Ethical Decision Checklist
Who benefits and who's harmed? Is it fair to everyone? Would it be acceptable if made public? Does it align with stated values?
What was corrected
Article attributed an unverified scale ('50,000 subjects across 30 countries') to James Rest's real Defining Issues Test. It misattributed Trevino & Brown's real ethical-leadership research to the wrong journal (stated Academy of Management Journal; the real paper is in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes) with unverified '0.61 correlation' and '37 percent' statistics. It cited two specific Francesca Gino studies (a 2011 JPSP paper and a 2014 Psychological Science paper) that could not be verified and appear unverified - critically, Gino's real ethics/dishonesty research has been the subject of major, publicly documented data-fraud allegations since 2023, with at least three papers formally retracted by Harvard, including two in Psychological Science specifically on ethics-adjacent topics, making any citation of her ethics research in this context unsound regardless of whether these two specific papers exist. It misattributed the real 'ethical fading' concept's co-authorship and journal (stated Tenbrunsel & Bazerman in Research in Organizational Behavior 2004; the real 2004 paper is Tenbrunsel & Messick in Social Justice Research) with unverified '73 percent/38 percent' statistics. It reversed the real Tylenol crisis market-share figures (stated share recovered 'from 7 percent to 35 percent,' when the real story is share was ~35% before, collapsed to ~7% after the poisonings, then recovered) and added an unverified '85 percent of accredited MBA ethics courses' statistic. It included an unverified Patagonia supply-chain statistics (93%/12% cotton, FLA 'top 7 percent,' Cone Communications 77%/32%) with no findable sources. And it unverified secondary Salesforce pay-equity statistics (PayScale 1.4%-to-0.7% gap, 14-point satisfaction increase, 8 percent attrition decline) layered onto real, well-documented core dollar figures.
Rest's DIT description generalized without the unverified scale figures. Trevino & Brown passage corrected to the real journal without the unverified statistics. The Gino paragraph was removed in its entirety rather than corrected, given the serious, documented credibility problems with her ethics research specifically. Tenbrunsel passage corrected to the real co-authorship and journal for the 2004 'ethical fading' paper, with the unverified percentages replaced by an accurate qualitative description of the real framing-effect finding. The Tylenol passage corrected to describe the real before/after/recovery market-share sequence accurately, with the unverified MBA-course statistic replaced by an accurate general statement. Patagonia and Salesforce passages rewritten to describe the real, verifiable programs and dollar figures without the unverified supplementary statistics.
Why this is better
This was the most consequential correction in this batch: beyond the usual pattern of unverified statistics attached to real researchers, this article specifically cited Francesca Gino's ethics research without disclosing her documented, publicly reported research-misconduct findings - an issue independent of whether the two specific cited studies exist, since her broader body of ethics/dishonesty work is now considered unreliable by the academic community. All other citations in this article followed the established pattern of real people/institutions with unverified or altered statistics.