Ethics
A growing number of experienced storm chasers advocate the adoption of a code of ethics in storm chasing featuring safety, courtesy, and objectivity as the backbone. Storm chasing is a highly visible recreational activity (which is also associated with science) that is vulnerable to sensationalist media promotion. Veteran storm chasers Chuck Doswell and Roger Edwards have deemed reckless storm chasers as "yahoos". Doswell and Edwards believe poor chasing ethics at TV news stations add to the growth of "yahoo" storm chasing. Edwards and Rich Thompson, among others, also expressed concern about pernicious effects of media profiteering with Matt Crowther, among others, agreeing in principle but viewing sales as not inherently corrupting. Self-policing is seen as the means to mold the hobby. There is occasional discussion among chasers that at some point regulation may be adopted due to increasing numbers of chasers and poor behavior by some, however, many chasers do not expect this eventuality and almost all are against it, as are some formal studies of dangerous leisure activities which advocate deliberative self-policing.
As there is for storm chaser conduct, there is concern about chaser responsibility. Since some chasers are trained in first aid and even first responder procedures, it is not uncommon for tornado chasers to be first responders, tending to storm victims or treating injuries at the site of a disaster in advance of emergency personnel and other outside aid. Jason Persoff, M.D., a physician and storm chaser, ended his chase to treat victims of the 2011 Joplin tornado and has provided first response and mass-casualty incident triage suggestions to chasers.
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Famous quotes containing the word ethics:
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“If you take away ideology, you are left with a case by case ethics which in practise ends up as me first, me only, and in rampant greed.”
—Richard Nelson (b. 1950)
“Indeed the involuntary character of psychiatric treatment is at odds with the spirit and ethics of medicine itself.”
—Kate Millett (b. 1934)