All lies are not created equal

Martha Stewart isn't the only individual whose proverbial (and high-profile) pants are on fire. Stewart, who was charged last week with making false statements to the government and obstructing justice, is only the latest in a litany of public figures -- from Bill Clinton to Pete Rose -- whose dishonest dealings have come to light.

Very wealthy individuals -- like Stewart -- may be more tempted than the average person to tell big lies in order to protect their wealth, according to Assistant Philosophy Professor Nancy Bauer, but people of all standings have been lying, for various reasons, "since the beginning of time."

"I think [lying] has always been an issue, though more recently brought into the limelight by some high profile cases," junior Jeremy Ng said. Those cases, he said, are "unfortunate but easily predictable -- most people don't live by clear-cut and homogenous codes of honor, and no one really likes getting in trouble, obviously."

"I think the recent rash of people getting caught lying is unsurprising," senior Paul Johnson said. "These few famous cases simply reveal what is common human practice -- it's our nature to distort the truth in order to get what we want and avoid the consequences of our actions."

Biology Professor Sheldon Krimsky's latest book, "Science in the Private Interest: Has the Lure of Profits Corrupted Biomedical Research?" includes the stories of several individuals within the scientific community who distorted the truth to get ahead. One prestigious corporate scientist lied about her credentials; another scientist "made almost $145,000 overnight on zinc lozenges" through insider trading, Krimsky said.

According to Krimsky, these and other forms of lying "happen all the time." For example, he said, "there have been famous scientists whose statistical results were re-examined and found fraudulent." Other common types of deception include lying about data, lying about animal treatment, and lying about violating lab safety rules.

Lying is also common outside the realm of science -- and inside the world of higher education. In her introduction to ethics class, many of Nancy Bauer's students disagree with philosopher Immanuel Kant's view of lying, that "it's always immoral to tell even the tiniest white lie or, at the other extreme, to lie to a terrorist," Bauer said.

Her students, she added, "reason this way: since everyone lies all the time, it's unreasonable to ask people to stop lying altogether. In other words, they seem to feel that because we do lie, we ought to be allowed to lie."

Senior Betty Amoah's view of lying is more in line with Bauer's students' than with Kant's. "I try to be honest in most of my life, but some things are better left either unsaid or misunderstood," Amoah said. "Even if you tell the truth sometimes, you aren't believed. So sometimes [lying] saves a lot of stress."

Paul Johnson, however, doesn't feel that saving stress or protecting someone's feelings are good enough justifications for lying. According to Johnson, "the lie [would have to be] told totally selflessly, completely for another's benefit," for it to be morally acceptable.

"I don't think this would include things like not telling someone they look fat in a certain outfit -- that seems more like a desire not to hurt someone's feelings, which doesn't seem like a very compelling justification." he said.

To Krimsky, however, "lying is sometimes acceptable, excusable, and even desirable, especially when it involves human feelings." For example, he said, "If someone has aged rapidly because of an illness, it would be cruel to tell them how you really perceive them, rather than to say something positive and uplifting."

Though neither Krimsky nor Bauer have noticed an overall shift in their students' opinions of lying, Bauer has noticed a shift in the relationship between lies and the media. "Global media coverage might be putting public figures on the spot in ways that didn't exist before this era," Bauer said. "For example, when Bill Clinton is accused of having sex with Monica Lewinsky, literally billions of people know about it within hours ... his first instinct is to deny the charges and try to prevent political disaster. This is just not how these things panned out in the days of, say, JFK, who had his share of female guests at the White House."

The lies of public figures may have received the most press coverage, but Krimsky is more concerned about lies of a different sort. "Probably the most injurious lying is institutional lies put out by corporations and government agencies," Krimsky said. "These lies affect millions of people's lives."

"Corporations lie about product safety and about occupational disease," Krimsky added. "They lie about the safety of automobiles. They hide information about drug efficacy. They tell researchers to lie about results so they can continue to get funding. All of these and many more cases can be documented."

Krimsky feels that such cases' existence is not due to the erosion of individuals' morality, but rather to "social, political and economic systems [that] help create the climate for lying. Krimsky does not believe there is evidence that the human character is on a decline.

Bauer agrees that social forces have an impact on lying. "I actually think that people may be lying less than they used to, since standards of decorum are more relaxed than they once were and toleration of difference is higher," she said. "People may feel less reserved than they once did about saying what they actually think." For example, Bauer added, a gay person "might have less reason than he had in an earlier era to lie to his friends or family about his sexual preferences."

Even the most tolerant and diverse social climate, however, is unlikely to eradicate lying completely. "Some amount of lying is inevitable," Bauer said. "Not because people are corrupt or selfish, but because human relations are complicated."