With every news story like this, I think back to my time as a federal grant funded grad student, sitting through numerous seminars and training sessions about b

With every news story like this, I think back to my time as a federal grant funded grad student, sitting through numerous seminars and training sessions about bribery, ethics, and history of ethical failures in research. The standard wasn't "avoid conflicts of interest", it was "avoid conflicts of interest and the appearance of impropriety", which is much more encompassing. It's immensely frustrating to see as much blatant "appearance of impropriety" among government officials. Gifts of tickets, gifts to supreme court justices, incredible stock market returns by members of congress and their spouses.