Reuters data scientist questioned the BLM narrative–so the company fired him

> Through a Zoom window, he comes across as rational, intelligent, and mathematically minded, if somewhat lacking in social graces.

Sometimes it's not about what you say but how you say it. I even once bought a similarly titled book for a colleague of mine that was terrible at communication.

All numbers point towards the counter productivity of police abolition, removal of standardized testing, BLM protests, 'compassionate' district attorneys, school closures, unquestioned affirmation of identities, "trust science" and dozens of similar initiatives.

Yet any criticism is met with firings, being blacklisted from industry/social media, character assassinations, and forcing these people to find refuge with the right.

From heavyweights like Rowling, Chapelle to academics like Chomsky, McWhorter and statisticians like Nate Silver. No one is spared with no space for nuance.

This is one of my uncharacteristically emotionally loaded comments on HN. I don't want HN to become a flamewarry place, so this will be a one off comment. But, it does feel a little hopeless.

> The stories framed the unrest as a “a new national reckoning about racial injustice” and described the protests as “mostly peaceful” or “largely peaceful,” despite widespread violence, looting, and crime. “More than 93% of recent demonstrations connected to Black Lives Matter were peaceful,” Reuters insisted, even as rioters caused up to $2 billion in property damage across the country.

The author is clearly trying to paint BLM as responsible for the property damage, which has been widely debunked.

It goes on and on reiterating the right-wing perspective of 2020 in an attempt to defend the data scientist.

Again, there’s probably some important conversation to be had around politics in the workplace but it’s really challenging to have a constructive conversation or debate when you plant your flag on one end of the political spectrum and tell the story from that biased reference point.

> Unfortunately, over the past few years I have grown more and more concerned about the damage that the movement is doing to many low income black communities. I have avidly followed the research on the movement and its impacts, which has led me, inexorably, to the conclusion that the claim at the heart of the movement, that police more readily shoot black people, is false and likely responsible for thousands of black people being murdered in the most disadvantaged communities in the country.

If you really care about minority communities but are not a part of that community, might want to throw us a few lines about what you’ve been doing outside of criticizing BLM to support these communities. History is filled with outsiders trying to “help” minorities and in tragically misguided ways. As any data scientist should know, communities, culture and data are complex. You can have theories, but to be so confident in something that you haven’t lived or experienced first hand raises a few flags. Naïve, but not fireable IMO.

> Unfortunately, in both our internal discussion and external coverage there seems to be a nearly absolute failure to examine the scholarly research, coming out of the most respected institutions in our country, which demonstrates the acute damage that the BLM movement is doing to many black communities, and the possibility that structural and systemic patterns in our society which have historically disenfranchised blacks are propelling the movement’s whirlwind rise.

A fireable offense. You can’t internally condemn the company you work for and expect to retain your job. The framing is harsh, judgmental and targets any employee who has participated in the coverage. It’s fine if you’re management, but as a data scientist that’s not your role. The world is more complex than the data you’re getting with can be inherently biased, underreported, etc. To think you have the correct answer based on numbers alone is pretty arrogant and not someone who I’d want on my team. It’s fine to scream “The data is showing ____”, but the lived experiences of people might be different and that’s why these conversations are complex and not as simple as 1+1=2.

> there is a substantial body of evidence establishing that members of different racial groups resist arrest at very different rates. Because the vast majority of potentially dangerous encounters happen when a suspect resists arrest, a greater rate of resisting arrest will be expected to increase the number of police shootings, even if police have absolutely no bias when deciding when to shoot.

Very narrow-sighted. Maybe groups that receive harsher sentences resist arrest more? And maybe resisting arrest shouldn’t be a lethal proposition? This is an incomplete look at a complex issue, which again posed with such conviction when a data scientist should know better is fireable IMO. I’d want my team to think a little deeper than this.

> The best explanation I can come up with for why a person (white, black or any other race) would support the BLM movement, is ignorance of even the most rudimentary facts.

Intellectually lazy. Even with the harshest view of BLM, you might assume that people join and support groups for personal / community reasons just as they do with any religion or sports team. Anyway, if you think anyone who supports BLM is dumb, you’re too biased to be in a reputable news organization IMO and firing is reasonable. Even if you don’t like BLM, think the data is clearly showing X while they’re saying Y, you can leave it at that without judging any labeling the supporters en mass.

> the BLM movement’s anti-police rhetoric and propaganda found a receptive audience

More judgement and labeling.

The article goes on, but it’s a rant and not worth debating point by point as it’s goes about 6” deep on an issue that’s close to 6’ deep. The length of the post itself is concerning, especially as others pointed out writing BLM essays on the internal message board wasn’t part of his job.

You might think his analysis is true, you might not, but at the end of the day I wouldn’t want any one of my employees posting something like this to an internal message board. It’s antagonist, judgmental, close-minded and absolutist. Not qualities I’d want in a data scientist at a news organization. Not to mention criticizing his colleagues and superiors publicly.

This wreaks of someone going out in a ball of flames rather than some innocent guy fired for having alternate beliefs.

Sorry to everyone who got excited by the title and thought the woke mob fired someone again. Turns out a data scientist went outside of his job description to publish a massive rant with poor conclusions and harsh criticism and got fired for it. As far as SJWs going too far, this one isn’t it.