Dr. Martin focuses on the imperative of ethics in professional writing heavily in his class, as does Anne Surma in the assigned reading, expressing the two as synonymous with one impossible without the other. Professional writing absent of ethics is absent of consideration for one’s audience and will not carry the weight necessary for effective communication, rendering the whole effort of a piece’s creation utterly useless in a perfect world, but sadly, that is not the world we live in. It seems that the discussion of ethics in fragile genres (namely politics) is very loosely defined and in some cases, entirely absent, misleading the audience away from actual truth.
We are all to familiar with the phrase, “fake news,” to be applied to any publication that does not necessarily reinforce whatever beliefs one holds. Often seen in any discussion of politics along with the anti-vaxxers, flat-earthers, and climate change deniers, the suspicion/hysteria revolving around widespread publications is at an all time high. With the overall message of your written piece likely to be debated or even ignored by anyone outside the targeted audience, one could ask how integral professional writing is when doing so for a general public that often distorts its meaning regardless of how thorough and detailed it may be? The issue commonly found with all of this resides in the blame being entirely put upon the author and those of whom they represent.
This argument can be interpreted one of two ways. The first being that mentioned before when saying a blame is to be upon the author, while the other is to blame those reading the publications outside of the targeted demographic. According to Surma, some blame is to be put on the author since it is their responsibility to be ethical in their work. Although I would love to say I personally blame society and their inability to focus on substantial evidence, it seems the blame should in fact lay on the shoulders of those who write without ethics and misrepresent their data to support their own argument.
I had mentioned anti-vaxxers before because they are a prime example of widespread falsehoods largely due to the lack of ethics in publication. In 1998, now ex-physician Andrew Wakefield published a study with 11 others reporting that the MMR vaccine caused autism in children. The study was disproved and 11 of the 12 involved retracted their conclusions about the vaccine while Wakefield stuck with his final conclusion ( Sathyanarayana and Andrade, 2011). It was also found that Wakefield’s study was funded by the very lawyers defending the vaccine companies so that Wakefield strike it rich as long as he falsified his study (Sathyanarayana and Andrade, 2011).
Wakefield’s study was found to be fraudulent and blatantly false and yet there is a widespread epidemic across multiple countries entirely related to parents not vaccinating their children who now risk contracting, spreading, and dying from the very diseases these vaccines stop. The study itself was incredibly unethical in almost every sense. Reinforcing it after it’s proven falsehood would be incredibly unethical, now more than ever given the aforementioned circumstance, and yet Wakefield does it, considering himself to be an “anti-vaccine activist.”
This is a perfect example of an unethical man spreading an unethical publication. When ethics are absent from professional writing, people can get hurt. Attempts to confront a situation such as this are often met with aggression and is then found to be ineffective and useless when those who created them continue to support. It may be a stretch to say, but Wakefield’s lack of ethics should be held responsible for the illness and deaths relating to those who do not vaccinate their children claiming his study as evidence to support their decision.
This case, in particular, is one where the ethical responsibility was entirely up to the authors and was blatantly ignored, causing the audience harm. No author intends for those who read their work to get hurt, so the responsibility to present the facts in a true, ethical manor so that it can be avoided is entirely theirs. The author has a responsibility to their audience and field, and in no way are those who read their work to blame for the falsehoods knowingly published by one. Ethics and professional writing are bound by definition.
Works Cited:
Rao, T S Sathyanarayana, and Chittaranjan Andrade. “The MMR Vaccine and Autism: Sensation, Refutation, Retraction, and Fraud.” Indian Journal of Psychiatry, Medknow Publications, Apr. 2011, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3136032/.
Andrew's Rhetoric Blog 