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"FOR the last few weeks, the sex abuse scandal at Penn State and the harassment claims against the Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain have been fodder for discussion at my house. The same is true, I assume, around the country. Putting aside the specifics of each case, one question that has come up is, "What would I do?" That is, if I saw what seemed to be a crime or unethical act committed by a respected colleague, coach, teacher or friend, would I storm in and stop it? Would I call the authorities immediately? Would I disregard the potentially devastating impact on my job or workplace or beloved institution? Absolutely, most of us would probably reply. I think so, others might respond. And the most honest answer? I don't know. As much as we would like to think that, put on the spot, we would do the right - and perhaps even heroic - thing, research has shown that that usually isn't true. "People are routinely more willing to be critical of others' ethics than of their own," said Francesca Gino, an associate professor at Harvard Business School, and two other authors in the journal article "See No Evil: When We Overlook Other People's Unethical Behavior." The article appeared as a chapter in the book "Social Decision Making" (Psychology Press, 2009). "People believe they are more honest and trustworthy than others and they try harder to do good." But our faith in ourselves isn't borne out by history or research, something the Times columnist David Brooks pointed out in his column this week. The most well-known example of this in academia is the experiment conducted by the Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram in the early 1960s. In the experiment, participants were "teachers" and, unbeknown to the participants, the "learner" was really an actor. The teacher was to instruct the learner in word pairs. For every wrong answer, the teacher could shock the learner, increasing the intensity of the shock for

"The new technology is, to its critics, Orwellian. Others view it as a silver bullet against terrorism that could render waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods obsolete. Some scientists predict the end of lying as we know it. Now, well before any consensus on the technology's readiness, India has become the first country to convict someone of a crime relying on evidence from this controversial machine: a brain scanner that produces images of the human mind in action and is said to reveal signs that a suspect remembers details of the crime in question. For years, scientists have peered into the brain and sought to identify deception. They have shot infrared beams through liars' heads, placed them in giant magnetic resonance imaging machines and used scanners to track their eyeballs. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States has plowed money into brain-based lie detection in the hope of producing more fruitful counterterrorism investigations. The technologies, generally regarded as promising but unproved, have yet to be widely accepted as evidence - except in India, where in recent years judges have begun to admit brain scans. But it was only in June, in a murder case in Pune, in Maharashtra State, that a judge explicitly cited a scan as proof that the suspect's brain held "experiential knowledge" about the crime that only the killer could possess, sentencing her to life in prison."

"These points are extremely well-taken, particularly his last comments about the use of brain scans as indications of the brain's functions. I'm delighted to see a scientist of Gazzaniga's stature provide these cautions. Others have also worried about the over-interpretations of brain scans, a question I raised in my Psychology Today blog posting "MRI's: The new phrenology?" How many times have you heard the expression "the brain lights up"? The brain does not behave in technicolor; it's just that the colors make for a better story when researchers are trying to sell their results to the public and funding agencies. It's important that we not over-interpret the pretty colors that brain scans provide but instead recognize that everyone's brain is a little bit different and that activity in a region doesn't signify exactly what a person is thinking or feeling. I hope that we will keep these cautions in mind even as brain scans become more and more commonplace. "