The headline may have fooled you. But no, this post isn't about the op-ed you're probably thinking of, and its not about anonymity. The op-ed that I'm thinking about was signed.
In early July of this year, The Seattle Times published an op-ed by Samuel Browd, medical director of Seattle Children’s Sport Concussion Program, on the risks of brain injury for young athletes active in contact sports.
In early July of this year, The Seattle Times published an op-ed by Samuel Browd, medical director of Seattle Children’s Sport Concussion Program, on the risks of brain injury for young athletes active in contact sports.
Dr. Browd referenced research on the dangers of repetitive brain trauma. But he cautioned against an alarmist view, saying that millions of children “have played contact sports without overt symptoms” and that “kids sitting around being inactive is bad and unhealthy.”
Dr. Browd is a co founder of VICIS, a football helmet company that sells some pretty pricey helmets ($950). He is also an unaffiliated neurology consultant to the NFL and to the Seattle Seahawks.
The op-ed went out to the public without any editorial note with regard to these industry connections on the part of Dr. Browd.
General question: fair play or foul?
I am surprised that you even ask the question. I cannot conceive of an argument to justify non-disclosure. Can you? Of course, the disclosure could include a claim that, despite Dr. Browd's affiliations or non-affiliations, the opinions expressed in the op-ed are objective, and readers can decide how much credence to give such a claim.
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DeleteHenry,
ReplyDeleteDid you in your now-distant days as a book review editor ask yourself if your reviewers had a fiduciary interest in the subject of the books under review, or other matters (more or less related) that they might discuss in the course of the review?
Christopher,
DeleteNo, but the issue never occurred to me, and, even now, I can't think of a situation in which a reviewer would have a fiduciary interest in the subject of the book under review or in other matters that the review might discuss. If such a situation had arisen, then I would not have agreed to the person's writing the review if I thought that his or her fiduciary interest would affect the review.
Two other situations come to mind that might raise questions about a reviewer's objectivity. One is the reviewer's opinions, before he reads the book he plans to review, on the subject of the book. For example, a reviewer of a book that advocates animal rights might himself favor (or oppose) animal rights, or a reviewer of a book about Abraham Lincoln might admire (or be critical of) Lincoln. (Usually a reviewer will want to read a book with which he agrees, so the two parentheticals in the previous sentence are for the most part unnecessary.) The situation of an opinionated reviewer is unavoidable and, in fact, desirable. This is because a person who is knowledgeable about animal rights or Abraham Lincoln is highly likely to have formed an opinion about them, and that opinion will probably not be that the arguments on each side of the question have equal merit. This being the case, the only alternative is to find a reviewer who is ignorant of the subject of the book under review. This would be difficult, because people do not ordinarily seek to review books on subjects in which they have formerly had no interest, and, if they did, they would not be qualified to offer educated opinions on such subjects.
A second situation that gave me pause was when a reviewer knew an author. I would agree to a review in that situation if the reviewer assured me that his acquaintance with the author would not prevent him from writing an objective review. Sometimes, in fact, an author would ask me to have his book reviewed, and, if I could not find a potential reviewer, then I'd invite the author to suggest someone he knew whom he thought would be willing and objective. (Thus, his mother could not be a candidate.) I was reluctant to extend this invitation to authors, but the situation arose rarely, and my desire for reviews to publish overcame my reluctance. (As you know, reviewers received no compensation.)
How about when the reviewer has a fiduciary interest in the book itself? Of course, I would not accept a review from such a person, but it brings up a personal story. I used to work for and write legal reports for the federal government. Some of these reports were bound by private publishers and sold on amazon.com. This is legal, because federal documents are not copyrighted. But it is morally dubious because these reports are available for free if you know how to obtain them. The private publishers, therefore, were taking advantage of people's ignorance. In response to this situation, I posted "reviews" of my own work on amazon.com. My reviews did not evaluate my work; they simply disclosed how to obtain it for free. After some months, amazon.com removed my reviews, and told me that it does not accept reviews from authors or anyone else who has a fiduciary interest in the product reviewed. I explained that, not only did I have no fiduciary interest (I got no royalties), but that my reviews were designed to discourage sales. A rule is a rule, replied amazon.com, mindlessly.
Henry,
ReplyDeleteTo spin this out a bit though: A lawyer might well write a book on bankruptcy law, and one of the themes of the book might be that, since bankruptcy laws are complicated, pro se representation by the average debtor is not well advised. I imagine that the author of such a book would acknowledge that he may benefit from giving this advice, but he thinks it so important nonetheless that, etc. (Or he could be writing this book in his retirement home.)
Anyway, suppose you had received an unsolicited and generally favorable review, from a lawyer, of this book, uncritically referencing that theme. This would have put you in roughly the situation of The Seattle Times. Would you have asked the reviewer whether his practice includes bankruptcy? Would a "yes" answer have caused you to decline the review, or add a disclosure?
Christopher,
ReplyDeleteIt would not have occurred to me to ask the reviewer whether his practice includes bankruptcy. If I'd thought about it, I would have assumed that it did (if I knew him to have a private practice rather than to be retired or to be a bankruptcy law judge, for example), for not many people read bankruptcy law books for recreation or amusement. (You might be an exception ☺)
If I assumed, or in fact knew, that the reviewer practiced bankruptcy law, it would not have caused me to decline the review, even if, in addition to being a favorable review, it explicitly endorsed the author's advice not to represent yourself. This is because I see this conflict of interest as de minimis and certainly not enough to prompt a favorable review of a bad book.
I suspect that a substantial percentage of book reviews in the popular and the professional press are written by reviewers who know the authors of the books they review, and that lots of mutual back-scratching occurs. They work in the same fields, after all. I am bothered by this, so, as a book review editor, I insisted on something that I've rarely seen in the press: disclosure of the reviewer's acquaintance with the author, if the acquaintance was more substantial than meeting at a professional conference or the like. But worrying about a conflict of interest of the sort you describe would be excessive, in my view.
Henry,
ReplyDeleteThose observations, I think, bring us around to where we began. Because although it is in isolation easy to say that there is no case for non-disclosure of Dr Browd's interest on a football helmet strategy, it would be a departure from a widespread laissez-faire policy on such matters. Almost no publication PAYS for op-eds. It is free work somebody is offering, it fills up space, and if it well done it provokes a lot of interest and maybe some angry 'letters to the editor.'
Thus, newspaper editors don't want to look gift horses in the mouth They don't inquire much into bios of contributors, and allow each contributor to write his own ;about the author' sentence. Any departure from this laxness would require explanation, or a new and more rigorous policy, and both seem more trouble than they're worth.
After all, there may well be a continuum of possibilities. On one end, the co-founder of a company that makes expensive helmets writing a column that says that young people should continue to participate in sports that require the to butt each other in the head. On the other end, say, a piece about bankruptcy law, by a lawyer, cautioning against pro se litigation for most debtors. Might turn into a tricky and continually contested line drawing exercise.
As Wittgenstein might have said (in an alternative universe!), "Of those lines that we cannot draw, of them we shouldn't even pick up the pencil."
Christopher,
ReplyDeleteThe fact that a policy exists is not an argument for retaining it. That takes care of your first two paragraphs.
As for your next two paragraphs, the fact that line-drawing can be difficult is not an argument for abandoning it and instead allowing even the most egregious conflicts of interest -- the ones that most clearly can result in a biased book review. As I noted above, when I was a book review editor, I distinguished between reviewing a book of an author whom you'd met at a professional conference and reviewing the book of an author to whom you'd given birth.
The law often requires line-drawing. In some cases it is difficult to draw the line between consensual sexual and coerced sex, but that is not an argument for legalizing rape.
Your first graf above reminds me of Chesterton's fence. Lots of fences richly deserve to be taken down, more than GKC would have wanted, but he had a point -- those taking them down should have a sense of why they went up.
ReplyDeleteChesterton is right, but I'll come back at you with Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.'s comment that “It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than that so it was laid down in the time of Henry IV.”
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