument, when a prosecutor has a case, she's going to try to win it to get a promotion, even if it means skewing justice by trying too hard to convict someone. Unless a prosecutor's office has clear promotion criteria benefiting those who insist on dropping cases where there is insufficient evidence equally to those who win cases, then the prosecutors in the office have the same sort of conflict as this prosecutor's office believes the journalism students have.
Second, trying hard to succeed in a venture really has nothing to do with grades or grading criteria. Everyone is biased in their attempt to prove what they are trying to prove. This bias causes all sorts of problems in every profession and business. When it comes down to it, money and grades are secondary to the drive to succeed and to be right.
The conflict caused by the drive to be right is at the center of this controversy. What group of professionals wants to be told by a bunch of students that it made a tragic mistake and ruined an innocent person's life? Accusations are being made that the Cook County prosecutor's office is trying to destroy the journalism project. This would not be surprising, for much the same reason they are arguing with respect to the journalism students: none of us wants to fail.
The prosecutor's office needs to try to rise above its natural feelings about past mistakes of others' and possible investigations into their own mistakes. It needs to recognize its own biases and question whether the documents it has demanded are really necessary to do justice. And it needs to take a hard look at its own grading criteria, to make sure that it is as without conflicts as it would like the Northwestern journalism school's to be.
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics
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Northwestern University journalism students spent three years researching a criminal case, in which they believe that a man was wrongfully convicted. They presented a great deal of evidence to the prosecutor's office, and in return the prosecutor's office has apparently determined that they are not journalists, but investigators, and as investigators you need to turn over all your notes, not only audio- and videotapes of their interviews.
In addition, the prosecutor's office has subpoenaed the students' grades and e-mails, grading criteria, and student evaluations. What's that about?
The prosecutor's chief of staff said, "Suppose we detect an account that said the students were guaranteed to get a higher grade if they went and located more witnesses. That then threatens the integrity of the information they got from the witness because there's this incentive or this bias that exists."
In other words, there might be a conflict between doing justice to the case and the students' interest in getting good grades. To get better grades, they might skew justice by trying too hard to find injustice.
This is not completely a specious argument, but there are two principal problems with it. First, according to this argument, when a prosecutor has a case, she's going to try to win it to get a promotion, even if it means skewing justice by trying too hard to convict someone. Unless a prosecutor's office has clear promotion criteria benefiting those who insist on dropping cases where there is insufficient evidence equally to those who win cases, then the prosecutors in the office have the same sort of conflict as this prosecutor's office believes the journalism students have.
Second, trying hard to succeed in a venture really has nothing to do with grades or grading criteria. Everyone is biased in their attempt to prove what they are trying to prove. This bias causes all sorts of problems in every profession and business. When it comes down to it, money and grades are secondary to the drive to succeed and to be right.
The conflict caused by the drive to be right is at the center of this controversy. What group of professionals wants to be told by a bunch of students that it made a tragic mistake and ruined an innocent person's life? Accusations are being made that the Cook County prosecutor's office is trying to destroy the journalism project. This would not be surprising, for much the same reason they are arguing with respect to the journalism students: none of us wants to fail.
The prosecutor's office needs to try to rise above its natural feelings about past mistakes of others' and possible investigations into their own mistakes. It needs to recognize its own biases and question whether the documents it has demanded are really necessary to do justice. And it needs to take a hard look at its own grading criteria, to make sure that it is as without conflicts as it would like the Northwestern journalism school's to be.
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics
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