Value and Worth

“What’s it worth?” Bill Bradford (Wikipedia here) asked me. That was about 1976 in his store, Liberty Coins, on Abbott Road in East Lansing. He continued: Is it worth what you paid for it? What you can sell it for? What it would cost to replace it? Over the years, I have considered the question. In 1990, I served on the board of ELFCO, the East Lansing Food Cooperative and chose the finance committee for my working task. There, I learned a lot from East Lansing entrepreneur Bruce Roth who sat on the board for many years and chaired the finance committee. Passed over for a job opportunity because I had no stronger experience in finance, I took a seminar in accounting for data processing at Lansing Community College. I do not remember if we did much with cost accounting but I do remember that you debit an asset to increase it. 

Some years earlier, the winter of 1972-1973, I sat in on a presentation on meta-ethics by Dr. William F. Schmidt in the home of Linda and Morris Tannehill. Bill Schmidt planned a futures trading company based on his algorithms for predicting change in the marketplace. He eventually had two satellite dishes feeding data. In 1993, I wrote computer programs for him because his IBM PC/AT computers (upgrades over the HP 9830s from too long before) were at their limit. (Necessary Facts here.).  I do not remember the content of his lecture that night and much of it was over my head at the time anyway. The essence was that in order to have values, you must have a standard of value.

 

To address that question, Ayn Rand posited an indestructible robot, asserting that as nothing could affect it, it could have no values. Any action or none at all would be equally consequential. (See “The Objectivist Ethics” in The Virtue of Selfishness. Ayn Rand Lexicon entry here: http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/values.html)

 

Some years ago (2017), on vacation, I wrote out notes but never was able to wotk through the problems to a solution or a set of them. The essential problem is one of limits: by Rand’s standard, the farther you are from any threat, the more secure your life it, the less consequential your choices. She solves that problem with the open container of “Man qua man.”

 

The Objectivist ethics holds man’s life as the standard of value—and his own life as the ethical purpose of every individual man.

 

The difference between “standard” and “purpose” in this context is as follows: a “standard” is an abstract principle that serves as a measurement or gauge to guide a man’s choices in the achievement of a concrete, specific purpose. “That which is required for the survival of man qua man” is an abstract principle that applies to every individual man. The task of applying this principle to a concrete, specific purpose—the purpose of living a life proper to a rational being—belongs to every individual man, and the life he has to live is his own.

 

Man must choose his actions, values and goals by the standard of that which is proper to man—in order to achieve, maintain, fulfill and enjoy that ultimate value, that end in itself, which is his own life.

 

The standard of value of the Objectivist ethics—the standard by which one judges what is good or evil—is man’s life, or: that which is required for man’s survival qua man.

 

Since reason is man’s basic means of survival, that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; that which negates, opposes or destroys it is the evil.

 

“Man’s survival qua man” means the terms, methods, conditions and goals required for the survival of a rational being through the whole of his lifespan—in all those aspects of existence which are open to his choice.

 

("Standard of Value" paragraphs from "The Objectivist Ethics" in The Virtue of Selfishness. Ayn Rand Lexicon here: http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/standard_of_value.html )

 

The statements are synonyms, tautologies, restatements in somewhat different words of the same assertion without evidence or demonstration. 

 

One of my favorite movie scenes (also in the book) is from 2010: The Year We Make Contact.  Curnaw and Floyd are homesick. “What I wouldn’t give for a hotdog at the Astrodome,” says Walter Curnaw. Floyd is taken aback “Astrodome?! You can’t grow good hotdogs indoors! Yankee Stadium. August. The hotdogs have been on the grill since opening day… The brown mustard.” 

 

But are they good for you? Are they pro-life? Are they appropriate to Man qua Man? Made from the lowest scraps of meat, spiced with artificial chemicals, each one is a cancer time bomb. 

 

An old joke goes that the doctor tells his patient that his health is at risk. Says the doctor, “Stop drinking, quit smoking, stop running around the bar scene chasing women.” The patient asks, “If I do that, will I live to be 100?” The doctor replies, “No. But it will seem like it.”

 

Aristotle’s Golden Mean offers some insight. Note first, that a problem underlies the concept of “eudaimonia” because it begs the question: What is the good life? In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle gives a shopping list of attributes that a good person will have, such as a measured walk and tone of voice. That being as it may, the Problem of the Stadium Hot Dog does speak to Ayn Rand’s Indestructible Robot. If you are 17 years of age having one hotdog at one game is not going to kill you: you are closer to indestructible than destructible in that context. At the other extreme, if you are 75 years of age, diagnosed with incurable cancer and given a few years (at most), as destructible as you are, the hotdog will not be your demise: you might as well enjoy it. 

 

Rand does indicate a productive line of analysis: “… for the survival of a rational being through the whole of his lifespan …” For Rand, of course, “rational” meant more than volitional or self-aware, though those are requisites to her deeper meaning. The inclusion may be redundant because, for example, rocks have no values. However, I assert that cats do have values. It is easy to assert (being unable to ask them) that cats are not self-aware. Like dogs, horse, etc.,, they do not "have" emotions because they are their emotions. (Unlike horses and dogs, though, cats have three different names.) 

 

Back to the question at hand: the Problem of the Stadium Hotdog can best be evaluated in the context given: through the whole of your lifespan. 

 

What is a hotdog worth? Is it a mistake, an error in judgment? If so, what does it cost to remediate the problem? The fact of future value indicates that any investment now correcting a mistake in the present results in tremendous costs in lost returns on investment in the long future. 

No matter how small the interest rate—the rate of return being some measure of how your life will improve—compounding will make the final answer consequential. 

 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

 

Morality and Ethics 

Choose Your Virtues

Understanding Objectivism 

A Good Place with Inadequate Philosophy 

Virgin Galactic VX01 VX03 

 

An Amateur Astronomer’s Credo

The January 2021 issue of Astronomy magazine presented “Studying Galaxies with Amateur Images” by David Martinez-Delgado and R. Jay GaBany. The article credited sanitary engineer Andrew Common with the first photographic record of the faint structures in the Orion Nebula. The year was 1883. Non-astronomers Karl Jansky at Bell Labs in 1933 and ham operator Grote Reber working alone in 1937 invented radio astronomy. 

Founded in 1897, the American Astronomical Society originally served all astronomers, but starting in the 1920s, amateurs drifted away and the AAS became a society for academics. Exploration beyond the Earth using rockets and the attendant creation of astronautics brought in other professionals. But the AAS, numbering about 2000 members, always had some amateur members, about ten to 15% or so. In 2016, the AAS Board of Directors created an initiative to reach out to amateurs with a new Amateur Affiliate membership class. Then, in 2019, the Board decided to take action. In 2020, they appointed a manager, their publicist Rick Fienberg, to head the effort. 

 

Meanwhile, AAS Amateur Affiliate and eclipse-chaser Rik Yeames decided to see if other AAS amateur affiliates would join his effort to publicize the upcoming solar eclipse, April 8, 2024. That’s where I came in. When I joined the AAS as an amateur affiliate in 2020, I saw that they wanted an assistant editor for the Historical Astronomy Division. So, I volunteered and was accepted. Tomorrow, February 1, 2021, I become the editor. At the 237^th meeting of the AAS, January 15-21, 2021, an Amateur Affiliate meet-and-greet was held. The AAS wanted to know what they could do for us. Ahead of that, I began to map out some ideas.

 

Rick Fienberg said that he found my ideas “confrontational.” I admit that what follows largely defines what a professional astronomer is not. However, that was consequential to the fact that the paradigm I started with was the NCO’s Creed of the U.S. Army here, which I learned while serving as a petty officer in the Maritime Regiment of the Texas Military Department. It begins, “No one is more professional than I. I am a noncommissioned officer, a leader of Soldiers.” It closes, “I will not compromise my integrity, nor my moral courage. I will not forget, nor will I allow my comrades to forget that we are professionals, noncommissioned officers, leaders!” Based on that, I wrote this:

 

An Amateur Astronomer’s Credo

 

My love of astronomy is its own justification.

I am motivated to practice the science of astronomy by my enjoyment of the activity.

 

I choose my own research projects.

I can change (or abandon) my research programs, goals, and methods.

My funding and my spending are my own.

I schedule my own time.

I choose my own instruments and equipment.

I schedule my own instruments and equipment.

I choose when and how to share my instruments or equipment. 

 

My amateur colleagues and I call each other by our first names. We also have cool usernames. 

 

I do not need approval from anyone to engage in and practice astronomy.

My advancement does not depend on approval from another person or group.

When I publicize my work, peer review is after the fact, not as permission to publish.

My publications stand on their own merit, independent of my name or ascribed status.

 

My learning is continuous and informal, an integrated aspect of my life and lifestyle.

I decide when and how to extend my knowledge, drawing from an open market of learning platforms including self-paced and self-directed studies offered by accredited organizations. I also benefit from public libraries and bookstores. Through social media, I ask questions. My love of the learning is its own justification, motivation, and reward.

 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Leaders are Readers 

We Were Soldiers Once and Young 

The Fourth Star 

Band of Brothers 

Peace is More Powerful 

 

A Good Place with Inadequate Philosophy

We enjoyed The Good Place. We watched it on disc and look forward to the release of Season 4. The show’s chatty dialogs on moral philosophy were pleasant and satisfying. The characters were engaging. We cared about what happened to them. It would be nice if The Good Place brought philosophy into the cultural mainstream something like what Star Trek’s original series did for science fiction. Like ST:OS, The Good Place had its flaws. 

Although the show namedrops several moral theories, it reverts back to Platonic altruism: your actions can be judged good if and only if (1) the goal is to benefit others and (2) you are not invested in the consequences to yourself.  

“Todd May and Pamela Hieronymi [are] the show’s philosophical advisors. While The Good Place hewed to the demands of a network sitcom—there was hugging and learning and quite a few jokes about farts—it also centered an ongoing debate about moral philosophy, from Aristotle up to the present day, and May and Hieronymi made sure the show stayed true to its grander ideals. Hieronymi, a professor at UCLA, introduced creator Mike Schur to T.M. Scanlon’s What We Owe to Each Other, which would become an onscreen bible for the show’s in-house philosopher, Chidi Anagonye. May, who teaches at Clemson, starred in a series of short videos explaining concepts like existentialism, utilitarianism, and deontology…” (Slate, 03 Feb 2020 here.) 

In addition to Aristotle’s virtue ethics, the show tossed out references to consequentialism and Scanlon’s contractarian  theory. Egoism did  not even get a nod. More deeply, the intention seemed to be to find one absolute standard for all contexts. Although I personally subscribe to Randian Objectivism as the best solution, always bringing all decisions to what is best for me, the fact remains that secondary theories such as contractarianism are useful and important. It depends on the context. And secondary theories can reflect back on primary considerations. It is not generally in your self-interest to habitually break your promises—unless you want to end your life as a hermit, even within a metropolis. 

My first class in criminal justice at Washtenaw Community College in 2005 was Ethics in Law Enforcement. Our professor was Ruth A. Walsh. Once the term was under way, we were given challenges to write about. Ms. Walsh expected us to apply all of the theories we were learning in order to analyze each problem from several viewpoints. Later, at Eastern Michigan University, working on my bachelor’s I tallied about 50 different theories to explain crime. That holistic approach to challenges in morality came in handy in my last class in graduate school (2010), Ethics in Physics.

I accepted that as a validation of the operation of necessary factual truths. At least 300 proofs of the Pythagorean theorem have been published. If an action is moral, then it can probably be justified not only by egoism, but by Kantian deontology, utilitarianism, pragmatism, and other constructs. If attempting that leads to contradictions, then one or more theories would be false on that point. In other words, moral theories are tools. You need to use the right tool for the right job. Do not use your screwdriver for a chisel. 

Can you save the whales? Should you bother? The inverse square law says that I cannot be very effective at that (here). On the other hand, I recently twice spent $20 on five boxes of Girl Scout cookies for the office. Not only does bringing cookies make me popular with my colleagues, but the money supports a local organization that I approve of. And the acts had a contractarian aspect: my first wife was a Girl Scout; and she taught me to always leave a place better than you found it. That lesson prepared me to engage the same behavior when, as a member of the Texas State Guard, I was part of a group using the barracks of the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Texas Army National Guard, and Sea Star Base Galveston.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Integrating Criminologies  

20% of Scientists are Crooks 

Morality and Ethics
Michael Shermer's Moral Arc 

Teaching Ethics to Student Engineers

Markets Bring Fairness 

Modes of Survival 

The Big Whimper of Modern Philosophy 

Soldiers of Peace

The military teaches the way of peace, said Paul K. Chappell, because they praise in public and reprimand in private. I heard Paul K. Chappell interviewed on an KERA’s “Think” with Krys Boyd, on March 20, 2018. A West Point graduate, Chappell left the Army as a captain and now works for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. I bought two copies of his book, Soldiers of Peace, and gave one to the director of our state guard officer candidate school. I finished reading it this morning. Overall, it was easy to find much to disagree with but Chappell argues well for finding other solutions to our social problems.

Chappell repeats his claims, which begin (easily enough) with the observation that 200 years ago, slavery was accepted and women could neither vote nor own property. But here we are today. So, what about us now will seem short-sighted to people 200 years in the future? Chappell calls his program “peace literacy.” It is a path, a way of life, not a formula or a checklist. Peace literacy includes empathetic listening, respect, integrity, and selfless service. Peace literacy depends on knowing how to calm yourself so that you can calm others. All of this takes discipline.

Soldiers of Peace: How to Wield the Weapon 

of Nonviolence with Maximum Force 

by Paul K. Chappell, 

Prospecta Press, 2017; 272 pages; $16.  

Chappell denies moral relativism and epistemological subjectivism. He says that the truth exists and we can know it. He warns against romanticizing the past, and even against romanticizing nonviolence. He calls himself a realist, and differentiates that from the common “realism” that is only cynicism. It is not surprising that he repeatedly cites Socrates, Lao-tze, Gandhi, and King. I did find it curious that he echoed Ayn Rand (though Rand is not cited anywhere). Rand found the basis for morality in our mortality. She posited an indestructible robot and explained that it could have no values. Chappell makes exactly the same argument. Like Rand, Chappell points out that humans have no instinctive, automatic modes of survival. Oak trees and caterpillars, he says, have no need for mentors. We do. And he provides many. Among them are Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the heroes of the Iliad, and Lt. Gen. John Schofield, the superintendent of West Point.

I never learned anywhere else that one impetus for Rosa Parks to resist segregation on the city bus line was her experience with the integrated transports at Maxwell Air Force Base where she and her husband both worked. In fact, Chappell says (at least twice) that his mother yelled at him when he announced that he was leaving the military because nowhere else in her world could a mixed race (African-American/Asian) person be treated fairly.

Chappell also speaks well of the discipline of martial arts that teaches respect for one’s opponent as the path to avoiding conflict in the first place. Contrasting that, he notes that during World War I, in the mad charges from the trenches, cruel officers were sometimes shot in the back. In the military, everyone is armed and trained to kill, so the social formalities reinforce respect.

It is salient that the military succeeds by training. Chappell cites Julius Caesar who recorded that the Gauls, Celts, and Germans made fun of the small stature of the Romans—until the battle was engaged. And in the military, failures in the field are traced back to failures of training. Learning the literacy of peace requires deep and extensive training, of course. And Chappell and the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation provide such classes (here) though he says nothing about them in this book. (His own website is here.)

Toward the close, Chappell says that the best use of the military would be for humanitarian aid and disaster relief. As killing the enemy still has not worked out very well, that seems hard to argue with.

Easier to take exception to are the very many glittering generalities, glib statements, easy oversights, and incomplete examinations that litter the book as Chappell wanders over the landscape of his personal life.

Just to take one point, the author asserts that women in ancient Athens were oppressed. It is the liberal, enlightened view. Women could not vote. They could not own property. Indeed, they were property. But so was everyone else. It is famous that the philosopher Diogenes was one of the very many who were captured on some voyage or on some road and were sold into slavery. Outside of your city, you had no protection. Even within the city, rights as we know them did not exist. Socrates is the most famous case in point, but not unique. On the other hand, Chappell at length cites Greek myths and Athenian dramas in which women were the driving force, the wise speaker, the effective agent. The god of war, Ares, was less powerful than Athena, the goddess of wisdom (and strategy). Beginning with the assumption that he seeks to prove, Chappell cannot reconcile that against the civil status of women.

A dozen other problems run through the book, repeated and restated, cast as assertions and reused as proofs.

In balance, Soldiers of Peace provides cogent reasons to re-examine our assumptions about war and peace. Chappell’s thesis includes the minor premise that nonviolence is not peace. Pacifism will not end war. Rage is an expression of pain, not of strength. Perhaps the most arguable and yet insightful assertion is that the threats to peace include disparities in wealth, rapid population growth in the cities, and climate change. Those threats were identified by the U.S. Army Sustainability Report (2009). “When the U.S. Army and the Occupy movement agree on something, I think we should pay attention.” 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Peace is More Powerful 

Armies Without Weapons

Shifting the Paradigm of Private Security 

Do You Know Your Military? 

Make Every Day Special

Commandos, Green Berets, Rangers, SEALs,… military special forces are legendary. We look to them for lessons, as examples to follow, as paradigms for living. Businesses want their managers to be leaders worthy of the most dangerous and demanding work we can imagine in service to our highest values of nation and family, liberty and democracy. We would find it unusual, even unsettling, if military commanders exhorted their field officers to be profitable, productive, and thrifty.  (See “Choose Your Virtues” and “Shifting the Paradigm of Private Security” here.) The military is a model for business. The merchant ethos does not inform the military.

Spec Ops: Case Studies in Special Warfare
Theory and Practice by William H. McRaven
(Random House 1995; Ballantine Books 1996).

A SEAL commander, Admiral McRaven identifies the factors that make special operations different from ordinary combat. First is the relativity of their force superiority. Special forces may be two-man teams or 100-man battalions, but even the largest of special force attackers are necessarily numerically smaller than the forces of the defender. Nonetheless, they achieve relative force superiority with speed, stealth, and special weapons. Their mission plans are simple. While practicing their missions repeatedly, they keep their intentions secret.  To the fullest extent necessary, each man understands the mission; and regardless of their role, every man is committed to the achieving the goal.

These narratives are interesting on their own merits.  The German assault on the Belgian fort Eben Emael in WWII was pure blitzkrieg. Italian frogmen attacking the battleship Queen Elizabeth in Alexandria, and British midget submarines hitting the Tirpitz at Kaafjord, Norway, are almost science fiction. The American liberation of POWs in the Cabantuan camp in the Philippines and the failed mission at Son Tay, Vietnam, could have come from Hollywood. The Israeli raid to free hostages held by the PFLP at Entebbe in Uganda was retold in two movies and a TV series. Action and adventure aside, McRaven chose them and others to demonstrate his theory of special operations.

Not all of the missions exemplified the fullest use of all factors. The British raid on the Saint-Nazaire dry docks called for over 600 men, 18 attack boats, and a destroyer. McRaven labeled it a success because the primary target was achieved: the dry dock mechanical works were wrecked. However, the over-ambitious inclusion of many subsidiary goals only left a lot of men dead and a few men captured.

It is clearly a challenge, perhaps impossible, to bring a large force to the expert effectiveness of commandos. But there are lessons here for the individual.

You are a small unit. You have good internal communication. You can identify your own mission, create a plan, and exercise it. You know your mission, and you are dedicated to it. And you are authorized to improvise as needed in the face of contingencies.  You can plan and train in secret. You can do this every day.

Your skills may be common, but the full set of them is unique to you. How you put them to work is also special. Rather than blowing things up – though Austrian economists speak of “creative destruction” – most of us build, create, deliver, and maintain. It can still be special operations if  you bring that intention to your work.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Extreme Ownership 

Entrepreneurship 

Venture Capital 

Open Secrets 

Morality and Ethics

Ayn Rand called her theory of egoism "Objectivist ethics." In her essays, she wrote mostly about morality and very little about ethics. She took the English language as she found it. Despite the fact that she knew perhaps four languages (Russian, French, German, and English), Rand did not delve into linguistic analysis. In other languages, "ethics" and "morality" do not exist as separate words. In English, we commonly use the words interchangeably, just as we do for "weight" and "mass" or "speed" and "velocity." When we have technical discussions, the distinctions become important. 

On the "Galt's Gulch" discussion site of the Atlas Shrugged movie producers, the question was posed, "Is Morality Absolute?" (Read all 100+ posts here.)  My response was that morality is absolute, but moral choices are not, or they would not be choices. Rand was very clear on why a rational, volitional being needs morality. 

YOU MUST CHOOSE SOME WORK.
The work you choose depends on who you are.
Who you are also determines your work ethic.

Alone on his island, Robinson Crusoe could choose to fish, or plant, or hunt. But he had to choose. The fact of choice is a moral absolute. The content of the choice is not: it is contextual. In society, pursuing a specific career is a moral choice. Many options are available. The fact that you must choose something - even choosing to be a moocher - is a moral absolute. What you choose is not absolute, but contextual; and context determines what is objectively moral, regardless of the ethical implications. 

Ethics is social conduct. I look to the fact that ethology studies the behavior of animals without any presumption of "morality."   In academic philosophy, the confusion between ethics and morality prevented any rational discoveries. Generally, when considering egoism, academic philosophers ask if egoists can be moral. They assume altruism (as an absolute) and measure all conduct (ethics) against how nice you are to other people.  In Rand's doctrine, social conduct for an egoist begins with an assumption of benevolence towards others - and expectation of the same in return. Every day we all say "Thank you" to customers and suppliers. 

In that discussion in the Gulch, frequent poster khalling challenged me to explain the difference between objective and absolute. It was an important question, a point that often confuses admirers of Rand's novels and non-fiction, especially Atlas Shrugged. In that story, the Washington gangs and their coteries of looters and moochers deny the absolute: for them everything is relative, except their demands.  But Ayn Rand called her philosophy Objectivism, not Absolutism.  The objective is that which is empirically observable and rationally explicable.  The rational-empirical method depends on certain absolutes, and does discover absolute truths, but, largely, it is contextual, especially regarding human affairs. The standard of life is absolute; your choices for your happiness depend on your context. So does ethical conduct in society.

Completing a masters in social science, I took a graduate class in "Ethics in Physics." I found that technical societies for geologists, geographers, engineers of all kinds, have different statements of professional ethics. They all boil down to "be nice; do no harm." But they are all different in detail, and properly so. The work of a geographer is materially different than that of a geologist. 

RATIONAL-EMPIRICISM 

I also attended a seminar in the teaching of ethics to graduate students in counseling. As I recall, their statement of ethics runs 25 pages. Moreover, the point of the seminar was that to practice as a counselor - to practice ethically - you need to do more than attempt to apply the ethics document. Life is more complicated than that: the document is a guide. Ethical choices are highly contextual. 

I was working in transportation when a colleague suggested that I take a class in computer programming "so the people in data processing can't hand you a bunch of baloney." I took a class and liked it. I went to work as a programmer. On a project, no one wanted to write the user manual. Having published a few articles and two small books, I did the documentation. I became a technical writer. When the current recession started, I took a part-time job as a security guard. As the economy continued to slide, I needed a four-year degree to even apply for work as a technical writer, so I earned one in criminology. Those were all moral choices, but ethics had nothing to do with it. 

khalling wrote: "Ethics and Morality are blood brothers just like geometry and algebra can be expressed in similar ways." In fact, of course, blood brothers are genetically unrelated. Becoming blood brothers is more like a marriage ceremony. If you look at any modern textbook in geometry for mathematics majors, you will find no drawings. It is all algebra. I understand the point: proper ethical conduct in society depends on a correct morality of self-interest. As for the analogy to geometry and algebra, having re-read Introduction to the Objectivist Epistemology for a discussion on "Galt's Gulch", I now just started George Boole's Law of Thought - and I had a similar observation: reading Boole after Rand was like finding the algebra in geometry.

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS
Teaching Ethics to Engineering Students
Fact and Value Aboard Serenity
20% of Scientists are Crooks
Misconduct in Science and Research

CSI: FLINT 2011 - Who Guards the Guardians?

On May 6, I presented two classes to middle schoolers participating in "Super Science Friday" at the University of Michigan Flint campus. In all about 500 pupils attended two each of 25 different sessions.  Some were laboratory demonstrations, others were hands-on engagements.  Topics included website design, trauma response, the chemistry of cooking, music, and termites.  My session was titled "Who Guards the Guardians" and explained misconduct and fraud in science as it applies to junk science in the courtroom and misconduct in police laboratories. 

To support the discussion, I created a blog, here.