Tag Archives: Research

A conversation about Sasquatch

How can a person know a sound they hear is a Sasquatch if they cannot see the alleged Sasquatch, and if it isn’t on verifiable  record what a Sasquatch sounds like? That is the question I asked Matt Moneymaker on Twitter that led to him telling me I wasn’t old enough to understand and should go an ask my parents. His reasoning was that many adults had asked him the same and had no problem accepting the answer that he knew because he’d heard Sasquatch before.

You can view the tweets from Matt on Storify here.

I couldn’t accept this answer because at some point, somewhere in the past of Sasquatch research history someone must have never heard an alleged Sasquatch before and as such wouldn’t have had previous experience to compare the sound they heard to, and nobody around them would have been able to say ‘yes that sound was Sasquatch, I’ve heard it before’. This is what I meant when I asked how he could know considering there is no definite, verifiable record of Sasquatch behaviour, appearance and sound.

If a young child hears a dog barking for the first time we can say to them ‘that is a dog barking. Here is the dog that is barking. Here are videos showing dogs barking.’ We can go to the zoo and the same child could hear a lion roar for the first time and we can say ‘that is a lion roaring. Here is the lion roaring, there are videos that show lions roaring.’ That isn’t possible with Sasquatch because you can’t show me a Sasquatch that is making alleged Sasquatch sounds and you can’t show me video after video of a Sasquatch making Sasquatch sounds – all you can do is tell me that the sound I hear is a Sasquatch because you’ve heard one before. All Matt could do was link me to audio of what he claims is a Sasquatch without being able to tell me how he knows it is a Sasquatch.

When I pointed this out on Twitter Matt Moneymaker called me a child and told me I was asking childish questions and ignoring the answers he had already given me. He told me

don’t make child-like assumptions about what exists and what doesn’t exist. Others may know more than you do about things.

The problem is though that Matt is the one making claims – that he knows what Sasquatch sounds like – but he cannot provide me with the evidence despite me asking him to do so several times on Twitter. The burden of proof in this situation lays with Matt. Making a claim is fine, but do so with evidence to back the claim up, and don’t dismiss me as a child for questioning how you know something is what you say it is.

I accept that others know more about subjects than I do, and that is why when I see claims being made that I am unsure of I ask questions. That’s how you learn more, that’s how you develop your current understanding of the world around you. I don’t expect to ask a reasonable question and to have to accept the answer I am given when it doesn’t make logical sense, as the initial answer given to me by Matt Moneymaker didn’t. To then be told I am a child because I ‘didn’t understand or accept’ the initial answer is nonsense.

Cough up the goods, Matt. Show me the evidence without me having to travel to the USA to see it. If you can’t show me that evidence you base your claims on then I’m afraid they’re just opinions and not facts. That doesn’t make me a child, it just means I’m not illogically accepting someones word as fact. Presuming I should just accept your word and not question it is beyond irrational – it’s pompous. Nobody is beyond questioning, especially when like Moneymaker they’re throwing around their opinions as fact.

P.S. I asked my mum like you told me to, and she suggested that someone who goes on television as an expert on a subject ought to be able to explain things for themselves.

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Turning your back on nonsense

In reflecting my previous blog post called ‘When claims of authority fall flat on their face’ I realise I was too quick to judge the Bomber County Paranormal team. Since writing my criticism is has been brought to my attention that Kerry, who is the founder and organizer of the group, is attempting to turn the team into a rational one after splitting from what is described as a less rational former team. I applaud that attempt, however the original blog post was written based on my initial impression of their team website and that’s an impression that unfortunately no amount of good intent can change.

The impression was based upon the claims the team made about being objective and rational coupled with photos of them, and reports of their investigations, demonstrating behaviour that wasn’t rational or objective. For example, on the front page of their website are photos of table tipping and glass divination. This is the problem that is faced by most paranormal researchers who want to change from being belief-led, biased and pseudo-scientific researchers into those who are objective and reasoned in their actions and investigations. I know now that the Bomber County Paranormal Team used the ASSAP logo on the front of their website to say ‘look, we’re trying to do this right’, rather than to say ‘, yeah! Look how good we are!’. Yet all of that effort is undone by those methods used that make no logical sense, that are justified in the name of fair balance and keeping people happy.

I get that. I’ve been there.

In fact, I recently wrote about my own experiences with this transition and about the lies you tell yourself when you try to defend the irrational things you do despite knowing deep down they’re not rational. This is normally done in the name of trying to keep everyone within your team happy and it puts immense, and unfair pressure upon a team founder or leader. It’s like an internal tug-of-war and you know that at some point someone is going to end up falling into the mud defeated. As the founder of a paranormal research team who went through the same transition I have one piece of advice for any team founder trying to make their team into a rational one, but struggling to stop people doing table tipping, séances, glass divination and other such methods: Put your foot down.

I did.

It was ugly because most of my team members left, but I don’t regret it because I wasn’t being selfish by wanting to change the team into a more rational and less unethical team, but those members who left were being selfish by wanting to continue to act irrationally and unethically for the sole purpose of validating their own belief in the paranormal, ghosts and an afterlife. They didn’t stop to consider how their desire to validate their beliefs could negatively effect those they came into contact with.

Although it is illogical and irrational, there’s nothing wrong with someone wanting to do table tipping or a séance in their own home or in private, but it does become a problem when they take that behaviour into property owned by somebody else in the name of ‘research’.

When I explained to the team I formed and ran that we would no longer be doing glass divination, table tipping and séances, nine out of twelve members of the team left and formed their own irrational team (which lasted a grand total of 3 months before splitting).

Sabotage: This text message was sent to a location owner our team were working with by a former team mate with a grudge.

When those nine people left I was called names on paranormal forums and in email. People sabotaged investigations I organised and I was threatened over the phone by people I considered as friends. One ex team mate even attempted to get me fired by telling my boss at the time that I was secretly filming people for BBC’s Watchdog (shortly after the company I worked for was exposed on Watchdog). To this day I get abuse from people I used to be friends with because I turned my back on irrational belief-led behavior and attempted to stop the team I formed in my name from continuing with unethical behaviour.

I wouldn’t change a thing though. If I was offered the chance to go back in time I’d do exactly the same because ultimately the decision to right your wrongs and stop irrational behavior that has a potentially unethical outcome is a good thing.

You should never expect the members of your team to let go of their beliefs, but you’re certainly entitled to ask that they don’t bring those beliefs into your investigations and research. Anyone who cannot respect that is being slightly selfish.

The Wiltshire Phenomena Research team is still going, by the way. We hardly do investigations as a group, but there’s about ten of us on standby should anyone get in touch for advice or an answer. We don’t do investigations every Saturday night like the old team did, but those odd rare cases are still fun and interesting. A successfully rational paranormal research team know that not every case is possible to investigate, that you don’t need more than a few people at a time, that you don’t need to turn the lights off to research experiences, and that the most valuable research often happens over a cup of tea.

I genuinely wish Kerry and any other team founder trying to turn their team into a more rational team the best of luck, if anyone needs advice, you can get in touch via this site. It’s not easy making a change, but trust me, it’s worth the effort.

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The ethics of Ghost Research

When I first got involved in paranormal research as a teenager I thought a good code of conduct looked like the one that can be found here. Most people who get involved in paranormal research do so with good intentions, but sometimes good intentions aren’t enough. There are things I have done in the name of ‘paranormal research’ that were unethical and damaging to the people involved. I should have known better but I didn’t and as time has gone on I have been able to cast my mind back to those instances and see how I would have done things differently had I been more aware of the unethical implications my desire to communicate with dead people could have on others.

There was an instance a few years ago when I was asked to conduct an educational investigation at a reputedly haunted pub in Bristol. The idea was that I would lead the investigation and walk people through the pseudo-scientific methods of ghost hunting. This included using the ouija board, and as we sat around the table conducting a faux ouija board session a member of staff that lived in the pub walked into the room, saw the board and started to panic.

I didn’t know people lived on premises, I hadn’t thought to ask the organisers of the event about such things, and as a result one resident got very scared and I’m pretty sure that would have had a knock on effect. Unfortunately I cannot change the past no matter how much I want to, all I can do is learn from my mistakes and hope that perhaps the lessons I have learnt through trial and error as a paranormal investigator can help others avoid such mistakes.

I interviewed the chairman of the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena (ASSAP), Dave Wood, alongside long time researcher CJ Romer about the ethical implications of spontaneous phenomena investigations a while ago and you can read the transcript of the interview by clicking here. Very recently I have observed numerous instances of paranormal researchers demonstrating either unethical behaviour or a lack of understanding about what ethical implications their actions may have on those they encounter. Rather than just name, shame and moan about what I had seen I’ve decided to both transcribe the interview I did with Dave and CJ (as linked to above) and write up a summary about the basic things to consider when it comes to ethical ghost research.

Ethical Ghost Research – the basics

When investigating spontaneous phenomena you will come into contact with all sorts of people who are both involved in the case and not involved in it. As a researcher (whether professional or amateur) the welfare of those affected by your research is paramount. Being guided by your common sense or morality is often not enough to ensure you have considered all possible implications that your presence at a location as a researcher may have on those you come into contact with.  This is why it is paramount that paranormal researcher organisations draw up a code of ethics to which organisation members are to abide by while on location.

Who can be harmed by paranormal researchers?

There are four groups of people that paranormal researchers may come into contact with who should be considered in a code of ethics drawn up by research organisations.

1 – The recently bereaved 

Paranormal Researchers should not work with those who have experienced the loss of a loved one within at least a six month period. Grief can make a person extremely emotionally vulnerable and only those professionals with specialist training in coping with grief and depression should work with those who have experienced such a recent loss.

2 – Children

Cases involving those under the age of Eighteen are an ethical nightmare for paranormal researchers. Some claim that it is okay to work with children, but I personally agree with CJ Romer and Dave Wood when they point out that only those Social Welfare Professionals with specialist training should work with children – and only when called upon to do so in a professional capacity.

3 – Statutorily vulnerable adult

Vulnerable adults may be those with mental health issues, learning difficulties, who are very elderly or frail, or someone who’s recently bereaved. Paranormal investigators should consider very carefully about whether it is appropriate to work with such people. Of people with these circumstances Dave Wood, the chairman of ASSAP says

‘they would fall into the category of statutorily vulnerable and that means they have some kind of care needs and you [paranormal researchers] shouldn’t be working with those people at all because they should already have professional networks of support.’

4 – Non-Statutorily vulnerable adults

Adults who are not vulnerable can still be harmed by the actions of paranormal researchers – the previously mentioned barmaid who stumbled upon the Ouija board session would fall under this label. Many ghost researchers enter a location in the pursuit of ‘evidence’ that ghosts exist, this can not only misinform the people they come into contact with but it can scare them too and cause them to feel uncomfortable, unsafe or scared of their own home or place of work. It’s a sure sign that you need to review your code of ethics when the hunt for evidence takes priority over the well being of those involved in the case – or the well being of those you come into contact with isn’t even considered in the first place!

How can people be harmed by paranormal researchers?

Through the sharing of information

When ghost researchers conduct an investigation they often conclude by writing and sharing a report about the investigation. If no code of ethics is in place, the way in which information is shared by the ghost researchers can have a harmful effect on the people involved in the case being researched.

Occasionally the reports that ghost researchers put together can describe pretty horrific things they believe they encountered as locations, such as being pushed, scratched, made to feel unwell, things being thrown or moved, sounds being heard and things being seen. These things can be upsetting and scary to those who live or work in the location – especially when the paranormal research teams findings may be pseudo-scientific and erroneous.

Not only this but sometimes it isn’t appropriate to name the people involved, or even the location involved as this can bring unwanted attention upon those being named. Confidentiality is something that all paranormal researchers should respect above all else.

Often paranormal investigators will visit locations where they don’t really come into contact with anyone they could cause harm through their actions, but then claim to talk to spirits while at the location. Publishing the details of the spirits they believe they have encountered could also be unethical in the cases where those spirits were real people who may have living relatives who could stumble upon the report containing details about their deceased loved ones.

By acting as a professional in a non-professional capacity

Many paranormal research organisations have members who are qualified in roles that might aid those who are listed above as potentially vulnerable. Some ghost researchers may be psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses, grief councilors, GP’s etc. but acting in their professional capacity when on an investigation is unprofessional and may have negative outcomes for the people they advise. Most vulnerable adults and children have a care network in place with such professionals already working for them and so anyone in a ghost research team who happens to have those credentials should not consider it their place to act in such a manner.

By breaking the law

A very big problem is caused by paranormal researchers who gain access to locations without permission from land owners. There have been horror stories of people being seriously injured and killed because they trespassed on private property to look for ghosts there. Even some graveyards have limited opening hours and by accessing the graveyard outside of these opening hours could mean you are breaking the law.

Not everyone who accesses a location illegally is respectful of the location and there have been instances of ghost researchers using locations as a toilet, vandalism, spraying graffiti and littering. I think the unethical implications of such behaviour speaks for itself.

Ethical conduct is a huge topic and the above has hardly scratched the surface, but then this was only intended as a brief introduction to the ethics of ghost hunting. The points made above are the most common mistakes I have seen paranormal researchers make again and again in the few years I have been involved in such research. Keeping research ethical is a big deal for researchers of all disciplines, but sometimes ghost researchers are so desperate to get out there and talk to ghosts that they don’t stop to think that this means them too.

I haven’t written out a list of rules that I think ghost researchers should follow, or a dummy code of ethics. I’ve just listed all of the above as my pointers on what to consider and hope that those researchers without a code of ethics will consider the information I have shared and draw up their own code of ethics.

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Ethical issues in Spontaneous Phenomena Investigations: An interview with Dave Wood & CJ Romer

I interviewed Dave Wood, the chairman of the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomlous Phenomena (ASSAP) and CJ Romer, a highly regarded phenomena investigator, about the ethics of ghost hunting for Episode 105 of the Righteous Indignation Podcast. Below is a transcript of the interview.

H = Hayley Stevens
D = Dave Wood
CJ = CJ Romer

H We’re here to talk about an article you both wrote for vol. 45 of the ASSAP journal ‘Anomaly called ‘Ethical issues in spontaneous phenomena investigations’.Do you believe unethical behaviour is a large problem among amateur paranormal investigators? I think it’s probably a bit of a given…

CJ I’d say it’s almost certain that there are ethical issues that come up almost on a daily basis for anyone who is active within the field. I’ve faced all kinds of ethical problems in my own time, and I’ve probably made lots of incorrect decisions myself. A couple from my own experience from running a paranormal group back in the 90’s before this all started to take off and everyone started to do it.

On one occasion I asked another academic, a colleague, if he’d like to be involved as he was a reputable scientist. I asked him if he’d like to come along on an investigation and he filled in a form and agreed to maintain confidentiality etc. We met him at the university, he got in the car and we thought ‘what possible harm could come from taking this fellow with us?’ and in fact no harm did come from it, but the first thing he asked us as we got out of the car was ‘why have you brought me to my house?’

It turned out that the case which was very sensitive involved his next door neighbour who’d he’d been friends with for many years who had been too embarrassed to tell him anything about the phenomena they were witnessing. So, inadvertent but straight away that raises a few interesting points, doesn’t it? On another occasion some time later we found what appeared to be a full blown physical relationship between a young child and a babysitter, and there’s real legal issues that become involved and I think one of the problems psychical researchers don’t realise is just how much they stick their necks out just by going into people’s homes which is why I strongly encourage people not to do it.

H Yes

D I agree with CJ, there’s some really shocking headline ethical issues that hit the papers, and I think some examples we used in the article included known registered sex offenders going into family homes and that kind of thing and really incredible mind-blowing stuff where you’re thinking ‘how could this have even happened?’ and it’s worrying on all sorts of levels, but going back to what CJ said originally, minor ethical issues crop up every weekend when paranormal investigation groups go out, most of which don’t have ethical codes of any description and from my own limited experience of seeing other groups as opposed to groups I’ve been directly involved with, ethical issues crop up all the time and I think it’s a big worry.

H I certainly know from my own experience – I mean the reason that I do less investigations now is because of ethical reasons, I just can’t assure that I’m being ethical so I steer clear. CJ you mentioned a ‘sensitive case’, could you describe what a sensitive might be?

CJ As an academic one of the first things you are taught is that you don’t do research with the recently bereaved and unfortunately one of the groups you’re most likely to be approached by is someone who has suffered a recently bereavement. It’s very hard.

D Yes

CJ a question that arose when we were writing the paper was ‘do you take on those investigations? Do you look at the phenomena, do you offer anything more than a cup of tea and sympathy – my preferred approach, and break off contact as quickly and gently as you could?’ How do you deal with it Dave?

D I think generally that certainly within six months of someone being bereaved there’s a good case that it’s almost automatically unethical to deal with someone who has been bereaved in the previous six months, there’s so much going on there. They’re automatically vulnerable in pretty much every single case. I don’t think a paranormal investigator is a suitable person to be working with them. Everything is too fresh and raw and it just doesn’t sit right with me at all.

An interesting offshoot to that is something that a number of paranormal researchers have done over the years, is set up legacy research. A few years ago I came across someone who put in place a plan for when they eventually died as to what research they wanted done by the people around them when they died which was kind of strange to me and kind of highlighted that issue there as to how you deal with that sort of thing as well

H Are these investigators who are saying when I die I want you to try and communicate with my ghost?

D yeah that sort of thing, a few years ago I came across an investigator who had a whole kind of plan in place of research they wanted conducting to try and make contact

CJ It’s almost the norm for members of the SPR[Society for Psychical Research] to do things such as set bicycle locks, create complex cypher messages that could only be decoded with the correct key, and to do other things so they can be used as tests of survival. I don’t have an ethical issue with this as it is people who are making informed decisions to assist a future research community and the normally the research doesn’t start until quite some time after their death.

But no… Stay away from the recently bereaved! And stay away from working with Children! Absolute horror!

D Yep

CJ I used to be a psychiatric nurse and one of the things they drummed into us was even if you’re a psychiatric nurse you don’t work with children unless you have that sort of training and understanding and we didn’t so they told us to stay away from them.

D I completely agree, going into a private case where children are present is a big no-no in most respects. People have argued the opposite view but I’m with CJ on that one. Working with children directly, there is the potential to do a lot of harm for them. Before anyone thinks about doing something like that they need to speak to professionals and get advice – certainly not something to do without thinking about it.

In the article we made a difference between statutorily vulnerable adults and then people who didn’t fall into that category. If you’ve got someone who has mental health issues, learning difficulties, is very elderly or frail, or someone who’s recently bereaved then they would fall into the category of statutorily vulnerable and that means they have some kind of care needs and you shouldn’t be working with those people at all because they should already have professional networks of support.

Then you have people who are non-statutorily vulnerable which is pretty much anyone in their own home who is concerned, worried or distressed about something happening in their own home and I think in any case where there’s than non-statutorily vulnerable you have to be very careful about how you deal with those situations and as CJ said he’d probably avoid them entirely and I’ve spoken to a refreshing number of researchers who have said ‘I don’t have enough training to deal with this, I would avoid the situation entirely’ but I think if anyone was to work with someone in a private house, and lots of people do, I think it’s important to have a very strong ethical code in place to ensure that person is protected.

H I know a lot of a lot of research teams who’ve gone into people’s homes and have done horrific things on their investigations and in the way they handle their ‘findings’ which is quite disturbing for those involved. When raising my concerns they often say they not sure how to work out if someone is vulnerable. Do you think it’s best to avoid private investigations completely unless they have specialist training?

D Yes I think unless they have some sort of ethical grounding I think the safest thing is to avoid those sorts of cases. At ASSAP[Association for Scientific Study into Anomalous Phenomena] we provide particular training on dealing with no statutory vulnerable people in private houses, and I think unless you’ve gone into it in a great deal of depth it is much better to err on the side of caution as we are dealing with people’s lives, and avoid these cases.

CJ You’ve got to bear in mind that even a trained social welfare professional will be working as part of a multi-agency task force, they’ll be working as part of a team. You’ll have a GP involved, and maybe social services, they may have contact with local clergy who deals with the faith of the family, with the housing officers, the hospital, maybe psychiatrists, perhaps a substance abuse teams. All those people work in an institutional frame work that protects them, gives them assurance, gives them cover but is ultimately designed to prevent unnecessary sharing of information and ensure that the client gets the best possible deal out of ay intervention.

What happens with paranormal investigators is more like:

*acts the knocking of a door*

*puts on voice* ‘Hello Ma’am, oh I’m sensing it already! It’s a headless baby, it’s horrible and disfigured, did you have a miscarriage? It’s coming through the walls!

I mean, I mock but that kind of horrific scenario goes on out there.

H Yeah I’ve seen that kind of thing

CJ These people believe it’s okay to go and do this. Actually there’s a real issue here. There are two kinds of psychic researchers at the end of day. Those who see themselves asspiritual super beings who save the world through psychic intervention and some of these do a good job and make people feel better and I have seen positive outcomes from mediums-

H a bit like a placebo

CJ Perhaps… sometimes though it can do horrendous damage. How do you know which people are going to leave you in some state of uncertainty and cause you untold degrees of horror, and how do you know whose going to tell you a nice story about the ghost and sort it out – whether its true or not doesn’t matter.

D Yeah, I’ve spoken to people in the past who say they feel quite comfortable approaching mediums because mediums tend to have this tenet of not doing harm at the centre of what they do, but I have come across cases of mediums going into locations and scared the bejesus out of people quite frankly. Saying there are dozens of ghosts in your house, or in your children’s bedroom and the children can’t sleep at night. So I think there is no way to know when you invite someone in your house – that can be a medium or an investigator –how do you know if they’re going to help and reassure you or how do you know they’re not going to make it worse?

CJ mediums generally do at least claim their aims are therapeutic. My team once had a call from a woman saying: “I’m so terrified, my children have gone to stay with their grandparents. The saucepan just got thrown at the dog. The dog is howling, objects keep moving and thumping! Doors keep opening and closing. I can’t take it anymore, I can’t take it anymore!’

My friend turned around to me and shouted: “Yes! We’ve actually got a good one!”

Utterly inappropriate. We went down there and the woman was absolutely hysterical and from my nursing perspective I wanted to cheer her up but it quickly became apparent that activity occurred when the family were stressed and upset so I also had this strong scientific urge to make them as unhappy as possible…

H *laughs*

D I’m sure you didn’t act on it!

CJ No, actually what I did was tried to calm them down, and that will always take priority for me over of hunting for evidence. One of the problems I have is statistically I don’t think there’s much point of going and sitting with a camera because even on the most live poltergeist cases where I’ve been, as soon as you have an outsider involved you might see or hear something but the phenomena is extraordinarily elusive so I spend most of the time trying to explain the phenomena in rational terms and trying to calm people down.
At the end of the case the woman said to us ‘you don’t want to get rid of the ghost at all, do you? You want it to stay here!’ and I think that’s true of a lot of research groups, they want the ghost to be there.

D They mean well and feel they’re doing a good job, and they may do a good job in the way they investigate, but not having an ethical code and a grounded ethical way of doing things, statistically speaking you’re going to have so many ethical issues coming up over the course of x number of cases you investigate. Unless you’re prepared to deal with them, small amounts of harm are going to take place, you may not know they take place, you may go in, do an investigation, leave and never actually realise that after the event something takes place that causes harm to the family.

We can focus on headline issues and horror stories which I think is good because that brings out good examples, but the thousands of investigators who operate without an ethical code just create these small ethical breaches over the course of time creates a huge accumulative problem.

H What do you think is the cause of unethical conduct? Is it people ignoring the problem? Or just not realising the potential for the problem is there?

D I think probably not realising the potential for the problem is there, I think very few people go out there trying to scare people and cause distress. I think the vast majority of investigators are trying to do a good job and a good thing through this sense of personal morality that people would hope guides them through a process. I suppose it’s where you’re coming from. If you think about Paranormal Investigation, it’s pretty much an amateur type hobby, most amateur hobby you don’t tend to have any code of how you act – you go into something with common sense and hope it prevails.

Indeed with psychology, that used to be, broadly speaking decades ago, how psychology worked, the individual morality of the person – albeit a well-trained person – would hopefully see them through the experimentation they’d do.

Psychology and other disciplines quickly learnt that actually the only way to really protect people is to have a set of behaviours, a code of conduct, a set of ethics to guide you and help you interpret different eventualities. Things you hadn’t considered and potential harm for people you wouldn’t consider. So I think very few of us can go into an investigation case having knowledge of every possible outcome that could happen. At least with a code of ethics you can institutionally minimise risk of harm and be in a position to address it if it comes up. So I think people go into it with the right mind-set but with the not that kind of professional mind-set that says ‘yes, we must have a formal code of ethics’.

-end-

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