University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Department of Philosophy
PhD, 1998
Hattiesburg, Mississippi, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Normative Ethics
Areas of Interest
Aesthetics
Applied Ethics
  •  4
    Testing an active intervention to deter researchers’ use of questionable research practices
    with R. Didlake, D. F. Sacco, and M. Brown
    Research Integrity and Peer Review 4 (1). 2019.
    IntroductionIn this study, we tested a simple, active “ethical consistency” intervention aimed at reducing researchers’ endorsement of questionable research practices (QRPs).MethodsWe developed a simple, active ethical consistency intervention and tested it against a control using an established QRP survey instrument. Before responding to a survey that asked about attitudes towards each of fifteen QRPs, participants were randomly assigned to either a consistency or control 3–5-min writing task. …Read more
  •  7
    Behavioral Misconduct as a Basis for Scientific Retractions
    with August Namuth, Lisa Wright, and Donald Sacco
    Journal of Academic Ethics 1-12. forthcoming.
    Increasingly, scholarly journals have begun retracting published articles for reasons other than those described by advisory organizations such as the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Numerous research articles have been retracted of late due to political concerns. Additionally, some articles have been retracted for behavioral misconduct, which was also the subject of a recent COPE discussion forum. ‘Behavioral misconduct’ denotes harmful or immoral behavior of one or more authors that is…Read more
  •  39
    “Should It Be Considered Plagiarism?” Student Perceptions of Complex Citation Issues
    with Dan Childers
    Journal of Academic Ethics 14 (1): 1-17. 2016.
    Most research on student plagiarism defines the concept very narrowly or with much ambiguity. Many studies focus on plagiarism involving large swaths of text copied and pasted from unattributed sources, a type of plagiarism that the overwhelming majority of students seem to have little trouble identifying. Other studies rely on ambiguous definitions, assuming students understand what the term means and requesting that they self-report how well they understand the concept. This study attempts to …Read more
  •  5
    Principal Investigators’ Priorities and Perceived Barriers and Facilitators When Making Decisions About Conducting Essential Research in the COVID-19 Pandemic
    with Alison L. Antes, Tristan J. McIntosh, Stephanie Solomon Cargill, and Kari Baldwin
    Science and Engineering Ethics 29 (2): 1-24. 2023.
    At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, stay-at-home orders disrupted normal research operations. Principal investigators (PIs) had to make decisions about conducting and staffing essential research under unprecedented, rapidly changing conditions. These decisions also had to be made amid other substantial work and life stressors, like pressures to be productive and staying healthy. Using survey methods, we asked PIs funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Nationa…Read more
  •  14
    Team sport, match analysis, technical variables, football
    with Mohammad Hosseini
    Accountability in Research 27 (8): 496-520. 2020.
    Over the past several years, there has been a significant increase in the number of scientific articles with two or more authors claiming “Equal Co-First Authorship”. This study provides a critical background to ECFA designations, discusses likely causes of its increased use, and explores arguments for and against the practice. Subsequently, it presents the results of a qualitative study that sought the opinion of 19 authors listed among equal first authors of recent publications in leading scie…Read more
  •  18
    Personal Motivations and Systemic Incentives: Scientists on Questionable Research Practices
    with Mary Medlin, Mitch Brown, and Donald F. Sacco
    Science and Engineering Ethics 26 (3): 1531-1547. 2020.
    As concern over the use of questionable research practices in academic science has increased over the last couple of decades, some reforms have been implemented and many others have been debated and recommended. While many of these proposals have merit, efforts to improve scientific practices are more likely to succeed when they are responsive to the prevailing views and concerns of scientists themselves. To date, there have been few efforts to solicit wide-ranging input from researchers on the …Read more
  •  16
    Grounds for Ambiguity: Justifiable Bases for Engaging in Questionable Research Practices
    with Donald F. Sacco and Mitch Brown
    Science and Engineering Ethics 25 (5): 1321-1337. 2019.
    The current study sought to determine research scientists’ sensitivity to various justifications for engaging in behaviors typically considered to be questionable research practices by asking them to evaluate the appropriateness and ethical defensibility of each. Utilizing a within-subjects design, 107 National Institutes of Health principal investigators responded to an invitation to complete an online survey in which they read a series of research behaviors determined, in prior research, to ei…Read more
  •  8
    What’s it to me? Self-interest and evaluations of financial conflicts of interest
    with Donald F. Sacco
    Research Ethics 14 (4): 1-17. 2017.
    Disclosure has become the preferred way of addressing the threat to researcher objectivity arising from financial conflicts of interest. This article argues that the effectiveness of disclosure at protecting science from the corrupting effects of FCOIs—particularly the kind of disclosure mandated by US federal granting agencies—is more limited than is generally acknowledged. Current NIH and NSF regulations require disclosed FCOIs to be reviewed, evaluated, and managed by officials at researchers…Read more
  • Kant's Conception of the Moral Law: Themes in "Groundwork" Ii
    Dissertation, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 1998.
    This dissertation explores several related themes from the second Chapter of Immanuel Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. A particular focus is Kant's view of the moral law as a law of reason and the similarities between this view and the position of the natural lawyers. My first chapter summarizes and interprets the conception of morality found in four leading natural law theorists--Cicero, Aquinas, Suarez and Grotius--which provides the basis for some preliminary comparisons with Ka…Read more
  •  46
    Looks-Based Hiring and Wrongful Discrimination
    Business and Society Review 120 (4): 607-635. 2015.
    Popular clothing retailer Abercrombie and Fitch (A&F) is well-known for hiring attractive store sales clerks. While the economic benefits of this hiring practice for the company are undeniable, many commentators contend that it constitutes wrongful discrimination against unattractive job seekers. In this article, I explore the ethics of A&F-style lookism and challenge two common perspectives on this issue. I argue that on one hand, looks-based hiring cannot be defended based on its economic bene…Read more
  •  66
    Teaching the golden rule
    Journal of Business Ethics 49 (2): 179-187. 2004.
    The Golden Rule is endorsed in oneform or another by most cultures and majorreligions and is still espoused byphilosophers, business ethicists, and popularbusiness authors. Because it also resonateswith undergraduate business majors, it can bean effective teaching tool. This paperdescribes a way of teaching the Golden Rulethrough a series of business-oriented examplesintended to bring out its strengths andweaknesses. The method described alsointroduces students to some basic moralreasoning skill…Read more
  • After Virtue—Twenty Years After
    Vera Lex 3 (1/2): 108-125. 2002.
  •  5
    No Title available: Book Reviews (review)
    Utilitas 15 (2): 248-249. 2003.
  •  95
    The Influence of Disclosure and Ethics Education on Perceptions of Financial Conflicts of Interest
    with Donald F. Sacco, Alen Hajnal, and Chris J. N. Lustgraaf
    Science and Engineering Ethics 21 (4): 875-894. 2015.
    This study explored how disclosure of financial conflicts of interest influences naïve or “lay” individuals’ perceptions of the ethicality of researcher conduct. On a between-subjects basis, participants read ten scenarios in which researchers disclosed or failed to disclose relevant financial conflicts of interest. Participants evaluated the extent to which each vignette represented a FCOI, its possible influence on researcher objectivity, and the ethics of the financial relationship. Participa…Read more
  •  119
    Duties of Gratitude
    Philosophy in the Contemporary World 10 (1): 11-15. 2003.
    This paper is a response to a recent article by Christopher Wellman in which Wellman argues that gratitude is better understood as a virtue rather than a source of moral obligations. First, I offer several examples intended to dispute his claim that gratitude does not impose duties. Second, I provide my own reasons for thinking that deontic notions alone cannot capture the moral significance of gratitude. Wellman’s mistake is attributable to an overly narrow conception of duty that his argument …Read more
  •  5
    No Title available: Book Reviews (review)
    Utilitas 15 (1): 121-123. 2003.
  •  26
    Education Journal Editors’ Perspectives on Self-Plagiarism
    with John R. Rachal
    Journal of Academic Ethics 13 (1): 13-25. 2015.
    The perspectives of academic journal editors regarding self-plagiarism were examined by means of an online survey in which 277 editors of education journals participated. Following the survey, a sub-sample of 14 editors were interviewed. A substantial majority of editors were found to be in accord with the most recent edition of the Publication Manual of the APA in believing that re-use of long, verbatim passages or tables, figures and images from an author’s previously published work without ap…Read more