No more so than usual. 🙂 I have a reputation to live up to!

I wonder if it’s the relationships with these companies in bioethics that makes this self-serving necessary? Computer ethicists usually are “in bed” with government-, education- or policy-level organisations – the EU Commission, research councils, universities, thinktanks, that sort of thing. But bioethicists have to deal with far craftier players of the field – pharmaceutical companies, for example. It’s probably no wonder that some bioethicists drift toward the dark side without even realising it sometimes.

The only encounter I’ve had with slightly dodgy behaviour in CE is with academics who turn more to communication than research, yet keep up a veneer of research by getting students to do their work for them. But even that is standard in some areas of academia, so it’s hardly “switched to evil” on the scale of things. I’m hoping that my field doesn’t fall into a pattern of opacity and self-servingness though; and I hope I’d be one to call it out when I see it if it does happen.