One of the many great people I’ve met volunteering was a man who was in charge of mixing natural medicines for a free/low-cost clinic in India. He did the job well and for minimal pay; he was also a good guy and helped me out on a couple of occasions.

The organization that ran the clinic regularly sent out a newsletter to its supporters, many of whom were from outside India. In one edition of the newsletter, there was a picture of this man – let’s call him Charles – hard at work dealing with medicines. The problem was that he was wearing jeans and a less than fresh-looking t-shirt; some of the staff working abroad thought the supporters would think the process was “dirty” because he wasn’t in their view properly attired.

So someone used Photoshop to make it appear that Charles was wearing a lab coat.

Plenty of staff were opposed to this and presumably it was the person with the final say on the newsletter who was in favor of adding the lab coat. People do have a lot of stereotypes about the way things are in other countries, and he might very well have been right that people would have seen it as wrong and possibly even unprofessional to not wear a lab coat. Would it be alright to lose funding because Charles didn’t wear a lab coat? Is this something a for-profit business would refuse to do on ethical grounds? In both cases I think the answer is no.

Mostly, this is a humorous anecdote. I don’t think there is much to debate about whether it was okay or not to use Photoshop to give someone a lab coat. That’s essentially dishonest. But it makes me wonder where the line is. Clearly, it’s important for organizations that rely on the generosity of individuals to be straightforward about things…would it have been more truthful to just not show the photo, or to get Charles to pose wearing a lab coat? I think there are always judgment calls made in areas like this, and my point is not to justify manipulating a photo electronically – but just to point out that things are often not as open and shut as they seem.