The Use and Abuse of History   /   Summer 2022   /    Notes & Comments

Insensitivity Training

Module-ating morality.

Carl Elliott

Shutterstock, Inc.

Another year, another day, another afternoon lost to a compulsory online ethics “module.” This time the subject was sexual misconduct, but it could also have been diversity and equity training, the responsible conduct of research, or any number of other topics aimed at improving my moral behavior. Even worse than the online modules are the in-person lectures and workshops, which I can’t fast-click my way through or watch at double speed. Why do I resent these sessions so much? It’s not as if I am in favor of sexism, racism, or homophobia. I am on the record as opposing financial corruption and the abuse of human research subjects. Yet these exercises in moral instruction always leave me feeling like Alex in A Clockwork Orange, my eyes clamped open as Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony blasts into my ears.

What makes it worse is that I have delivered this kind of torture myself. For thirty years, it was part of my job to lecture medical school students, residents, and faculty on matters of ethics. There is a linear relationship between ethics and scandal: The worse the academic medical institution behaves, the more bioethics professors its leaders hire. Whether you believe their interest in ethics is genuine depends on your degree of cynicism about academic medicine. I have never been a true believer, but my recent experience as a victim of ethics training has made me wonder again how my own lectures have been received. The philosopher Moritz Schlick, you may recall, was assassinated by one of his former students.

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