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On April 19, 2017, I participated on a panel of presenters at the Carmel City Library (Indiana) dealing with the topic of “Fake News.” The other panelists included an assistant professor at the Indiana University Media School and President of the Indiana Coalition for Open Government; an investigative reporter for a local television station; and an assistant news director for another local television station.

Fake News is of great interest currently, presumably because of the recent Presidential election, which brought Donald Trump to the White House. The concern goes beyond the US, however. A prominent story in the Wall Street Journal of April 15, 2017, was headlined “Fake-News Flow Puts Facebook to Test in France.” Facebook reported that it had vetted over 30,000 accounts in France alone the week before national elections there. Similar concerns arose in preparation for elections in Germany as well. A Google search for “Fake News” brings up hundreds if not thousands of sites. It is a hot topic at the moment.

The journalists on the panel expressed frustration with the difficulties they experience in trying to combat this wave of disinformation. As a professor of communication and author of a book on communication ethics, I am quite worried also.

Certainly disinformation and falsified reports have been a part of history for some time. One need only think of documents such as the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,’ which was first published in Russian in 1903 (but reproduced many times in the 20th century). Of course there was the impact of so-called “yellow journalism,” including the reporting on the US warship the Maine exploding in the Havana harbor leading to the Spanish-American War of 1898. The current phenomenon seems more widespread and dangerous for a couple of reasons. First, there is the effect of the social media, which accounts for the rapid dissemination of fake stories. Second, the polarization in the present political climate, which motivates people to latch on to reports that could put the other side in a bad light. Third are the 24/7/365 demands of the cable news networks for continuous access to scandalous or embarrassing scoops. Think of the fake news story surrounding Comet Ping-Pong pizza shop in Washington, D.C. The story sped around the social media networks, claiming that Hilary Clinton and other high-ranking officials in the Obama Administration were running a child pornography ring out of the pizza place (Comet Ping-Pong has the same first letters as child pornography, C. P. Also, an order for “cheese pizza” was supposed to be code as well—C. P). One man eventually showed up with a rifle at the store, fired some shots, and stated he had come to “self-investigate” the so-called ring.

The tack that I took on the panel was to focus on the receiving side of the communication process. Fake News seems more dangerous now than in the past because of lay people’s difficulty with critically analyzing the messages bombarding them from social and regular media. Many psychologists and philosophers challenge the notion that we are in fact as rational as we like to think. Joseph Heath, a Canadian philosopher, in his 2014 book, Enlightenment 2.0, suggests that we are neither rational nor logical most of the time. Critical thinking abilities are derailed depending upon how we process incoming information. Among the many examples in his book, Heath points to our need to see patterns, even where none exists. Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Prize winner in economics, stresses this point in his recent best seller, Thinking: Fast and Slow. The two modes of thinking have been labeled “System 1,” and “System 2.” Most of the time we get by with the quick (and dirty) process of System 1—we take the first plausible (or even implausible) pattern that we perceive without too much thinking.

System 1 thinking (fast thinking) relies on ready-to-hand rules of thumb that allow us to function amid all the events and messages we face everyday. These rules are termed “heuristics,” from the classical Greek, originally meaning learning tools. For example, Heath reports this case. He was presented with this problem: a friend is thinking of a rule that will generate a series of numbers, such as 2, 4, 6. Heath was to suggest more series, and the friend could only answer yes or no as to whether these new series fit the rule. So Heath tried 14, 16, 18—“yes,” said the friend that fits the rule. So he tried 118, 120, 122, thinking he had already discovered the rule. “Yes,” the friend said again. “Aha,” said Heath, who described the rule as ascending, consecutive even numbers—“No,” said the friend. Heath had quickly jumped to a conclusion based what he saw as a pattern. The actual rule was any ascending numbers, consecutive or not, even or not—so 12, 37, 134 also fit the rule. The mistake Heath made, one of which we are all guilty, is failing to ask enough questions, since our process leads us away from asking questions that would disconfirm our original hypothesis of ascending even numbers. The way to proceed in this case would have been for Heath to try a series that was not ascending consecutive even numbers. If 12, 37, 134 fit the rule, then he would know his first assumption was incorrect and be led to a new formulation that would probably be correct. This is the basis for the scientific method: to test a hypothesis by trying to find ways to disprove it (see the philosopher, Karl Popper, who made finding ways to disprove an hypothesis or theory as the basis for the scientific method).

In fast thinking (System 1), we latch onto the first plausible pattern we think we see. This “confirmation bias” is the basis for many conspiracy theories, when people think they see a pattern where none exists. It also is the basis for stereotyping people. We think we see a pattern showing that “those people” are prone to a way of acting, and so treat all representatives of that group as part of a conspiracy. These perceived patterns are usually resistant to change. As Ian Mittroff, an adjunct professor of Cal-Berkeley, points out in a blog, “Reality Wars: The Battles over Truth and Reality” (posted June 19, 2015): “Ideally, in science, and idea is accepted as ‘provisionally true’ if and only if it survives repeated attempts by scientists to prove by ‘hard data’ that it’s false.” This point is continued in the next paragraph: “In contrast, in everyday life, people hold onto their ideas for as long as possible. Indeed, the more an idea is at the core of a person’s belief, the more he or she tries to protect it.” Think of the venerable theory of Cognitive Dissonance. And, as Jonathon Haidt reminds us, “Belief comes first, logical reasoning comes second.” Smart people can believe false things because they are smart enough to devise rationalizations for cherished beliefs.

What to do? Perhaps our ethical responsibility, as consumers of potentially Fake News, is to be aware of these error-inducing tendencies. We need to exercise argumentative self-control, making the effort to consider alternatives to our own reasoning and evidence. Ethical argumentation lies in our commitment to maintain vigilance, especially when we feel strongly committed to our positions.

William W. Neher

Bill Neher is professor emeritus of communication studies at Butler University, where he taught for 42 years. Over those years he has served as Dean of the University College, Director of the Honors Program, Head of the Department of Communication Studies, the Chair of the faculty governance, and most recently as the first Dean (Interim) for the new College of Communication begun in June 2010. He is the author of several books dealing with organizational and professional communication, ethics, and African studies, plus several public speaking and communication text books.

The Pope arrived today (September 23, 2015) in the United States from his visit to Cuba and was greeted with fanfare in Washington, D.C., by President Obama. The most recent entry in this blog discussed ethical and effective communication about scientific and technical risk. The Papal visit provides a good opportunity to look at the recently published encyclical letter concerning just these sorts of issues: global risks and their potential impact on the poor, often the most at risk from environmental and climate threats to the planet.

The full title of this publication is “The Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ of the Holy Father Francis on the Care of Our Common Home.” The title of the letter refers to a famous canticle composed by St. Francis of Assisi (inspiration for the Pope taking the name, Francis) with the repeated phrase, “Praise be to You, My Lord,” or “Laudato Si’, Mi Signore.” St. Francis offers praise for “Brother Sun” and “Sister Moon” (providing a well-known second title for the canticle), and also for Brother Wind, Sister Water, Brother Fire, and Sister Mother Earth, the basis for the content of this encyclical—care for Mother Earth. The canticle is dated to 1225, but sources suggest the hymn was really written in three stages over time, the last two verses added on his deathbed. Pope Francis quotes the verse concerning Mother Earth in the opening of the letter: “Praise be to you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us, and who produces various fruit with colored flowers and herbs.”

The second paragraph of the encyclical summarizes much of the argument presented in the document: “This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will. The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life.” In his response to President Obama’s welcome on the White House lawn this morning, Pope Francis continued to stress his concern for environmental degradation through pollution, waste, and climate change.

The Papal letter goes well beyond concern for global warming or climate change, although it has largely been characterized in those terms in media outlets over the summer. Pope Francis includes a wide range of topics related, not just to environmental degradation, but covering deterioration of quality of human life especially for the poor of the world. The letter touches on the issues of what he terms our “throwaway culture,” the tendency toward the “rapidification” of everyday life, and the appearance of “agrotoxins” in industrial level agriculture. He also shows concern for human life in “unhealthy megacities,” often featuring waste of food and water in such crowded urban settings. The letter also emphasizes the extent of “global inequality,” which allows a few to escape or at least to mitigate these effects on themselves while exposing the many to an unhealthy environment. As he writes, “Particular appreciation is owed to those who tirelessly seek to resolve the tragic effects of environmental degradation on the lives of the world’s poorest.” Lack of access to clean drinking water, for example, denies to many a life of the “inalienable dignity” which all people deserve.

Pope Francis does recognize, in the encyclical, a point often mentioned by some. The Bible in the Book of Genesis allows that “man” is to have dominion over the earth and its creatures. Francis maintains that the idea of “dominion” in this context intends “responsible stewardship,” or care, rather than what might become heedless exploitation of resources. In this regard, he coins the phrase, “modern anthropocentrism.” Based on the example of St. Francis of Assisi, we should strive to live in harmony with the resources and creatures of this earth. Francis in this encyclical also hopes to emphasize that we are facing a major crisis unless there is swift action by those with power to deal with interlocking challenges he delineates in this document. In his statements on the White House lawn at his arrival he referred to a famous metaphor from the “I Have a Dream” speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King compared the promise of the founding documents of the United States as constituting a “promissory note” for freedom for all Americans. Carrying forward the image of Dr. King, Francis implied that he hoped later generations could not say that the “promissory note” to protect our common home, Earth, came back marked “insufficient funds.”

William W. Neher

Bill Neher is professor emeritus of communication studies at Butler University, where he taught for 42 years. Over those years he has served as Dean of the University College, Director of the Honors Program, Head of the Department of Communication Studies, the Chair of the faculty governance, and most recently as the first Dean (Interim) for the new College of Communication begun in June 2010. He is the author of several books dealing with organizational and professional communication, ethics, and African studies, plus several public speaking and communication text books.

When I was teaching a course in African history or African studies at the university, I would usually begin with a discussion to gauge the scope of knowledge students might already have. One icebreaker I employed was to ask students to name the most deadly (to humans) animal in Africa. Over the years, the correct answer was given just once—the mosquito (especially the anopheles variety which transmits malaria). Most responses were lions, elephants, and the like. Some could have said other human beings, but that didn’t happen. I did get the objection that mosquitos were not “animals,” but they didn’t think they were vegetable or mineral either. This exercise illustrates one of the ways in which we tend to misperceive risks and probabilities. Deaths from the large game animals are fairly rare and so the risk from them is quite low. Although rare, these animals are familiar to us and readily come to mind when thinking about Africa. It may also be interesting that snakes are far more deadly than the large animals in statistical terms in Africa, but also are not immediately available (psychologically speaking) when thinking of “dangerous African animals.” When thinking about risks we face in everyday lives, we also tend to place more importance on the familiar or striking sources even though the risk presented by those more readily “available” things may be as rare as tourists’ death by lion.

Since the Superfund Act of the 1980s, corporations, governments, and scientists have found it necessary to communicate more and more about environmental and chemical risks. More recently, the topics of concern have shifted more to chemical additives, irradiation of foods, GMOs in the food supply, toxicity of inoculations and dangers of immunizations (whether childhood immunizations cause autism, for example), carbon fuels’ contribution to potentially dangerous climate change, among others. Over the same period (1980s to present), public trust in government, corporations, and scientists appears to have declined. The literature in risk communication and perception indicates that prior belief usually determines who or which sources are credible anyway. For example, if a person already believes that childhood immunizations can cause autism, credible sources are limited to those that reinforce this belief. Sources that dispute an already existing belief are discounted. Ethical and effective communication about these kinds of risk is therefore challenging. The enormous effects of online and social media, of course, might exacerbate such challenges even further.

The dangerous animals exercise illustrates the kinds of filters shaping how we perceive information about risks. Most people do not have ready access to the kinds of statistics that help them determine the actual probabilities of something bad happening—as a result they tend to rely on practical guidelines for interpreting the nature of risk.

One such rule of thumb is a sense of control. If I am driving myself, I feel more in control of what happens than if someone else has the wheel. That may explain why people feel safer driving rather than flying on a commercial airliner. Generally air travel is safer than driving, although a careful statistician may quibble (strictly speaking, the statistics of this comparison are not straightforward—these sorts of complexities can occasion the difficulties communicating about risk). Related to this rule is one about voluntariness. We are willing to accept the risk of skydiving if we have chosen to do it, but not as willing to accept a nuclear power plant in the neighborhood, even though jumping from a plane may be statistically riskier. Along those lines, people differentiate risk based on catastrophic potential. A very high percentage of people involved in auto accidents survive. Surviving the crash of an airliner is much less likely. If told there is a 99% chance our plane won’t crash today, we still might want to change travel plans.

Other tests we use include uncertainty and unfamiliarity. A new danger or one not really understood seems more threatening than one that is familiar. Ebola seemed frightening a year ago, but we are less fearful of the annual flu season even though thousands of Americans die from the flu. Similarly, if the incidents and numbers of people affected are distributed over a wide area or time, the threat seems less striking. Auto accidents might kill 40,000 Americans a year, while the one plane crash that kills 200 at one time gets more attention and may arouse more fear of flying. The risk may be seen as distributed in different ways as well. The people who are most at risk may seem distant from us in place, time, or condition. In his encyclical message, LAUDATO SI’, Pope Francis focused on the harmful effects of climate change on the world’s poor, in areas such as Africa or southern Asia, since they tend to be much more at risk from a lack of water, food, and sanitation resulting from environmental degradation than people in the wealthier countries (Laudato Si’). In a similar vein, we are usually less concerned about these risks for people in the future. From this point of view, risk communication takes on aspects touching on social justice and human rights.

These rules of thumb for judging risks clarify the differences among being logical, being rational, and being reasonable. For the most part, the rules tend to be reasonable, if not strictly logical or even completely rational. Most of us are not Spock or Sheldon Cooper, nor do we want to be. Those who want to communicate about public risk need to recognize that their audiences are usually being reasonable when they appear to be unconvinced by just the presenting of “the facts.” It is reasonable to judge risks with irreversible consequences as less acceptable than those that are much more likely but with less catastrophic outcomes. It is also reasonable for people to interpret such communication from a point of view associated with their interactions with and memberships in social groups. People do not get such messages as isolated individuals.

Issues about risk communication highlight the difficulties surrounding communicating scientific information in an ethical and effective manner. To the lay public, scientists may seem to communicate in arcane and overly technical language. Their statements may seem hedged with qualifications, worded as probabilities rather than definite statements of fact. I hope to take up issues related to ethical risk and science communication over the next few weeks.

William W. Neher

Bill Neher is professor emeritus of communication studies at Butler University, where he taught for 42 years. Over those years he has served as Dean of the University College, Director of the Honors Program, Head of the Department of Communication Studies, the Chair of the faculty governance, and most recently as the first Dean (Interim) for the new College of Communication begun in June 2010. He is the author of several books dealing with organizational and professional communication, ethics, and African studies, plus several public speaking and communication text books.

Called for Life is the title of the book just out recounting the experiences of the first American physician to be treated successfully for Ebola in the United States (see publication details below). The February 3, 2015, blog entry on this site indicated that Dr. Brantly and his wife, Amber, had contracted for a book to demonstrate, in addition to their experiences with the Ebola epidemic in Liberia, the need for support for programs for the people in West Africa facing the challenges of Ebola and similar diseases. The book has now been published by Waterbrook Press.

Dr. Brantly was the first recipient of the annual CEPA award for ethical communication this past March, presented at Butler University as part of the College of Communication Symposium on Servant Leadership. The CEPA award (now known as the Bill Neher Award for Ethical Communication) honors premier examples of effective and ethical oral, written, or mediated communication on issues of significant public interest. The Brantly’s book is intended to continue their effort at bringing before the public the challenges presented by this disease outbreak and the continuing public health needs of poorer nations in general.

The subtitle of the book, “How Loving Our Neighbor Led Us into the Heart of the Ebola Epidemic,” emphasizes that the Brantlys responded to a mission call to serve the people of Liberia, both their medical and spiritual needs. As the main title highlights, they feel that calling is “for life.” They alternate telling their story each from their own point of view—so that we see the perspectives of both Kent and Amber from the development of their early relationship, through marriage and beginnings of family life, and their move to the capital of Liberia. Of course, much of the book focuses on their perspectives on and experiences of Kent’s illness, treatment, and eventual recovery.

Kent recounts how he had difficulty deciding on a major at Abilene Christian University. He had grown up in Indianapolis, where his father was a physician, and had attended Heritage Christian School there. He started out to be a math teacher and coach, but after a semester in England where he was influenced by a philosophy professor who accompanied the Abilene students, he began to focus on Biblical Studies. While on a study internship in East Africa, he turned more and more toward the calling of a medical missionary, leading him to medical school at Indiana University. Amber had always wanted to be a nurse, so her career choice was less circuitous. Her father had been a preacher in a small Colorado town. Both felt motivated by an overwhelming sense of compassion in the need to be of service to others, such as the people of Liberia.

The couple moved to Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, in 2014, where Kent was associated with the hospital complex known as ELWA (Eternal Love Winning Africa), part of the SIM (Serving in Mission) organization. Kent describes the challenges of dealing with severe disease outbreaks in a poor country—for example, lacking ambulance service, patients are often transported to a hospital by taxi, a serious problem when dealing with a contagious outbreak such as Ebola, since family members and the driver were directly exposed to infection. Although the disease is not easily transmitted in the early stages, as the illness progresses any fluids from the patient are highly infectious. For that reason, health care workers are at special risk, since they work with patients in which the disease is full-blown. Hospital staffs, as at ELWA, were often devastated by the infection as a result. Kent and fellow SIM missionary, Nancy Writebol, thus both acquired Ebola.

A key message of the book lies in Kent’s emphasis on “saying yes” to people, in the sense of being fully present and showing unreserved compassion for others. This stance calls for responding to the authentic and deeply felt needs and aspirations of each person, especially those being treated medically. Kent registers the importance of recognizing the distinction between the medical and the spiritual needs of his patients in carrying out his professional duties. He presents us with his belief that it is wrong for a doctor to use his or her power as a physician to impose a religious or other point of view on the patient during such treatment of a condition of the treatment. One can share the motivation for becoming a medical missionary with patients if they—the patients—first evince such an interest. The doctor should then be free to discuss his religious convictions. The Brantly’s mission to Liberia was sponsored by the organization Samaritan’s Purse. This organization is based in North Carolina, and its CEO is Franklin Graham, the son of evangelist, Billy Graham. There was some criticism of this organization back in March of 2001, according to the New York Times, related to a charge that medical or other services to patients in El Salvador seemed to be contingent on attending a religious presentation or service. Dr. Brantly is clear on his commitment to the separation of medical treatment and religious or other kinds of proselytization.

On another potential issue of ethical communication, he is also clear. He realizes that there seemed to be the impression here in the US that he declined the first course of the experimental treatment, known as zMapp, which appears to have been efficacious in treating both him and his fellow health care worker who was stricken with Ebola at the same time. The decision was exclusively a medical decision made by the entire medical team in Monrovia, he points out, and not a heroically sacrificial decision on his part. In the event, the three initial doses were divided between the two with Dr. Brantly receiving the first dose after all. The treatment advisers in Liberia and in the US felt that they would both be in Atlanta in time for each to receive the balance of the course of treatment.

Both Kent and Amber believe that the publication of their book provides for a major platform to continue to send the message that the people of Liberia are still in great need. They also hope that more and more Americans will come to understand that the people of West Africa face overwhelming needs in public health. Called for Life appears to enhance their continuing communication of this need and their mission.

Some may wonder why a third author is credited on the cover—David Thomas. He is what is known in publishing as a co-writer. There are many demands on the time and energy of both the Brantlys, and that fact no doubt led to the decision to bring in Mr. Thomas. Based in Fort Worth, the home city of Kent and Amber, he has collaborated on eight other books, usually with sports figures, such as Bobby Richardson from the Yankees, or other prominent figures. It can be assumed that his assistance was important in bringing the book to publication in as short a time as possible.

Called for Life: How Loving Our Neighbor Led Us into the Heart of the Ebola Epidemic, by Kent Brantly, Amber Brantly, and David Thomas, published July 21, 2015. WaterBrook Multomah, of Colorado Springs (division of Penquin Random House). Available in hard cover, Kindle version, and audio CD.

William W. Neher

Bill Neher is professor emeritus of communication studies at Butler University, where he taught for 42 years. Over those years he has served as Dean of the University College, Director of the Honors Program, Head of the Department of Communication Studies, the Chair of the faculty governance, and most recently as the first Dean (Interim) for the new College of Communication begun in June 2010. He is the author of several books dealing with organizational and professional communication, ethics, and African studies, plus several public speaking and communication text books.

John “Stan” Schuchman has shone a light on important but little-studied aspects of the experience of deaf and hard-of-hearing people through his research on deaf people in the Holocaust and in the Hollywood film industry (Hollywood Speaks: Deafness and the Film Entertainment Industry).

Stan Schuchman is an emeritus professor of history at Gallaudet University, where he also served terms as a dean, provost, and vice president. He together with his wife have inaugurated the Dr. John S. and Dr. Betty J. Schuchman Deaf History Award at Gallaudet University. A 1961 graduate of Butler, Stan will return to the campus for a presentation, “Deaf People in Hitler’s Europe” on March 5, 2015. The presentation will be part of the College of Communication Symposium on Servant Leadership that week. His work on oral history (based on sign language) is a major contribution to our understanding of deaf history within the context of the Nazi policies against both people with alleged disabilities and Jews and others marked for persecution or extermination during that period in central Europe.

The research program on deaf survivors of the Holocaust began with the opening of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., in April of 1993, according to Dr. Schuchman’s collaborator on the project, Dr. Donna F. Ryan. While Dr. Ryan was an expert on Holocaust Studies, Dr. Schuchman was an expert on the history of the deaf community as well as the use of oral history—using videotaped sign-language interviews with informants. To carry out this program, Drs. Schuchman and Ryan conducted research in Germany, France, Great Britain, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, the Netherlands, Norway, and Canada as well as locations in the US. This extensive research program led to the convening of an international conference, “Deaf People in Hitler’s Europe from 1933 to 1945,” in Washington, D.C., in June of 1998, under the auspices of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and Gallaudet. An important product of this conference and research was the book, Deaf People in Hitler’s Europe, edited by John Schuchman and Donna Ryan, and published in 2002.

The common experience of deaf witnesses suffering under National Socialism (Nazi) policies was certainly one of marginalization, in the case of Jewish deaf people, double marginalization. Much of the background for these experiences lies in historical theories concerning policies of eugenics and so-called “racial hygiene,” or Rassenhygiene in the official terminology in 1930s Germany. The now outdated theory behind eugenics was that given “scientific” knowledge about heredity and genetics, it should be possible to encourage or, in Nazi cases, require selective marital unions to “improve” a particular population. After coming to power in 1933, the Nazis could begin to implement their particular view that they had a duty to improve the German (Aryan or Nordic) national population through what became extreme practices based on these theories.

The picture that emerged from the research is the following: that the experiences of deaf people in Germany and in the occupied areas were far from uniform, but instead were very complex. In Germany, many deaf people, Jewish or not, were in danger of being classified among those considered to be hereditarily disabled. Hitler and his cabinet enacted a sterilization law as early as July of 1933 just after coming to power targeting people with “a variety of mental and physical disabilities,” people who were to be “excluded from the national community” (Robert N. Proctor, “Eugenics in Hitler’s Germany,” in Deaf People in Hitler’s Europe). People so identified could be sterilized, subjected to forced abortions, and even killed (“euthanized” being the term used by the Nazis, in the infamous “T4” program). Outside Germany, non-Jewish deaf people were not in the same danger, but Jewish deaf people were obviously in even more danger. A further complication is that some deaf people were themselves Nazis or collaborators with the Nazis. There were deaf storm troopers and party officials. In addition, medical personnel and deaf educators also collaborated with party officials in identifying candidates for sterilization, abortions, or even “euthanasia.”

One is amazed that there were any survivors among the Jewish deaf people in Nazi occupied Central Europe. Very little is known about Jewish deaf people in Germany, Poland, or other countries under Nazi rule during the 1940s. Hungary presents a different case because, since Hungary was an Axis ally from 1940 to 1944, Jews were not transported to the death camps until near the end of the war when Germany directly occupied the country (similar to the situation of Primo Levi’s Italy in that regard). When the Germans occupied Hungary, the Jewish deaf people were subject to harassment and forced transportation to the camps by the Nazis and by the local Arrow Cross, the Hungarian pro-Nazi party. Drs. Schuchman and Ryan have been able to interview more than a dozen Hungarian deaf survivors. Their stories are of course remarkable, heart-rending, but also marked by amazing courage and fortitude.

Dr. Schuchman’s research, publications, and presentations have brought attention to these stories, illuminating a little known but highly significant, historical deaf experience.

William W. Neher

Bill Neher is professor emeritus of communication studies at Butler University, where he taught for 42 years. Over those years he has served as Dean of the University College, Director of the Honors Program, Head of the Department of Communication Studies, the Chair of the faculty governance, and most recently as the first Dean (Interim) for the new College of Communication begun in June 2010. He is the author of several books dealing with organizational and professional communication, ethics, and African studies, plus several public speaking and communication text books.

Dr. Kent Brantly, the American physician who recovered from Ebola contracted while treating Liberian patients suffering from the often-fatal disease, has been selected to receive the first CEPA Award for 2015. Dr. Brantly, who was named along with other Ebola fighters as “Time Person of the Year for 2014,” has been a forceful advocate for increasing awareness and aid for the West African nations and peoples suffering from this outbreak.

The CEPA award is intended to honor premier examples of effective and ethical oral, written, or mediated communication on issues of significant public interest. Dr. Brantly, through his public statements, testimony before Congress, and in media interviews and presentations, well represents the qualities of a worthy award recipient.

And, appropriately, this first award will be presented at the College of Communication Symposium on Servant Leadership, the second annual program presented by the Conference on Ethical Public Argumentation (CEPA). Dr. Brantly is without question an outstanding exemplar of the qualities of a servant leader as well as those of a highly ethical communicator. Complete details on the schedule for the presentation as well as the rest of the Symposium will shortly appear on this site.

Dr. Kent Brantly is a native of Indianapolis, a graduate of Indianapolis Heritage Christian School. He received his undergraduate degree from Abilene Christian University in 2003 and went on to medical school at Indiana University, receiving his MD in 2009. Dr. Brantly completed his residency at John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas, in 2013, and then became a family physician in Fort Worth. During his academic career, he exhibited a definite, powerful calling to be a medical missionary. While at Abilene Christian, he went on mission trips to Tanzania and Uganda. Fluent in Spanish, he also participated in two mission trips to Central America—Honduras and Nicaragua. It is not surprising therefore that he answered a call to take on a two-year commitment with the organization, Samaritan’s Purse, as a physician at the ELWA (Eternal Love Winning Africa) Hospital in Liberia. Dr. Brantly and his wife, Amber, moved to Monrovia, Liberia, with their two children in October of 2013, and were hence in that country when the Ebola epidemic surfaced in 2014.

Dr. Brantly was on the ground when the Ebola outbreak began to ravage the nations of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone in West Africa. The fact that Liberia and Sierra Leone had recently emerged from devastating civil wars further exacerbated the terrible impact of this epidemic in those countries. As Dr. Brantly said in his testimony before a Senate committee hearing in September, “I worked as a physician to support the woefully inadequate healthcare system of a country still struggling to recover from a brutal civil war. Resources were limited, and we often saw patients die of diseases that would be easily treatable in the United States. It was a challenging job to provide quality care even before the Ebola virus tore through the country.”

He accepted an appointment as the Medical Director for Samaritan’s Purse Ebola Consolidated Case Management Center in Monrovia, the capital and largest city in Liberia. He came to personalize the Ebola epidemic for Americans when he himself was stricken with the disease in the summer of 2014. Health care workers are at extreme risk during this emergency because of their close contact with persons suffering from this highly infectious disease. When only two doses of an experimental medication (one never tested on human subjects at that time) were made available, he insisted that another American health care worker be the first to receive them. In the event, doctors decided his own case was so grave that he had to be given a first dose. As is well known, he was then airlifted to the United States for treatment at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta and subsequently recovered from the disease. He has since provided blood for others suffering from Ebola, which it is thought could serve as a sort of vaccine for such patients.

Dr. Brantly has become a spokesperson for furthering awareness and understanding of Ebola both nationally and internationally. On September 16, 2014, he testified before a joint hearing of two Senate committees regarding American response to the outbreak in West Africa and potential dangers to the United States, http://www.help.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Brantly.pdf . His testimony, which can be read by following this link, specifies the main elements of his arguments for increased international response and specific American initiatives to combat the threats of this dangerous Ebola epidemic. As he points out, the destabilizing of the fragile nations in West Africa can lead to consequences not just for international public health but also for political stability throughout an area already struggling to contain civil wars and violence in Nigeria, Central African Republic, and other countries of the region—such effects can have serious negative ramifications for the United States and the international community.

Dr. Brantly has continued to be a spokesperson and advocate for strengthening our response to this disease outbreak and the public health needs of poorer nations as well. As mentioned already, Time Magazine featured Dr. Brantly in their most recent “Person of the Year” issue, which highlighted several of the Ebola fighters. The link in the previous sentence leads to further information concerning Dr. Brantly’s role in the early stages of the struggle against this disease outbreak, as well as the heroic efforts of other Liberian and international doctors and volunteers in the West Africa nations first affected. He has also spoken out on the continued need for medical and humanitarian aid in these areas through interviews on NPR and other media outlets.

He and his wife, Amber, have signed a contract to write a book detailing their experiences and emphasizing the continued need for volunteers, governmental programs, and “servant leaders” to meet this and future international challenges to health and security. They hope that the notoriety achieved from this effort and his appearances and testimony will further bring attention to this cause.

Further sources for more information on Dr. Kent Brantly:
Indianapolis Star
http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/02/health/ebola-kent-brantly/
Samaritan’s Purse
http://www.ktxs.com/news/watch-live-ebola-survivor-kent-brantly-to-speak-at-acu-today/29048090

William W. Neher

Bill Neher is professor emeritus of communication studies at Butler University, where he taught for 42 years. Over those years he has served as Dean of the University College, Director of the Honors Program, Head of the Department of Communication Studies, the Chair of the faculty governance, and most recently as the first Dean (Interim) for the new College of Communication begun in June 2010. He is the author of several books dealing with organizational and professional communication, ethics, and African studies, plus several public speaking and communication text books.

Howard Schultz: Exemplar of Ethical Public Communication

The CEO of Starbucks has earned a reputation for communicating enlightened corporate responsibility in several ways. Most recently he has championed a movement to recognize and reward America’s veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Together with the Washington Post senior correspondent and associate editor Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Schultz just published the book For Love of Country, with the long descriptive sub-title: What Our Veterans Can Teach Us about
Citizenship, Heroism, and Sacrifice. Chadrasekaran is well-positioned to work with Schultz on this book. He has reported directly on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His best-known work is probably Imperial Life in the Emerald City (about life inside the “green line” in Baghdad) and the most recent, Little War: The War within the War for Afghanistan.

The book provides context for Schultz’s recent pledge that Starbucks will hire at least 10,000 veterans and military spouses over the next five years. In a related endeavor, Starbucks and HBO presented “The Concert for Valor” on Veterans Day of 2014 with talent including Bruce Springsteen, Carrie Underwood, Jamie Foxx, Eminem, and guest appearances by Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, and Steven Spielberg. The purpose of the concert, in addition to honoring veterans, was to publicize service organizations intended to assist in the reemployment, reintegration, and health and wellness of returning American veterans. The Schultz Family Foundation, under the leadership of Schultz and his wife, Sheri, has also committed $30 million to aid veterans in their transition to civilian life.

The book, For Love of Country, elucidates a situation troubling to Schultz and Chandrasekaran: members of a professionalized military are somewhat isolated from the broad American public in a way uncharacteristic of most former wars in American history. Returning veterans are therefore almost invisible in many circumstances. After World War II or Vietnam, the draft had ensured that a broad spectrum of American families and communities had some direct relationship with returned soldiers, sailors, marines, and air force personnel. The all-volunteer force, however, is not as widely representative. Schultz and Chandrasekaran are concerned that consequently there is less understanding or even less connection with the returnees from these recent battlefields.

For Love of Country attempts to personalize the lives and sacrifices of these veterans by highlighting, in the first part, the amazing heroism of several individuals and in the second part, the continued contributions of other returning warriors to their communities. For example, the first highlighted case is that of Bill Krissoff, who, after the loss of his son killed in Iraq in 2006, volunteers and becomes the oldest serving serviceman in that war theater at age 62 (as a marine surgeon). The first part of the book also details the amazing actions of others, such as Kellie McCoy, a West Point graduate and combat engineer in Iraq; and the “last line of defense,” the story of two marines who stayed at their post firing at a bomb-laden truck roaring toward them at the entrance to an American base, giving their lives to save those of their fellow-soldiers.

The second part of the book illustrates the continuing service to country on the part of returning veterans after their service: “What our veterans can teach us about citizenship.” One becomes an unusually effective teacher in an inner-city Chicago high school. Others develop the highly effective volunteer team known as “Team Rubicon,” or “Nice Guys of San Diego.” Groups such as these were especially noteworthy for help after the bombing at the Boston Marathon. And, there was Peter Chiarelli, who noted the epidemic of suicides among returnees from the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. The point is that most Americans may not be aware of the high level of service and community involvement many returning veterans continue as a follow-up to the dedication shown in their military service.

James Fallows in the January 2015 edition of the Atlantic Monthly makes many of the points developed by Schultz and Chandrasekaran. Looking at institutional issues rather than those of individual service and heroism, he presents a more worried look at the overall state of the American military, while starting from much the same point as For Love of Country. In his article, “The Tragic Decline of the American Military,” Fallows details many of the perhaps unanticipated consequences of an all-volunteer force, or the suspension of the selective service system. Fallows discusses what he calls the disinterested way that Americans now applaud or show reverence for returning military but do not engage or think about what they are doing. “This reverent but disengaged attitude toward the military—we love the troops, but we’d rather not think about them—has become so familiar that we assume it is the American norm.” When there was a military draft, a wider swath of the public was liable to military service than is the case today.

Schultz appears to hope that through his corporate pledge to hire 10,000 veterans or spouses, concerts to rally support for the returning troops, his family foundation support for veterans, and his well-publicized book that he can enhance our engagement with the men and women who have served so well and sacrificed so much. The effort is no doubt a good example of public argumentation made in an ethical and responsible way. This effort is certainly consistent with Schultz’s record in the arena of public advocacy. He was awarded the Business Enterprise Trust Award for courage, integrity and social vision in business; the International Humanitarian Award from CARE (supporting people in coffee-producing countries); a national award from AIDS Action for efforts in the battle against AIDS. Also over the last year, he made noteworthy and well-publicized statements in regard to guns in the Starbucks stores and the problems of government gridlock in Washington. The latest effort in advocacy for veterans continues a definite pattern of high-level public argumentation.

William W. Neher

Bill Neher is professor emeritus of communication studies at Butler University, where he taught for 42 years. Over those years he has served as Dean of the University College, Director of the Honors Program, Head of the Department of Communication Studies, the Chair of the faculty governance, and most recently as the first Dean (Interim) for the new College of Communication begun in June 2010. He is the author of several books dealing with organizational and professional communication, ethics, and African studies, plus several public speaking and communication text books.

“Can’t we just be rational about this?” Probably you have heard or uttered this admonition before, perhaps more than once. There is an assumption (in fact, the basis for this site and this blog) that we can and ought to be rational, especially when making arguments affecting people in public arenas or dealing with significant issues of public policy.

But—can we always rise to the challenge of applying faultless reasoning in our public decisions or arguments? Our first inclination is to say, “Of course.” After all we are rational human beings—the so-called “homo sapiens,” or wise man. Some anthropologists even classify modern humans in a sub-category of “homo sapiens sapiens,” even wiser, it would seem.

Still, many psychologists and philosophers challenge the notion that we are in fact as wise or as rational as we like to think. Joseph Heath, the Canadian philosopher, in his 2014 book, Enlightenment 2.0, suggests that we are not logical or rational most of the time. At the beginning of his book, he offers this thought puzzle (p. 27):

The Marriage Problem:
Bill is looking at Nancy, while Nancy is looking at Craig.
Bill is married. Craig is unmarried.
Is a married person looking at an unmarried person?
Answer: A) yes, B) no, C) cannot be determined.

What answer do you choose? The puzzle may seem easy to figure out, most people say. Do you agree? What if I reveal that the answer is not C—does that change the way you think about the puzzle? (Hint: it’s not necessary to know which married person is looking at which unmarried person.)

The reason that the marriage problem may seem more difficult than it does at first has to do with the application of different thinking styles or processes we use when faced with real-life problems. Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel prize-winner in economics (although his academic field is more often psychology), describes these different styles as “thinking fast,” and “thinking slow.” Most of the time, we are just fine employing “fast thinking,” it serves well for most of the quick decisions we have to make every day. “Slow thinking,” however, takes more effort and seems not to come to us as naturally and easily as “fast thinking.” Kahneman and his colleague, Amos Tversky, conducted a well-know series of studies over several years demonstrating that how issues are “framed,” (that is, how they are presented) goes a long way to determining how we think about them. The result is that we are often misled and fall into various kinds of reasoning fallacies. The fallacies result from our use of reasoning tools called “heuristics.”

As an example, Kahneman as well as Heath, both discuss the “confirmation bias,” which says that when we seek only confirming evidence for a favored hypothesis, we are often misled. Take this case, also from Heath’s Book. He was challenged by a friend to state the rule behind the formation of a series of three numbers. The friend gave him, first, an example that fit the rule: 2, 4, 6. Heath was then to make three guesses of series that fit the rule; his friend would confirm or deny whether the series given by Heath fit the rule. So, his first guess was 6, 8, 10. Yes—that fit the rule. Then, 32, 34, 36, and again that fit the rule. So, Heath tried 118, 120, and 122 (or something like that)—and again this fit the rule. So, Heath concluded, the rule is ascending, consecutive even numbers. No, he was told, that’s incorrect. Can you see where Heath went wrong? The rule actually was any three numbers in ascending order—so that 17, 94, and 243 also fit the rule. What happened was that Heath, like most of us, assumed he saw a pattern right away and stayed with it. It did not occur to him to try to “falsify” his conjecture by testing a completely different pattern (such as, not guessing only even numbers). This fallacy is called the “confirmation bias”—when we think we see a pattern, we tend to assume it is the real situation and look for confirming evidence. This bias is the root for a lot of tendencies, such as seeing conspiracies (a false pattern) where none may actually exist.

To overcome the natural tendency of the confirmation bias, the philosopher of science, Karl Popper argues for the use of the procedure of “falsification.” A truly scientific proposition is one that can be shown to be false. Scientists therefore look to falsify or disconfirm their hypotheses or theories. If it is not possible to specify how one would disconfirm a theory, it is not scientific (it may still be true, just not science). At the end of World War II, Popper, who had escaped from Austria at the time of the Nazi takeover of that country, published a major work on the application of rational argument in political matters, The Open Society and Its Enemies.

Our perception of patterns can mislead us in other ways. A famous example from Kahneman and Tversky involves their describing a woman named Linda, 31 years old, who is single, outspoken, very bright, a former philosophy major in college, where she was concerned about issues of discrimination and social justice. The people who are subjects in their experiement are asked to choose one of two responses as “most probable”: 1) Linda is a bank teller; or 2) Linda is a bank teller and active in the feminist movement. Most people chose number 2, even though the occurrence of two events happening together is always less probable than one event by itself. In this case, option two seemed more “representative” of Linda than just choice number 1, even though mathematically it is more probable. You may think it more likely that she is a feminist rather than a bank teller, but that is not a choice.

Of course, seeing patterns and being subject to “false positives” (seeing a pattern when none actually exists) had survival value at one time. If you fear that rustling in the bush is a threat and take preventive action, you are more likely to survive in the long run even though you are wrong most of the time. One needed to ignore the perceived pattern only the one “right” time to become the possible victim of a snake or other predator.

Heath, Kahneman, Tversky, Popper and others conclude that “slow thinking,” applying deeply rational thought, requires several conditions. It does take more time, it is usually more difficult than quick decision-making, requires thinking abstractly and working things out in language. One clear conclusion from the psychological work in the area is that it is not necessarily related to intelligence. As Heath and others point out, there is not a correlation between intelligence and the use of various biases and heuristics in thinking.

So, do we know if a married person is looking at one who is unmarried? The answer is A) Yes. Nancy can be either married or unmarried (no other possibility exists). If unmarried, then Bill is looking at her. If she is married, she is looking at Craig. Therefore, at least one married person is looking at an unmarried person, regardless of Nancy’s actual marital status.

William W. Neher

Bill Neher is professor emeritus of communication studies at Butler University, where he taught for 42 years. Over those years he has served as Dean of the University College, Director of the Honors Program, Head of the Department of Communication Studies, the Chair of the faculty governance, and most recently as the first Dean (Interim) for the new College of Communication begun in June 2010. He is the author of several books dealing with organizational and professional communication, ethics, and African studies, plus several public speaking and communication text books.

Carmel, Indiana, the rapidly growing suburb on the north side of metropolitan Indianapolis, has lately received a lot of favorable publicity. CNN Money Magazine, for example, recently ranked the city as number one in the nation on its list of “Best Places to Live.” At the same time, Carmel was named number one on a list of “Ten Safest Suburbs” in America by the Movoto real estate blog. The city has also received recognition for its walkability, affluence, quality of its public schools, youth sports programs, and the many roundabouts on its public roads.

Presiding over this highly regarded city since 1996 is Mayor Jim Brainard, a Republican, as one must be to achieve political office in Hamilton County, Indiana, in which Carmel is located. It would be hard not to credit Mayor Brainard for the positive developments seen in the city over the past decade and a half. Although a prominent politician, the Mayor does not exhibit the highly partisan rhetoric typical of party politics in present-day America. Mayor Brainard, a participant in the first Conference on Ethics and Public Argumentation (CEPA) held at Butler this April, often models what political discourse could be or ought to be. A prior post on this blog focused on another participant in the first CEPA, the Reverend James Harrison of the Indianapolis 10-Point Coalition. This post takes up the example of a second.

The mayor recently sat for an interview with a writer for the Huffington Post, focusing on the topic of President Obama’s newly announced rules on climate change emission standards (direct quotations are from that interview: “Meet One Republican Who Is Happy About Obama’s New Climate Rule,”

While national Republican political leaders, such as House Speaker John Boehner, attacked the new rules (Boehner reportedly said they were “nuts”), Brainard had a different take on the matter: “People realize we’ve made a mess of our climate and our environment,” he said, and, “We need to clean it up. It’s very simple.”

Brainard is one of only two or three Republicans appointed by the President to his task force composed of local and state elected officials to advise the Administration on climate change and its effects on local communities. The Huffington Post writer wanted to know what that was like. Brainard pointed out that before all the partisanship on this issue, historically the Republicans were known for pro-environmentalist positions. Teddy Roosevelt, after all, initiated the national park system over a century ago. And, the mayor reminds us, the EPA was begun under President Nixon, who also saw the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Migratory Bird Act enacted during his administration. Regarding the meetings of the task force formed by President Obama, Brainard says that you wouldn’t know who were R’s and who were D’s by observing the group’s discussions. “It’s refreshing to say the least,” and he reminds us of the saying repeated in local government, “there’s no Democrat or Republican way to fill a pothole.”

So, are the political fights and heated rhetoric unrepresentative of the Mayor’s experience? “Totally different from my experience as mayor!” Brainard has an interesting explanation concerning why the national scene is so different from the local one. “[In Washington] we have a industry of political consultants,” who are highly paid and whose jobs are dependent “upon partisanship and keeping everybody mad at everybody.” He is implying that there are powerful incentives to foment dysfunctional politics. Policy-making in a non-partisan way, featuring compromise, he adds, “doesn’t make political headlines either during elections. We have a real problem in this country with that.”

There appears to be a lesson from this Republican’s view on the political climate in America (going beyond the meteorological climate). In an atmosphere polluted by a fixation on winning and losing (and little else), it becomes difficult to connect ethics with one’s public arguments. The public debates on climate change and related topics may well continue to be clouded by the continued emphasis on extreme partisanship. Meanwhile, leaders such as the Mayor of Carmel offer a model of a better way for carrying forward policy discussion and debate.

William W. Neher

Bill Neher is professor emeritus of communication studies at Butler University, where he taught for 42 years. Over those years he has served as Dean of the University College, Director of the Honors Program, Head of the Department of Communication Studies, the Chair of the faculty governance, and most recently as the first Dean (Interim) for the new College of Communication begun in June 2010. He is the author of several books dealing with organizational and professional communication, ethics, and African studies, plus several public speaking and communication text books.

Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw) looks up from his room service breakfast at Kelly (Robert Redford) to announce he knows how the con works: “You’re past-posted.” This is the point in the movie The Sting when Henry Gondorf (Paul Newman) and Kelly/Redford set the hook to reel in their big fish for their big sting. Lonnegan thinks he knows how Gondorf’s illegal gambling parlour in Chicago is able to know the results for horse races around the country before they are made public. In betting parlance, this insider knowledge is called past-posting because the bet is made after the post call for the beginning of a race (past the post). Today there are claims that so-called flash trading on stock markets is something like old-fashioned past-posting at the racetrack.

In the classic Newman-Redford film, the past-posting does not require a great deal of speed in communication—after all the movie is set in the year 1936. Results from horse tracks around the country then were sent over Western Union telegraph and re-distributed through the media of the day. Roy Alston’s character in The Sting pores quickly over ticker tape of various racetrack reports and finds results that will fit the needs for the conning of the New York gangster, played by Shaw. He tips off Lonnegan (Shaw) waiting by a pay phone booth in a nearby drug store. Lonnegan then makes the bets at Gondorf’s establishment. The con required a time lag of up to 5 or 10 minutes in order to work. But in contemporary high speed stock trading speeds of microseconds (millionths of a second) or even nanoseconds (billionths of a second) allegedly can make all the difference.

A recent book by Michael Lewis, called Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt, spotlights the practice of flash trading, or ultra high speed stock trading. Lewis is perhaps best known for his books The Blind Side and Moneyball, both of which were made into popular movies. Lewis focuses on the processes of Brad Katsuyama, a trader for the Royal Bank of Canada who discovers that suddenly his computer seems to play tricks on him as he tries to execute large trades. He sees the buy and sell prices for his stock, but when he clicks on “buy” everything immediately changes—the price he thought he was getting has vanished. Lewis’ story also begins with the engineering of a long distance cable running from the south side of Chicago to northern New Jersey, laid at great expense to avoid almost all turns and changes in elevation (very tricky through Pennsylvania). Katsuyama also finds that large stock traders, such as those working in the major banks, will pay high prices to locate their computers as close as physically possible to those of the various stock exchanges (mostly housed in northern New Jersey). Lewis, through Katsuyama’s investigations, uncovers how the “flash traders” are able to take advantage of microseconds to “run ahead” of trades as they occur to snap up and re-sell the target stocks before the initial trades themselves can be completed, thereby running up profits. Lewis also discusses the use of “dark pools” by some of the largest investment banks in which they can execute trades “out of sight” of the public markets, as if they were happening in a dark pool.

The machinations are too complex to describe in a brief blog entry, but are explained in more detail in Lewis’ book and other recent business articles and posts, as in the Wall Street Journal. On April 17, for example, the Journal featured a report on subpoenas sent to some of the firms engaged in high frequency stock trading (Wall Street Journal, April 17, 2014, p. C2). The subpoenas issued from the office of the Attorney General of New York focused on the practice known as “latency arbitrage,” in which the high-speed firms take advantage of the delays, or latencies, in the communication among various parts of the trading network. As the Journal points out, those high speed traders “can detect trades before other investors can see them and take advantage of the information,” even though latencies are measured in microseconds (millionths of a second). In earlier probes the Commodities Futures Trading Commission was investigating whether similar high-speed tactics amounted to insider trading “by taking advantage of fast moving market information unavailable to other traders” (same Journal article). An article on April 30 in the same paper reported that the Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC) was also initiating investigations of high-speed firms taking advantage of timing differences in the availability of stock-trading information. This article even references Michael Lewis’ book as one motivation for the concern (“White Says SEC is ‘Quite Focused’ on High-Speed Trading,” Wall Street Journal, April 30, 2014, p. C3; also see Wall Street Journal, May 2, 2014, p. C1: “NYSE Settles Charges Its Safeguards Fell Short”).

Lewis explains that Katsuyama and the team of expert programmers he enlisted were motivated by a concern for fairness, particularly in that private investors and people who depend upon the success of pension funds were being ripped off by the use of flash trading, dark pools, and latency arbitrage. The interesting point in the view of CEPA is that Katsuyama’s team and Lewis are trying to communicate to the public and policy-makers about a highly complex, technical issue with potentially significant financial impact on ordinary individuals. At the moment, the legal question is not settled, as the SEC chair in the April 30 Journal article notes that high speed traders may be operating within regulations. Is high speed trading a “Sting” or not? More analysis seems to be coming. People like Lewis and Brad Katsuyama have at least brought attention to the issue.

William W. Neher

Bill Neher is professor emeritus of communication studies at Butler University, where he taught for 42 years. Over those years he has served as Dean of the University College, Director of the Honors Program, Head of the Department of Communication Studies, the Chair of the faculty governance, and most recently as the first Dean (Interim) for the new College of Communication begun in June 2010. He is the author of several books dealing with organizational and professional communication, ethics, and African studies, plus several public speaking and communication text books.