Healthcare whistle blowing, despite the benefits it has brought to healthcare systems in many developed countries, remains generally regarded as a pariah activity by many of the most influential healthcare professionals and regulatory institutions. Few if any medical schools or law department health law and bioethics classes, teach whistle blowing in a formal sense. Yet without exception, publi...

Whistle-blowing is seen as a powerful tool in containing corruption, although theoretical findings and experimental evidence cast doubt on its effectiveness. We expand a standard corruption model by allowing both, briber and official to initiate corruption actively, in order to assess the full effect of whistle-blowing. In our laboratory experiment we find that the effect of symmetrically punis...

OBJECTIVE To examine students' attitudes and potential behaviour with regard to whistle blowing as they progress through a modern undergraduate medical curriculum. DESIGN Cohort design. SETTING University of Glasgow Medical School. SUBJECTS A cohort of students entering Glasgow University's new learner-centred, integrated medical curriculum in October 1996. METHODS Students' pre- and po...

Inquiries in the UK into mistreatment of older people by healthcare employees over the last 30 years have focused on introducing or supporting employee whistle-blowing. Although whistle-blowers have made an important contribution to patient safety it remains a controversial activity. The fate of whistle-blowers is bleak, often resulting in personal and professional sacrifices. Here we draw on t...

By "paradox" I mean an apparent—and, in this case, real—inconsistency between theory (our Systematic understanding of whistle-blowing) and the facts (what we actually know, or think we know, about whistle-blowing). What concerns me is not a few anomalies, the exceptions that test a rule, but a flood of exceptions that seems to swamp the rule. This paper has four parts. The first states the stan...

Whistle-blowing is a core topic for any ”ethics” or ”professionalism” course offered for IS/CS/CE/EE majors. This paper documents a real whistle-blowing case that is ideal for use in teaching. The incident is set in the computing industry, specifically in the supply of micro-electronic chips for use in safety-critical systems. The incident is well documented, with decisions in both a criminal c...

Leniency clauses, offering cartelists legal immunity if they blow the whistle on each other, is a recent anti-trust innovation. The authorities wish to thwart cartels and promote competition. This effect is not evident, however; whistle-blowing may enforce trust and collusion by providing a tool for cartelists to punish each other. We examine the impact of leniency law, and other rules, theoret...