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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

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".

hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
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.
- Razengan 8y ago
  The above comment was gray, within 5 minutes of being posted. Perhaps the karma threshold for downvoting needs to be raised to balance the Redditization of HN.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    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.
    - fouc 8y ago
      There's no way to detect the down voters unless they leave a comment indicating that?
      - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
        I assume it's tracked in a DB (inb4 blockchain) somewhere so you can't downvote the same comment twice.
        fouc 8y ago
        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.
        krapp 8y ago
        >I assume it's tracked in a DB (inb4 blockchain) Lisp tables in flat files, actually.
    - _0ffh 8y ago
      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.
  - sctb 8y ago
    It's not anywhere near gray, and 5 minutes is no amount of time to draw conclusions. > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. > Please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - fuck-sctb 8y ago
      Uh huh.
- mannykannot 8y ago
  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.
  - mattigames 8y ago
    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.
    - Mirioron 8y ago
      You're also allowed to defend yourself when kidnapped. No such thing when the state does it.
      - chronogram 8y ago
        Which should be the other way around... :-(
        tareqak 8y ago
        Are you saying you should not be allowed to defend yourself if you are kidnapped by an entity that is not the state?
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
  - hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
    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.
- alexandercrohde 8y ago
  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?
  - hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
    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).
    - heyyyouu 8y ago
      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.
- jrockway 8y ago
  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."
  - michaelbuckbee 8y ago
    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.")
    - DavidAdams 8y ago
      Yet they will ride an ATV for fun, which actually will get them killed.
    - newswriter99 8y ago
      "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
      - crushcrashcrush 8y ago
- magashna 8y ago
  They stated they had proven this controversial technique worked, then it came out it was never tested. That seems pretty clear cut to me.
- stale2002 8y ago
  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.
  - hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
    > 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.
    - stale2002 8y ago
      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.
- drugme 8y ago
  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.
kmlx 8y ago
> 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.
- DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
  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.
  - duxup 8y ago
    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.
  - RHSeeger 8y ago
    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.
    - logfromblammo 8y ago
      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.
winter_blue 8y ago
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.

hn_throwaway_99 8y ago

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.

Razengan 8y ago
The above comment was gray, within 5 minutes of being posted. Perhaps the karma threshold for downvoting needs to be raised to balance the Redditization of HN.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  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.
  - fouc 8y ago
    There's no way to detect the down voters unless they leave a comment indicating that?
    - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
      I assume it's tracked in a DB (inb4 blockchain) somewhere so you can't downvote the same comment twice.
      - fouc 8y ago
        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.
      - krapp 8y ago
        >I assume it's tracked in a DB (inb4 blockchain) Lisp tables in flat files, actually.
  - _0ffh 8y ago
    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.
- sctb 8y ago
  It's not anywhere near gray, and 5 minutes is no amount of time to draw conclusions. > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. > Please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - fuck-sctb 8y ago
    Uh huh.
mannykannot 8y ago
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.
- mattigames 8y ago
  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.
  - Mirioron 8y ago
    You're also allowed to defend yourself when kidnapped. No such thing when the state does it.
    - chronogram 8y ago
      Which should be the other way around... :-(
      - tareqak 8y ago
        Are you saying you should not be allowed to defend yourself if you are kidnapped by an entity that is not the state?
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
  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.
alexandercrohde 8y ago
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?
- hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
  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).
  - heyyyouu 8y ago
    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.
jrockway 8y ago
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."
- michaelbuckbee 8y ago
  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.")
  - DavidAdams 8y ago
    Yet they will ride an ATV for fun, which actually will get them killed.
  - newswriter99 8y ago
    "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
    - crushcrashcrush 8y ago
magashna 8y ago
They stated they had proven this controversial technique worked, then it came out it was never tested. That seems pretty clear cut to me.
stale2002 8y ago
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.
- hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
  > 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.
  - stale2002 8y ago
    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.
drugme 8y ago
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.

kmlx 8y ago

> 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.

DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
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.
- duxup 8y ago
  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.
- RHSeeger 8y ago
  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.
  - logfromblammo 8y ago
    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.

winter_blue 8y ago

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.