Some Paradoxes of Whistle-Blowing

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 standard theory of whistle-blowing. The second argues that the standard theory is paradoxical, that it is inconsistent with what we know about whistle-blowers. The third part sketches what seems to me a less paradoxical theory of whistle-blowing. The fourth tests the new theory against one classic case of whistleblowing, Roger Boisjoly's testimony before the presidential commission investigating the Challenger disaster ("the Rogers Commission"). I use that case because the chief facts are both uncontroversial enough and well known enough to make detailed exposition unnecessary. For the same reason, I also use that case to illustrate various claims about whistleblowing throughout the paper.