So. I really REALLY believe in academic and personal integrity. Which means citing your sources, so your readers, if they are interested, can explore and decide for themselves instead of just being spoon-fed your interpretation.
This is why tonight’s GEDI discussion about Parker Palmer’s article (link here) truly annoyed me. We were discussing the ethics of a medical case based on what was presented in this article. But what was presented….wasn’t the whole story. The case study that was being discussed was not even cited as a source (found it myself, don’t worry…link here) by the author! What, huh?!
If you discuss the ethics of a case, it is also imperative to discuss the ethics of PRESENTING such a case. If you want to tell me about a case, that’s fine. But don’t misrepresent it. The medical resident who is the goat in Parker Palmer’s article is not the ineffectual character we are presented with – she’s not necessarily emotionally distanced from the man who died during her watch. We weren’t there, so we don’t know the whole story as a first-person bystander to begin with; when an author picks and chooses their narrative to create pathos by bringing in the wife (unmentioned in the original case study itself, by the way), you lose the trustworthiness that the reader had originally bestowed.
And trust is hard to re-earn – whether you are teaching in front of a class or presenting research results.
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