Who stole all the library’s ethics books?

Even those among us who graduated many years ago will have at least a vague recollection of studying the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s code of ethics — guidance for the profession on how to do “the right thing”. But a couple of studies have shown that, while studying ethics may be a laudable pursuit, there is little evidence that students of the subject go on to behave more ethically.

Ethicists behave no more ethically than non-ethicists, according to the results of a survey of their colleagues at a meeting of the American Philosophical Association. The study, published in the journal Mind, noted that the connection between career and behaviour can be tenuous and complicated.

It points out that police officers may commit crimes, doctors may smoke and economists may invest badly. This fits comfortably with what we know of pharmacists: that they may abuse drugs and may be non-adherent patients.

A separate study questions ethicists’ moral behaviour in the library. “Do ethicists steal more books?”, which was published in Philosophical Psychology, found that books on ethics were more likely to go missing than books on other philosophy topics.

Relatively obscure publications likely to be checked out by professional philosophers and their students were 50 per cent more likely to be missing than non-ethics books. But more widely read ethics classics were about twice as likely to go missing. This effect is not due to simple absent-mindedness either, as ethics books were no more likely to be overdue than were non-ethics books.

The study’s author concludes that it would be “a dark day for moral philosophy” if it turned out that philosophical moral cognition was harmful. He argues that while, in certain situations, moral cognition promotes moral behaviour, in others it can undermine morality if it is used to justify a self-serving conclusion.

Perhaps it is time to dust off your code of ethics and find out for yourself.