Mr Ness. Scorpio. My name’s right here.
If your doctor recommended a drug whose manufacturer’s consulting fees financed his summer home, would that give you pause? Would you trust a stockbroker who wanted to sell you on a risky mutual fund that gave him a commission for every sale? (…)
Within many fields, one solution has emerged: require people to disclose any ties that might sway their judgment. Such transparency, the rationale goes, encourages those in authority to behave more ethically.
But recent research by experimental psychologists is uncovering some uncomfortable truths: Disclosure doesn’t solve problems the way we think it does, and in fact it can actually backfire.
Coming clean about conflicts of interest, they find, can promote less ethical behavior by advisers. And though most of us assume we’d cast a skeptical eye on advice from a doctor, stockbroker, or politician with a personal stake in our decision, disclosure about conflicts may actually lead us to make worse choices.
