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.
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.")
"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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Or just subtract one karma from the person doing the down-voting as well so people only down-vote when it's "really" worth it. Prolific down-voters would float around the down-vote karma threshold and basically be rate limited by the number of upvotes they get.
That rate limiting idea sounds very good in principle.
Unfortunately it would make the part about karma that's already slightly broken IMO into a major breakage: You have to write scores of reasonably popular comments to collect as much good karma as a single successful submission tends to give. That's on top of commenting tending to be more work than submitting. I've spent as much as half an hour of research on some comments, just to make sure I've got the details straight.
I was talking about HN users figuring out who is downvoting. Of course HN has it in its own database, but I don't think that bit of information is publicly exposed.
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 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?
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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
So the city claimed that a study had been done but refused to release it. When pressed to release it, they fired those involved. How is this not career ending for anyone who knew the study didn't exist but claimed it did?
Look up a book called Encyclopedia of Ethical Failure
It's produced by the Federal Government as a way to show people the 'grave consequences' of misbehaving as a government employee.
I'm not a government employee, but it was recommended to me and it floored me. The amount of shit you can get away with if you are a government employee is mind boggling.
I think this book should be read by every school child so they know the type of double standard and corruption that is rampant in government.
> I think this book should be read by every school child so they know the type of double standard and corruption that is rampant in government.
As anyone who has ever spent any time working in a private sector job knows, corruption and double standards are the status quo in life.
Unlike with the government, you rarely have any recourse when your manager, your director, your landlord, your bank, your utility, your grocery store, your accounting firm, or any of the other organizations that have power over you succumb to it.
(You can sue them, but you can also sue the government.)
Damn straight. Thirty years of moving things out of government because of perceived inefficiency has put us in a place where our lives are governed by systems which are both inefficient and unaccountable, or - worse - efficient at the /wrong things/ and unaccountable.
Because an overwhelming majority of threads like this, someone will use government corruption as the excuse to get up on their soapbox and proclaim that's why government is evil. They'll rattle on about how private enterprise isn't evil at all, and when you point out things they do wrong, they'll shout "regulatory capture!" like it's some bogeyman that keeps the unregulated, free market from creating the utopia that only unrestricted capitalism can.
They're not contradicting you. They're heading off the hyper-libertarians who think the laissez-faire free market will magically solve all problems and lead us Moses-like to some divine land of milk and honey, because somehow the market can solve all problems of corruption, information control, labor vs capital stress, etc. These people haven't read where Adam Smith argued for government regulation, or how unrestrained, unregulated capitalism was already tried in the 19th century and it failed with horrific results and widespread human casualties on an unimaginable scale.
I 100% understand where you are coming from. Maybe there is a better way to interject this reminder?
It was posted in a way that seems like a rebuttal. It's also off topic to the point being made. Or maybe make your own comment on the main article? I don't know. Just feels out of place.
Like when someone is talking about the issues with private sector and someone randomly starts talking bad about the public... it doesn't really help IMO. We need to be able to address things without a 'whataboutism'.
Leniency given government employees that is not given to private sector?
There are certainly old boy networks and corruption in both, but I think your not aware of how serious some of the punishments in the "Encyclopedia of Ethical Lapses" are to an individual.
This looks like a military publication, a letter in your personal file can be career ending and force you out early with no retirement.
Oh the horrors of getting a letter when you were taking bribery and extortion.
Poor poor people. They have a it tough. Not like I... what happens to me if I engage in extortion again?
Do I too get a 'horrible career ending letter'?
No! Then it must be easy.
It's not like my career would be over after I get out of jail with a criminal record. That's right. Civilian misbehaving has no consequences. Not like that letter. That letter is the hard core stuff of nightmares. Not like easy options like jail and massive fines.
You've posted a lot of flamewar-style comments to HN. It also looks like you might be using HN primarily for ideological battle. Those things are against the site guidelines; would you mind reviewing them? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
This is important, because the hope is for HN to be a place of intellectual curiosity and thoughtful conversation. Those are fragile things which flamewars and ideological battle quickly kill. Special measures are needed to prevent reversion to the internet mean, which people (hopefully) come here to escape from.
You might also find these links helpful for getting the spirit of this site:
You are right. I was inflammatory and that wasn't right.
I'm not the least bit ideological though, I'm a complete pragmatist.
I apologize for the combative attitude. I guess I am ideological in the fact that I believe emotionally driven decision making is flawed. There is no real evidence that so called rational though leads to better outcomes. Even though I feel that, and ironically feel strongly against emotionally driven issues, as I feel such perspectives are damaging to improving things.
Your comment makes me realize that by "ideological battle" we mean something a bit broader than battling for a fixed ideological position. It also covers combativeness about ideologically charged topics. If you'd avoid doing that, and post rather out of curiosity and thoughtfulness, we'd be most grateful.
Did you read the book? Bribery and extortion are not "letter in your file" offenses. The book doesn't specify the punishment everyone received, but letter in your file was for things like improperly submitting receipts for travel, or hiring a buddies son-in-law.
Prison or at least standard white-collar prosecution was doled out for bribery and extortion.
The extortion was listed as 'cohersion'. Bribery was listed as such, no prison sentence or fine even. On my kindle it is Loc 76 and 84 of 3214. Taken from the "Encyclopedia of Ethical Failure - Revised September 2016: An Anthology of Unethical Conduct in the US Government."
Since you first denied that government employees were treated different than private business, and then stated that my examples didn't exist... maybe it's time to reconsider why the defensive position against something that is so clearly factual?
P.s. stating that there are negative consequences for government employee behavior doesn't address the assertion that there is a double standard and one is treated more leniently than another. I know government employees go to jail. That's not new. The difference in LENIENCY is what's at issue here.
I’m skeptical you’ve ever worked in the private sector. I’ve talked about my experience in government in another comment, but as example of private sector corruption, I used to work at what’s known as a food brokerage which handles getting food stocked on grocery store shelves. Something you wouldn’t think on the face of it would be naturally corrupt, but bribery and kickbacks and cheating were rampant and merely winked at. People faked numbers, faked photos of displays, bribed managers and store employees, faked time sheets. It was far worse than anything I’ve seen in government.
Wow, I'm truly shocked at how many comments try to argue one point with something totally unrelated.
My comment, which you are answering, says:
Government employees, when caught in wrongdoing, are very leniently punished.
I never talked about where there is more corruption. Whether government is good or bad. Or any of the other topics being braught up.
Your example has literally zero to do with the point you are literally answering to.
Can I ask what emotional feelings you had for this response?
I mean, the way I see it, is if I post something that paints the government in a bad light, people talk about the need for government and how it isn't that bad.
Literally, if people had any patriotic bone in them, criticizing specific issues withing the gov (like accountability) is important. Talking past the points in a sophist defense is... absurd.
There's currently a powerful, and fairly successful political movement to move much of the power governments have over their citizenry into the hands of private corporations. I don't know what your position on this question is, or even if you have one, but it is meaningful context to include in discussion of this.
Corruption and double-standards inside the government are often cited as a reason for this transfer of power.
I note that when corruption and double-standards happen inside private corporations that have power over them, citizens have even less recourse then they do when it happens inside governments.
The campaign exists. I agree. It is horrible. I agree. But that shouldn't prevent rational adults from holding rational conversations.
Bring up non-sequiturs just because I said something that reflects badly on government is not a reason to bring up a non-sequitur.
It's like people who think drugs are bad.
Sure they are sometimes.
But that doesn't mean we can't have a rational discussion about what to do about it. And repeating 'drugs are bad' when people talk about drug reform is harmful to everyone involved. It answers nothing and creates an unnecessary divide. There are practical options that can be discussed instead of theory.
If people behave in an emotional manner not directly answering each other but rather giving off remarks based on feelings... it breaks down communication.
Instead of talking about 'what to do' people bring up theoretical points of good vs bad.
My point was reasonable. Please try to address reasonable points directly... basically engage in dialectics instead of sophism. I'm shocked at having to explain this on hacker news.
I actually feel that is the problem with US politics. People talk to the talking point, not to people's points. Everyone is busy answering the theory questions being brought up on the TV... not the specific instances of individual questions. If I talk to a conservative, since I don't always agree, they think I'm a liberal and talk against liberal points of view which I don't have, and many times which if they actually listened, they would know I don't have. If I talk with a liberal, since I don't always agree, they think I'm a conservative and talk against conservative points of view. No one talks about their point of view and mine as a stand alone argument. In the end, this is pure sophism. It's the desire to beat the other side, not find the truth (dialectics)
Perspective. This is what I feel the book was trying to tell government employees:
'This is a great job. You will move up and never get fired, just don't do anything too bad or we will whip you with a wet noodle... it will be oh so horribly humiliating... you might even get a suspension (read paid vacation) or worse'
Here's how I was reading it:
'oh my god, if I did that as a small business owner I would be jailed, sued and have a criminal record... my business assets would be frozen, I'd possibly be charged with money laundering or wire fraud or some other vague laws... what do you mean 'possible suspension' for government employees doing that?
Having worked for the federal government as an employee and a contractor, my experience is that while there are certainly people leaning on their shovels all day collecting a paycheck for doing almost nothing, the vast, vast majority of people are ethical and honest and trying to do the right thing.
Well, I posted a fact: leniency toward government official misbehavior.
empath75 posted a fact in a reply to my fact: most government employees are good.
The fact doesn't contradict mine directly, but it came across as a rebuttal.
There's a pattern to this type of answers. It's 'throwing true facts out there that sort of contradict a point without having to actually address the point being made, and if anyone takes the bait, you can always say there was never any contradiction being made, it was just a statement of facts'.
So I did the same. I posted a totally true fact that sort of rebuts the point without having to address the point being brought up.
I prefer a point-counter point types of conversation.
Edit: I don't think civil servants are like drug dealers.
Example 1: Military captain gives contracts to companies which he is 'affiliated' with in addition to getting direct kick back commissions from them.
After investigation, he was 'forced into retirement'. So basically he accepted bribery (which I'm sure he didn't classify correctly on his bank statements, meaning money laundering and wire fraud) and didn't have to pay anything back, didn't get charged with anything and kept his career. His 'punishment' is having to continue to get paid... while keeping the money.
Example 2: Naval director extorts money from subordinates: he faced a single 'letter of counseling' telling him his failures. He didn't pay back the money he received and faced no financial, career or other punishments. And that is AFTER being caught.
And to be clear, these two examples are taken from a document produced by the US Government to warn employees of the dangers of misbehaving. Imagine the cases they felt were too lenient to include in the book!
(EDIT)
page 5:
5brother-in-law as contractors. Colonel 2 even attempted to get his own son hired as a contractor, but Colonel 2’s supervisor correctly thought it would be inappropriate. Each colonel was issued a letter of caution to avoid an appearance of a conflictand they were required to take an annual ethics training course. Chief AuthorityA military service Chief Master Sergeant abused her authority and improperly used a government vehicle when she employed a government vehicle and three non-commissioned officers under her supervision to move personal property in a government rental vehicle. The soldiers helped her for 3 hours. The Chief Master Sergeant was given a verbal warning and advised of the improper use of government vehicles and the abuse of authority. Abuse of Position and BriberyA military service Captain used his official position as a reservist to obtain contracts for private sector companies with which he had an affiliation. In addition, the Captain accepted a “finder’s fee” (i.e., kickbacks) from one company for his efforts in helping thecompany obtain government contract work. For his significant ethical failure, the Captain was “allowed” to retire at the grade of Commander, though he had been selected to be an Admiral. In addition, the Captain was debarred for one year, while two of the affiliated companies entered into administrative agreements (for 3 years) with the military service.
-- what's the pay difference between commander and admiral? This looks like a standard white collar slap on the wrist.
Your statement: 'standard white collar slap on the wrist' is so self evidently disconnected from an objective reality... that all I can state is I wish you well in your subjective reality.
I truly wonder though what leads a person to believe that corporate employees getting caught in bribery and kick backs leads to them 'getting demoted'. It's a 'standard' story of a 'slap on the wrist'. Yeah, because courts order that all the time: this executive bribed the government? He will now be a junior executive. So has the court commanded... I don't even know how this could be a thing someone could imagine... to me it's hilarious. It's so evidently false.
I'm also totally shocked at how some people will deny something, and when proven wrong, they pick at the proof by trying to diminish it without challenging it or acknowledging that they had the oposite view just a minute ago.
It's like there is a percentage of the population incapable of admitting being in the wrong.
Again, pure sophism. You could say the same about government employee misconduct. It has no factual basis, it's just a generic statement designed to not address the topic while seeming to contradict the point.
Talk equal to equal.
The example provided is what happens to government officials when they are caught AND punished. I the frequency of getting caught was never mentioned, it's something you brought up.
The topic here is leniency.
Do you really think a small demotion within a company is the reaction of the legal team of say, facebook, to such things?
I mean imagine the Director of Marketing getting kick backs from companies he recommends to the board. And when caught, he is not fired, doesn't have to pay back anything and only suffers a 30% paycut.
It is my understanding that when a large corporation has an officer unjust enriching himself by securing kick backs from companies, they engage in a civil lawsuit.
This would result in an amount considerably larger than the amount received from enrichment being placed in judgement against a defendant.
It would also create a discovery process which would basically mean a made case for a DA, who may and likely will prosecute. A first time offender will likely have minimal if any jail, but they would have a criminal record.
The employee in question would undoubtedly lose his job and all benefits.
How could you compare these two?
The fact that white collar crime is unjustly lenient vs street crime has no bearing on the unjust lenience of private vs public sector employee misconduct. This reddit style 'whatabboutism' is really tiring.
So you've got a book that's convinced you that it's easy to be unethical and not get punished for it in government positions. My point is that corruption and nepotism are not a "government" problem so much as a "human institutions" problem.
Whether you believe it's a human problem or a government problem has major implications for policy response: Do you reduce government function, or try to install better safeguards? My position is that it's definitely not just a government problem, and that 30 years of responding as though it WERE just a government problem has in fact just hidden the issues in the (far more opaque) private sector.
I interpret "Whattaboutism" as an argument that it's OK for Group A to engage in an unethical action because Group B does as well (perhaps even while overlooking differences of scale or context). This is not my point, nor is it a position I condone.
> My position is that it's definitely not just a government problem
Sure. But no one said anything to the contrary.
I said:
Government employees get unjust leniency compared to private enterprise when caught in unethical behavior. I then gave an example to back up my claim (with examples and high trust references)
You posted, and continue to post:
"But WHAT ABOUT private sector misheavior, private sector does bad too!"
And:
"But WHAT ABOUT the good government employees, most are good"
"But WHAT ABOUT the privatization of things that are going wrong"
Which are excellent statements to be made on their own. I actually happen to agree with you, I dislike a lot of privatization that is happening. But they are a poor reply to a point that doesn't mention anything about private vs public.
Whataboutism has the following pattern:
Person 1 posts a fact: leniency toward government official misbehavior.
Person 2 posts a fact: private enterprise is less transparent than government enterprise.
The fact doesn't contradict the first directly, but it came across as a rebuttal.
It's throwing true facts out there that sort of contradict a point without having to actually address the point being made or take a stance or define a clear point which could then receive a counterpoint.
A counter point to be made could be: Well, I believe government employee misconduct is more easily spotted and therefore a lenient treatment might be justified.
See? That's an actual counter point. I can then say: 'Well, let's look at the statistics of corruption in each and convictions and we can prove the point one way or another'.
But what you posted... can never be answered in a way that furthers the finding of the truth. It is 'anti government people' vs 'pro government people'. It's tribalistic, many people here seem to have placed me in the anti government field because I posted 1 thing that reflects badly on public servants.
I'm neither pro gov nor anti gov and I'd appreciate it both parties could find a place to battle it out that wasn't my point, which neither supports nor disproves either side. My point is that this (unjust sector leniency) is an issue and it should be more widely known. You are welcome to answer with a counter point. I'm pro-dialectics and will change my mind if given good points with proper references or logical constructs.
Notice his 'loss' isn't even a demotion. It's just the negation of a promotion.
I'll re-post the text as the egrecious stuff was mixed in with other non egregious stuff by pnutjam, who stated this case is 'standard for white collar crime' in private enterprise:
>> Abuse of Position and BriberyA military service Captain used his official position as a reservist to obtain contracts for private sector companies with which he had an affiliation. In addition, the Captain accepted a “finder’s fee” (i.e., kickbacks) from one company for his efforts in helping the company obtain government contract work. For his significant ethical failure, the Captain was “allowed” to retire at the grade of Commander, though he had been selected to be an Admiral.
No fees. No restitution. No jail. No charges even.
He had to endure the 'horrors' of retirement with full benefits. Though he was 'severely punish' with not getting his promotion.
Maybe she wanted to uncover rampant corruption, knew they'll fire her for this and guessed they'll try to settle for a high amount, because what they're trying to cover up is huge. She's 69, $1M is quite a good get out of this hornet nest ticket and this is unlikely to end here. Lawsuits from people wrongfully convicted based on DNA evidence will likely follow.
> a novel form of DNA testing being used in criminal cases
I feel like any "novel form of" really shouldn't be evidence until it's proven.
Granted I also recognize how courts really struggle understanding the magical world of what science is proven and what isn't.
I do worry that it's up to each defendant to effectively fight these fights that are big topics and would be crazy expensive to "disprove" something the government says is proven, but isn't.
Sadly that is where judges should be stepping in but the barn doors were left open so who gets to be the first to say "you can't use fingerprints that 'match' because your noob deputy thinks they kinda look alike..."?
In my experience at least with lawyers (don't know any judges), I wouldn't trust them with that sort of thing any more than anyone else. They're hyper concerned with convincing arguments, to the point where they often fail to make the distinction between something that is actually true and something that seems like it should be true. They know plenty about law and the sort of reasoning that makes the interpretation of law consistent. But it doesn't seem like they're in a position to understand scientific evidence better than your average joe. Like, programmers and folks on hacker news are great at computers and sometimes math and engineering. But I'm not sure I want hacker news giving me dating advice or gardening advice. That's not really in their wheelhouse. Unless you had specialty judges who only did something like determine the validity of certain kinds of evidence who didn't have to have the same skill set as other judges, I don't see it as being much of an improvement.
> Granted I also recognize how courts really struggle understanding the magical world of what science is proven and what isn't.
I don't understand how. Aren't you suppose to study logic to be a a judge ? Surely laws and argumentation are a central topic, and they all require a brain. How somebody unable to understand simple concept like probabilities can be judge ?
> How somebody unable to understand simple concept like probabilities can be judge?
How many smart people struggle with the Monty Hall problem? It's a fairly simple probability problem, overall, but it is very much unintuitive (mostly a matter of the difficulty of setting up the problem in the first place). Most people aren't very strong in mathematics, and even most scientists struggle to apply statistics correctly (see the commentary around the fMRI of a dead fish for an example). It's not surprising that judges and juries are going to have these same struggles.
Ones that aren't elected are appointed. Typically they're appointed because they're related or friends with the elected officials doing the appointing (My dad is a court officer in NY state - he's seen over and over again that nepotism is absolutely the norm and not the exception for all appointed positions). Any merit judges have compared to a baseline lawyer is basically accidental.
I feel like citing that it's just nepotism is not entirely accurate.
Judges are lawyers, but the approval process and performance of judges who are willing to follow the rule of law and rule in ways that aren't simply in line with "nepotism" is significant.
Even existing supreme court justices appointed have not taken actions that the folks who appointed / approved them might wish... that's a good thing.
> Typically they're appointed because they're related or friends with the elected officials doing the appointing
I don't think that's completely accurate. It's very much party politics at the local level. Party hacks are rewarded. (Which may look like friends and family, but party discipline is highly enforced AFAIK)
you still need to have at least a JD from an ABA-accredited school and admission to the state bar. There are some corner cases where this isn't true, but they're for misdemeanors and defendants have the right to have a Real Judge review their case.
Logic isn't the hard part, it's knowing what to weigh and how.
I think like diving into an actual scientific paper, it's actually quite hard to take issue with various things and understand them if you're not familiar with the science itself.
I feel like I can logic out some stuff reasonably well as say some doctor studying DNA (speaking very generally) but as far as DNA goes i'm straight ignorant as to what to weight and conclude.... the doctor presumably better, but I'd have no clue if he was wrong.
> I don't understand how. Aren't you suppose to study logic to be a a judge ? Surely laws and argumentation are a central topic, and they all require a brain. How somebody unable to understand simple concept like probabilities can be judge ?
Some of this gets solved via the use of expert witnesses- people who weren't at the scene of the crime that have expertise in a related topic, and their job is, basically, to explain some part of what happened, or how something works, under oath- for instance, a computer forensics expert, who investigated the computer of a hacker, can, during testimony, explain how something works and why that's important. Because experts are under oath, and assumed to have a knowledge of the field they're representing, the judges (and jury, too) generally place trust in them. In this case, the defendant scientist was concerned because of a lack of data:
Ms. Stajic, 69, said she felt vindicated.
“As a forensic scientist, I am fully aware
of the importance of validating each study,”
she said in an interview. “My concern was if
that study was not done, there could be
wrongful convictions. And if the wrong people
were convicted, that would mean the wrong person
would be walking free.”
This is especially important considering the following lines:
Low Copy Number testing involves very minute amounts of DNA —
often lifted from crime scene surfaces, such as weapon handles
or bicycle handlebars, that multiple people have touched.
The city first adopted this technique in 2006, and it is estimated
to have been used in thousands of cases before it was phased out
in January 2017. New York was the only crime lab in the country
believed to have used the method.
This sounds a little fishy to me- like a computer forensics expert testifying in court that the only reason to use Tor is for bad-guy activities, shortcutting the process of finding what else they might need it for- for instance, I personally use Tor in a VM for looking at the occasional site that I just don't trust.
In conclusion- yes, logic is an important part of being a judge, and a part that you more or less have to have in order to get very far. Judges also trust expert witnesses to fill them in on what they don't know (such as how this exact model of car works, or what a particular weapon's spray is like, or if shells from bullets match the defendant's gun) and generally trust them. The problem in the article is that the NYC's science department was more or less in bed with its prosecutors, which is not fair, and that the science department was using less data than it ought to to produce often-damning evidence. It's not really the fault of the judge for not understanding that the shortcuts that the science department were using weren't good, especially when they're under oath, which is a HUGE psychological part of law.
Also, if it helps, here's a good overview of how a court case works, in the form of a movie scene critique (legitimately the best primer on how a court with a jury generally functions, or at least ought to):
The trite content is similar, just the audience changes (working class vs (upper) middle class). It's like Taco Bell vs Chipotle, both are hardly where those who know better go to eat.
>The trite content is similar, just the audience changes (working class vs (upper) middle class). It's like Taco Bell vs Chipotle, both are hardly where those who know better go to eat.
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".