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Comment by ceejayoz | Hacker News Reader

Reminds me of a case in healthcare, where a hospital found genuine apologies were way more effective than stonewalling to try and avoid liability.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/saying-sorry-pays...

> When a treatment goes wrong at a U.S. hospital, fear of a lawsuit usually means “never daring to say you’re sorry.”

> That’s not the way it works at the University of Michigan Health System, where lawyers and doctors say admitting mistakes up front and offering compensation before being sued have brought about remarkable savings in money, time and feelings.

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Joel Spolsky wrote about this roughly 20 years ago on JoelOnSoftware. IIRC, he hired a locksmith to copy a key and the key didn't work. After the third (and likely final, because of how irritated he was getting) try going back to the shop, the locksmith took a closer look at it and said, "I'm sorry, I see where I went wrong." Instantly, situation defused from major annoyance to "OK, this guy just made a mistake, I'll try it again."

The problem in the US: Accepting guilt may open you to gross negligence with can incur triple damages. As a result most bog standard legal advice in US tells companies to never admit fault when sued. It would be nice to carve out some kind of exception a genuine apology.

But they have to be genuine, not "We found the button to press to get the best result."

Plenty of people can fake genuineness. It doesn't have to be genuine to be effective, it just has to be well received.

Once a sufficient number of people have peed in the pool the strategy fails to work: this physician is incompetent and dug in, that physician is incompetent and dug in, another physician who is incompetent and refuses to own up, and here's one who is incompetent and pretends to be sorry.

In many Islamic justice systems, there is an option for the offender to pay money to the victim to reduce penalty. I think there are many cases where this could work in a non-Islamic culture, but many people are afraid that "rich people can buy their way out of trouble". There is some truth to it, but the victim may feel the outcome is better after payment.

This book - https://www.amazon.com/Sorry-Case-Good-Apologies/dp/19821634... - has an entire chapter dedicated to this.

There was also a Radiolab episode that discussed this idea at a different hospital...

https://radiolab.org/podcast/apologetical-2303

Hmm yeah but the US legal system is kinda out of control with ridiculous claims and damages granted. If you're going to bankrupt a doctor, it becomes much harder for them to tell the truth.

Can you substantiate this claim?

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