Bad apples excuse

A bad apples excuse or few bad apples excuse is a rhetorical attempt to spin misdeeds within a group as isolated to a "few bad apples". cite web
title = The “few bad apples” alibi in business, military and political crimes
url = http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_871.shtml
author = Ben Tanosborn
publisher = Online Journal
dateaccessed = 2007-12-24 ] cite web
title = Leadership, Diversity and Nationalism
url = http://www.leadership2004.ca/french/2004/speech_igantieff.cfm
author = Dr. Michael Ignatieff, Director, Carr Center for Human Rights
dateaccessed = 2007-12-24 ] The term has been applied to excuses for corporate fraud in the wake of the Enron scandal cite web
title = Olsztynski Editorial: When No One's Watching
author = Jim Olsztynski
publisher = Supply House Times
url = http://www.supplyht.com/CDA/Archives/7bcad4d2913a8010VgnVCM100000f932a8c0____
dateaccessed = 2007-12-24 ] , for the Abu Ghraib torture and prison abuse casecite web
title = Abu Ghraib, Whitewashed
url = http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E00EEDA173DF937A15754C0A9629C8B63
publisher = The New York Times
date accessed = 2007-12-24 ] cite web
title = A faith-based case against torture
url = http://www.thestar.com/News/Ideas/article/268773
author = Stephen Scharper
publisher = Toronto Star
dateaccessed = 2007-12-24 ] , the Chicago Police Department's response to off-duty officer Anthony Abatte's videotaped beating of a bartendercite web
title = More than a few bad apples in Chicago Police Department
author = Richard Muhammad
Publisher = Chicago Defender
url = http://www.chicagodefender.com/page/editorial.cfm?ArticleID=9153
dateaccessed = 2007-12-24 ] and in a hypothetical sense involving projections about organizational accountability.cite web
title = Who's Stopped? Who's Frisked?
author = Aubrey Fox
publisher = Gotham Gazette
url = http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/crime/20071217/4/2382
dateaccessed = 2007-12-24 ] The term became popular soon after the airing of a Canadian broadcast from the CBC's Fifth Estate television series called "A Few Bad Apples". [ [http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/badapples/ CBC News: the fifth estate - A Few Bad Apples ] ] According to Michael Ignatieff, "The Few Bad Apples excuse is institutions' invariable first response to moral failure and it’s the wrong response."

"see also: Ulster Defence Regiment, Moazzam Begg, Stanford prison experiment, The Corporation and cover up"

Quotations

*"So then I started hearing about different things, I started hearing about the seven bad apples analogy, so I went to Congress. I said, 'I'll either go to the media or you all will listen.' And Congress was very anxious to listen." - Ken Davis, from "A Few Bad Apples" (31:39)Dont be a bad apple!

*"In Iraq, what happened at that prison, it is now clear, is not the result of random acts of a few bad apples. It was the natural consequence of the Bush Administration policy." - Al Gore [ [http://www.moveonpac.org/goreremarks052604.html MoveOn PAC ] ]

*"Is it fair to be suspicious of an entire profession because of a few bad apples? There are at least two important differences, it seems to me. First, no one doubts that science actually works, whatever mistaken and fraudulent claim may from time to time be offered. But whether there are *any* "miraculous" cures from faith-healing, beyond the body's own ability to cure itself, is very much at issue. Secondly, the exposé of fraud and error in science is made almost exclusively by science. But the exposure of fraud and error in faith-healing is almost never done by other faith-healers." - Carl Sagan, "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark"

*"I think most Americans understood that the My Lai massacre was not representative of our people, of the war we were fighting, or of our men who were fighting it; but from the time it first became public the whole tragic episode was used by the media and the antiwar forces to chip away at our efforts to build public support for our Vietnam objectives and policies." - Richard M. Nixon

*"Anyone who has declared someone else to be an idiot, a bad apple, is annoyed when it turns out in the end that he isn’t." - Friedrich Nietzsche [ [http://www.bartleby.com/66/27/41827.html 41827. Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Columbia World of Quotations. 1996 ] ]

*"For there is no good tree which produces corrupt fruit, nor a corrupt tree which produces good fruit." - attributed to Jesuscite
author = Luke the Evangelist
title = Luke [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=49&chapter=6&verse=43&version=16&context=verse 6:43]
date = 1890
publisher = Darby Translation ]

*"One bad apple spoils the bunch" (proverb)

References

"bad apples are like mean beans"