Copyright: 2001

Publisher: Dutton

ISBN: 0465026079

Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet is the product of three psychologists from different fields.  Howard Gardner is a cognitive psychologist best known for his theory of multiple intelligences.  Csikszentmihalyi is a social psychologist best known for his concept of "flow", a state in which an individuals skills and challenges mesh and completely absorb the mind.  (See his book Flow)  William Damon is the author with which I am least familiar but he is a developmental psychologist who focuses on social and moral issues.  The book itself is the culimnation of several years of intense research into two major fields: genetics and journalism.  The focus of their study was searching for the factors that lead to both highly effective and highly ethical behavior in a given field. 

General definitions

Aside from being a fascinating portal into the two fields of genetics and journalism, this books spends a great deal of time delineating various aspects of our working society.  Since this book is from academics, it is not terribly practical, however the insight is valuable nonetheless.

The authors note that many people face ethical dilemmas in the course of their work.  Guideliness for consideration are:

  • What is the mission of your profession?
  • What are the standards (best practices) of your field?
  • What is your identity, i.e. what are your personal values?

The authors go into great details on the differences between individual practitioners, domains, and fields.  For simplicity sake here are simple definitions of each term.

Practitioner: A person who chooses to enter a given profession. (The authors recursively define a profession as "a group of people who decide to work together.)

Domain: A symbolic structure that surrounds a codified body of knowledge.

Field: The set of people and practices that work with a given domain.

Within a profession, individuals can hold one of three "positions":

  • Gatekeeper: one who presides over the destiny of the professional realm
  • Expert: one who is recognized and authorized by the gatekeepers to practice
  • Apprentice: one who is a student of the field, seeking entrance

Notes

"We are not against market based economy, but against market based society."

"At one level information is the ratio of signal to noise... at another it is about 'meaning.'"

"Matthew Effect" from Robert Merton.  "For unto every one that hath shall be given" Matthew 25:29.  Merton noticed that people who have accomplished things will have an easier path towards accomplishing more things.  This means early success in fields such as journalism and genetics are crucial to long term effectiveness in the field.

Geneticists identified four themes of their work:

  • Thrill of scientific inquiry
  • Pleasure of working with scientific materials
  • Enchantment with the quality of thinking
  • Belief that science foregrounds a certain kind of rational thinking

In a discussion on the conflict between science and religion, Francis Collins came up.  He is a fascinating and sometimes controversial geneticist. 

Much of the description of early American Journalism can apply to today's "blogosphere".  Penny papers were sometimes decorated with lavish artwork, others were poorly typeset.  Each paper catered to a consituency, be it ethnic or otherwise.  Virtually all news sources of the day were blatantly and shamelessly partisan.  Sounds just like the blogging world of today!

Conclusion

This book was an interesting read, however the authors make their liberal views well known however when they praise Salon and Slate as "objective" and put down Drudge as "inaccurate".  My main disappointment in this book was the blatant left leaning perspective.  I am under no illusion that Matt Drudge is a "journalist" or that Fox News is wholly unbiased.  But please don't insult my intelligence by lifting up NBC and Salon as models of journalistic integrity.  All in all it was a decent book but it was marred and in my opinion fatally flawed by some of the bias shown in the journalistic section.  If the authors couldn't bring themselves to be intellectually honest in the face of their own bias, how can I expect the rest of their work to be accurate?