Comment by sophacles | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sophacles | Hacker News Reader

The people who criticized her and fired her need to be removed from their positions and barred from working in the public sector ever again. Further any action they've taken in the name of "the public" needs to be validated by an independent group.

It's a hard-line stance I know. Anything less tho is just externalizing the damage done by these fools and their "win at all costs" mentality. It's easy to have that mentality when the "costs" to the actor are - at worst - keeping ill gotten gains and some slap on the wrist, while the real consequences are borne by people who are effectively collateral damage.

Sure I'm a crazy hippie, but the fact that this woman got a settlement does nothing to help the real problem. If anything, it makes it worse - the people are distracted by the bread and circuses of a person getting a pile of money, while the NY medical examiner's office gets to purge a person fighting for actual correctness. I'm sure her absence will make it easier for prosecutors to "win" more, since there are fewer people arguing to do silly things like trying to follow the prinicple of "prosecute the actual offender".

Before pulling out the pitchforks, I'd encourage you to investigate with more than just one article. It may very well be everything you recommend is warranted, but be aware that once reporters decide on the narrative for a story, they pull out quotes and data in a manner that specifically supports that narrative.

I know I've been burned in the past by just reading one side of the story and getting angry before understanding the entirety of what happened.

Okay, great, but if it is found to be a cut and dry case, you agree a firing and bar from public office are the correct course of action?

I think very few things are "cut and dry", but if it was indeed true that the claimed study was never done, and if the superiors knew this and lied about it, and then retaliated against this scientist for attempting to bring this fact to light, then yes, I absolutely think they should be fired. Note that "bar from public office" is not even a potential sanction in this case - the superiors are not publicly elected officials, and saying "no public government is allowed to hire you" is not a punishment that exists or is legal in the US. Depending on the level of knowledge, I'm guessing there are some criminal punishments available, but that would obviously be a very high bar in terms of determining culpability (IANAL).

IANAL, but not that high, actually, esp. if the feds want to get involved and can find a legit way. Any attorney general could be a serious problem but if the feds involved, I'd not want to be their legal rep.

I typically read both the NYT and the WSJ, and they very often agree on news stories. When I subscribed to the WSJ, I was expecting to be blown away at how the NYT was sticking me in some sort of liberal media bubble. But it turns out, they both pick the same topics and both relay the same facts.

Even the opinion columns are the same -- "I support the position of the political party to which I am aligned, no matter what. NO MATTER WHAT."

With respect to the NYT/WSJ having a similar point of view, I've heard it described as a "cosmopolitan bias". That the professional journalists are mostly college educated, live in a large city, have a sense of professional ethics, are exposed to people from a variety of backgrounds and ethnicities and all sorts of other markers of class and socio-economic background.

I grew up in a tiny rural town in Ohio where that certainly isn't the case and currently live in the suburbs of Virginia where that urban lifestyle feels very far removed.

This is less a political description and more of the urban/rural divide in viewpoint. Case in point: I've had multiple conversations with people locally who reacted with horror at the idea of taking a Lyft/Uber ("Don't do that you'll get killed.")

Yet they will ride an ATV for fun, which actually will get them killed.

"mostly college educated, live in a large city, have a sense of professional ethics, are exposed to people from a variety of backgrounds and ethnicities"

You're making "cosmopolitan bias" look good, when it's not. It's still bias. Having a better education and being exposed to more cultures than the average person does not guarantee that you won't be a closed-minded, fundamentalist, holier-than-thou jerk.

Source: country-raised metropolitan-educated journalist

It doesn't guarantee it, but it makes it more likely.

I will assert the opposite, based on decades of living in both major metros and backwater towns. Your biased comment just drives the point home.

Major metros will make you colder and slower to trust strangers, but you'll know a lot more about the world. There's simply more variance in cities. Living your life in a backwater town won't disabuse you of being trusting and friendly, but your preconceptions about the rest of the world won't be tested either.

Travel to other countries is better than either to broaden perspectives. Seeing the world from multiple points of view (sometimes literally) is the best way to eliminate bias.

I strongly disagree that metros will make you know "more about the world." They will let you know more about a specific bubble that is just as narrow as the bubble in any small town. You can travel the world and run into people who believe in exactly the same things you do and have read the same books and seen the same movies. In fact, it's hard not to.

I remember when I was a grad student, they would pair me up with a different foreign student each year. They were all cookie cutters of each other. One from Germany, one from the UK, one from Spain. They all immediately came here and complained about U.S. gun control and how the U.S. was too religious (Bible belters!) and the same tired old things that someone from Boston or NY would complain about. It got so bad I wrote down all their complaints on an index card and just handed it over when they started with their monoculture rants. It doesn't matter which nation in the west you are from, the elites form one gray goop of groupthink.

I do recommend travel, but go into the countryside or talk to people with different life values from your own, not just different stamps on their passport. Talk to a mormon. Talk to a devout Catholic. Talk to a rural minority from China. Talk to someone without a college degree from Spain. Go visit the a traditional village in Japan. Hang out with the cabbies in Holland who play chess all the time. There you will see diversity. Flying from Paris to London to Berlin and visiting hip coffee shops or tech seminars -- you might as well just stay in San Francisco and go out to a bar.

I agree that there's a cosmopolitan bias, but I'm extremely skeptical of the claim that journalists writ large are motivated by a sense of professional ethics and are exposed to people from a variety of backgrounds.

I don't think I saw a single journalist apologize for pushing the Trump/Russia misinformation, the NYT and WASHPO haven't given back their pulitzer for reporting on it, what's most telling is that after the report dropped, the journalists pivoted to impeachment - it's clear the Russia angle was more about having a stick to beat the dog than anything else.

Additionally, I think people in cosmopolitan areas are probably more ignorant about life in rural areas than vice versa. This is a pretty partisan source, but look how some journalists reacted when asked if they knew anyone who owned a pick up truck (one of the most common vehicles in America): https://www.dailywire.com/news/12138/journalists-lose-it-aft...

I'm sure journalists have 'diverse' friends/social circles, but I'd wager that they're all in agreement w.r.t culture war topics - how diverse is that really?

LOL. The NYT opinion page is likely less liberal than the WSJ, they're just disguised better. At least the WSJ is fairly upfront where they stand.

If you actually want opposite views, maybe step away from the NYT.

From a social perspective the WSJ and NYT have pushed similar narratives in the past. Eg the pewdiepie thing.

They stated they had proven this controversial technique worked, then it came out it was never tested. That seems pretty clear cut to me.

People always make claims like "oh, innocent until proven guilty!", "Let's just wait for the evidence!'.

But apparently we are here right now, where the state was proven guilty, and they paid a million dollars to someone for their crimes, and the evidence does show that something bad happened, and yet people are still ignoring the evidence.

Yeah, no. They paid a million dollars to someone. That is good enough evidence for me to condemn them.

> But apparently we are here right now, where the state was proven guilty

You just posted something that is completely false. The state settled a lawsuit. Large organizations settle lawsuits all the time because the cost of litigation can be huge even if the organization wins.

Even your leading statement that "People always make claims like "Let's just wait for the evidence!"??? Please, we should only be so lucky.

A million dollars is a million dollars.

In the court of public opinion, I can judge them guilty.

It is impossible to hold people accountable otherwise, because they will always just settle and escape the political consequences.

I have been following this case for some time in various sources, and there is essentially no way to spin this as other than a determined and long-running attempt to pervert justice. Deliberately falsely imprisoning someone is the moral equivalent of kidnapping in my book.

Prison is worse than kidnapping, when you are kidnapped you can grab to the hope someone (the cops?) will rescue you soon, when the state does it that hope is non-existent.

You're also allowed to defend yourself when kidnapped. No such thing when the state does it.

Which should be the other way around... :-(

Are you saying you should not be allowed to defend yourself if you are kidnapped by an entity that is not the state?

Do you have any other sources you can post? In particular, the article mentions how the OCME claimed they had done studies on the reliability of this DNA technique, but in fact hadn't.

If that turned out to be a complete, bald-faced lie, I would expect that there would be an independent investigation and, if those statements were made in an official capacity, that someone would be in legal jeopardy.

Before pulling out the pitchforks,

And yet -- Occam's Razor, and lengthy enough observation about how things operate in various city agencies in NYC prudently suggests:

At the very least, do keep those pitchforks ready at your side - and freshly sharpened.

I absolutely agree. I think we need laws that hold those working in the public sector to extremely high standards, and moreover we need laws that allow private individuals and groups to take action (incl. lawsuits) against corrupt agencies and officials, and have changes in the agency enforced upon it by the courts, and corrupt individuals fired and subject to punishment.

> I'm sure her absence will make it easier for prosecutors

The whole police and prosecution system is need of major reform. Most importantly, eliminate rewards for catching offenders and putting them in jail -- instead: (1) ensure job security, while (2) awarding the lack of crime / low crime rates. At the same time, the agency that crimes are reported to is separate and independent, so that there is no incentive to not record crimes / under-report.

> The city and the Office of Chief Medical Examiner said Monday that the settlement did not mean that Ms. Stajic was treated inappropriately. In pretrial papers, its directors had argued that there had been some unrelated concerns over how she managed her laboratory.

I suspect that parallel construction is very common in situations where management wants someone fired for illegal reasons.

I think I'd need to see the results of an independent investigation before reaching any conclusions in this case.

I've seen it happen both ways (at least I think it was) where someone with a legit problem claimed they were fired for X when ... naw man you really were terrible at Y.

At the same time I've kinda suspected about situations where someone was let go that the "reasons" appeared after another situation occurred and that made me wonder.

Really hard to know. I agree an outside investigation would really be the only route to try to find out.

I reported my boss to HR based on his inappropriate behavior (with other employees at the company). I was put into the next round of layoffs. Needless to say I don't trust HR anymore.

If you are ever in a situation where you feel as though you need to report something to HR, hire an attorney and have them do it for you.

If you feel like that would be overkill, don't report anything to HR. They don't work for you; they are not on your side; they will never be on your side.

If it is an issue that could be criminal, hire an attorney and have them tell the cops, without letting HR know about it first. Internal whistleblower programs are probably a trap.

In short, nobody should trust HR, ever, except the board and CEO.

> They don't work for you; they are not on your side; they will never be on your side.

But they're not on the manager's side either. What rational HR department would want to keep a manager who makes their subordinates feel unsafe, work ineffectively, etc?

Basically every single one. Best recent example is probably the shit Uber got into a few years back.

An HR department whose mandate is to limit legal damage to the company at the lowest possible cost. That is to say, all of them. Unfortunately, it's usually easier and less legally dangerous to push a low level employee who has a grievance than it is to terminate a higher-level one who's misbehaving.

That is a high risk strategy.

Sure, it might work most of the time. But the one time it doesn't work, could cause billions of dollars in damages.

Just look at what happened to Uber after they retaliated against the wrong "low level" employee.

> What rational HR department would want to keep a manager who makes their subordinates feel unsafe, work ineffectively, etc.?

Any of them, because:

(1) The manager is more likely to know their legal rights,

(2) The manager is more likely to be able to afford the cost of litigation in a dispute,

(3) The manager is more likely to have a contract beyond at-will employment,

(4) Determining whether the manager is a problem or the employee is malingering has a cost, plus risks creating evidence of corporate liability

Etc.

Except in the most clear and egregious cases, HR is naturally aligned with management against the human resources that management manages; that's kind of the point of HR, whose function is to assist management in efficiently (i.e., at minimum cost per unit value produced) managing those the human resources.

HR is not a neutral referee; the closest there is to that is government labor relations authorities.

HR doesn’t see it that way; they only see current situation: the immediate two-person conflict between employee and manager. In this isolated case, it’s always less politically risky to stand with the manager against the lowly employee. Now copy and repeat this process for every single subsequent case, even against the same manager; it’s always less politically risky in each isolated case to rule against the employee. This is therefore a sufficient explanation for why the HR department behaves like it does.

I don't think a lot of people realize that HR is never there to defend you--its sole purpose is protect the company from legal liability.

Abusive managers are a significant legal liability. In what way are the people who report them a liability?

> In what way are the people who report them a liability?

Because they reported them. The rest of the employees are not reporting anything, and are therefore not a problem for HR to be dealt with. The conflict is between the reporting employee and the manager, who has more political capital. Therefore, HR sides with the manager to minimize risks to itself.

If you have an abusive manager, the best thing you can do is find out if the behavior is illegal, and change jobs. You could hire an attorney to see if any laws were broken, and if they were, likely receive some respite through the legal system. If the behavior was not illegal, there's not much else that you can really do. A few rare companies might have systems in place that rectify the behavior of abusive managers, but that's probably incredibly rare. HR is never there to help you. It's likely best to keep them out of the loop in all these matters.

Is this an undefeatable weapon? It seems governments and bosses have "7 things they can hang you for" against anybody. Or Malicious Compliance wouldn't be a working striking strategy. What could go wrong with:

1. Accuser must provide evidence that deviations indicate worst case behaviour, not normal procedure, after researching similar staff members 2. No suing for deviations and law violations known by bosses 3. Prevent counter suing and prioritizing the suit of less powerful

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