
Do ethicists steal more books? (2009) [pdf] - kristianc
http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzPapers/EthicsBooks.pdf
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ltbarcly3
I checked several math books out of the library over the summer, and they were
sitting on my desk when the library emailed me saying they were 'missing', and
I was being charged to replace them. I took them back to the library and they
aren't missing anymore. Using the methods of this paper, in the interim period
while they were declared missing but before I took them back, they were
considered 'stolen', even though my account was charged a standard book
replacement fee which was well above the cost to replace each book.

So 'missing' is quite often the same as 'extra overdue'. (in most university
libraries you end up paying to replace any book you don't return anyway, so I
doubt any ethicist would consider it stealing, but that isn't relevant to my
point)

If ethicists just check out a lot of books, and they need them for longer than
other people use other books, or else ethics books are in short supply so
people often request them (so that they can't be renewed and end up being
overdue and thus missing more quickly than other books), you would recreate
this same data while all of the ethics books could still make their way back
to the library in the end.

Here is another possibility: Students check out books from the library so they
can avoid buying that books for a class. This would seem to be more common in
philosophy than in other subjects because philosophy (or english literature
say) tends to require original texts while other subjects have dedicated
textbooks, and dedicated textbooks aren't generally held by libraries. If a
student takes out a book but it is then put on hold by a professor, it
generally is either recalled to the library or can't be renewed. The student
just holds the book until the end of the semester, but it is marked missing by
the time it is returned at the end of the semester since the hold accelerated
the date it was due. Since the data was collected between "October 17 and
December 13, 2006,", it is unclear what the data would look like if you did
the sampling between say June and August.

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thanatropism
One of my thousand gigs is adversarial critiquing of statistical sampling
procedures (say, for lawsuits) and unaccounted-for seasonality is a big
winner. It's a great way to skew samples in a deliberate matter.

~~~
smudgymcscmudge
Is that gig as interesting as it sounds?

~~~
thanatropism
It’s just expert testimony. Usually clients approach us when they already have
their own numbers and know trickery is afoot.

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mchannon
I wonder why it isn't "Do librarians lose more ethics books?" After all, we
don't know if it's ethicists stealing the books, or punk kids stealing the
books, or books getting disproportionately misplaced, or library assistants
misfiling the books because they can't spell Nietzsche.

Maybe the works of John Stuart Mill (off the charts in terms of missing) are
tastiest to vermin.

I don't think ethicists get paid on par with physicians or attorneys, and
ethicists-in-training are likely disproportionately poor as a church mouse. An
antique calculus text would not be in use in a modern college setting but
ethics still likely uses the original editions. They can have their $250 copy
of an ethics text back when the term is over. Or maybe I'll just hold on to
it, since it looks so nice on the shelf, and why take the risk of getting
busted returning it?

Finally, the fact they're disproportionately missing to overdue suggests that
some are being stolen then resold to ethicists, who perhaps are too ethical to
borrow a book without returning it but not too ethical to buy a stolen version
of same.

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burning_hamster
The comparison is with other philosophy texts.

~~~
mchannon
Such as Frege's _Foundations of Arithmetic_?

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tokai
Interesting. Maybe they feel less shame about stealing a book with a narrow
scope and with few potential readers, when the book is very useful to them.

In my work experience are law students the most thievish patrons at academic
libraries. A sentiment I have heard echoed by several colleagues.

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archi42
I've heard the same for law studies at several German universities. Sometimes
a few pages are ripped out or important paragraphs blackened. The intention is
to put your fellow students at a disadvantage in the exams.

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abdulhaq
Modern day ethicists employed at universities do not, generally speaking,
found their beliefs within a traditional religious framework. They do not
believe in an afterlife and punishment by an all-knowing God. Therefore, as
long as they are not caught, it is of no import to them if they break the
ethical systems that they analyse, because they, much more than Marx's
'masses', know that the ethical systems they study have neither foundations in
reality nor a means of enforcement. To them, we are evolved apes who, by a
process of physical and psychological evolution, have developed a culture of
imaginary rights and wrongs that say you should not, e.g. steal. However, they
believe that they will derive some positive benefit by stealing and so simply
do so knowing, in their minds, that there is no authentic reason not to.

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JoeAltmaier
Maybe the ethicists are just more absent-minded? Missing books doesn't
necessarily mean dishonest borrowers.

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barry-cotter
The comparator group is other philosophy professors. More ethics books go
missing than in other sub fiends of philosophy.

The abstract

> If explicit cognition about morality promotes moral behavior then one might
> expect ethics professors to behave particularly well. However, professional
> ethicists’ behavior has never been empirically studied. The present research
> examined the rates at which ethics books are missing from leading academic
> libraries, compared to other philosophy books similar in age and popularity.
> Study 1 found that relatively obscure, contemporary ethics books of the sort
> likely to be borrowed mainly by professors and advanced students of
> philosophy were actually about 50% more likely to be missing than non-ethics
> books. Study 2 found that classic (pre-1900) ethics books were about twice
> as likely to be missing.

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thanatropism
Maybe ethicists are running deliberate experiments either on librarians'
atitudes (possibly examining differences by region/country) or on themselves
-- do they feel bad? The whole "Crime and Punishment" thing.

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crimsonalucard
Ethicists should overall should have the super power to commit no crime
because of their amazing ability to justify all of their actions through
complex logical arguments. This a boon to society as the ability to justify
anything allows you to do anything and remain ethical, or maybe the entire
field is useless.

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musicale
It's only stealing if you refuse to pay the appropriate overdue fees. If you
return the book and pay the fees then it's called "supporting the library."

I support the library a lot.

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erokar
Ethicists know what they're doing. Stealing books obviously can't be such a
big deal.

