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

35 points by Bostonian 5y ago

footlose_3815 5y ago
[dead]
awb 5y ago
Maybe there’s an important conversation to be had around this incident but this article is littered with biased reporting. > 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.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ehvatum 5y ago
  “Widely debunked”. What? Label me as you like, but Kenosha happened. CHAZ happened. David Dorn’s shop was looted and David Dorn was murdered during a BLM protest.
  - mint2 5y ago
    There were blm protests in nearly every city, a handful of cities had opportunistic looters. There are documented cases of white nationalists pretending to be blm and trying to cause trouble[1]. Some cops do bad things, do you think all cops are bad? Or is there a double standard? If anything cops should be held to a higher standard not a lesser because it’s their purpose to protect people. [1] just one example to show they do this https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/twitter-takes-down-washington-protest-disinformation-bot-behavior-n1221456 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/twitter-takes-down-was...
    - nate_meurer 5y ago
      This is anecdata. You found one news story. Maybe you can find a handful of others. But do you have evidence that infiltration by white nationalists was a significant contributing factor to the widespread anarchy and destruction in places like Kenosha or Portland?
      - ashwagary 5y ago
        There is video evidence of agent provocateurs setting fire to stores, one was confronted and potentially exposed as a police officer. Tbh, we are extremely lucky to have any video evidence of the sabotuers, most arent stupid enough to commit crimes on video.
        nate_meurer 5y ago
        Uh huh. So who were these agent provocateurs? Are there arrrest records, or any sort of reporting that confirms their identities? Or are you just going on rumors here?
        ashwagary 5y ago
        >Or are you just going on rumors here? It's literally video evidence as I stated above, are you choosing to have a hard time with this on purpose? "Minneapolis 'Umbrella Man' who sparked AutoZone fire is Hells Angels member" https://www.foxnews.com/us/minneapolis-umbrella-man-autozone-fire-hells-angels-police https://www.foxnews.com/us/minneapolis-umbrella-man-autozone... Don't be surprised that the largest gang in America (law enforcement) supports and is heavily controlled by white supremacists (KKK, Hells Angels, The Executioners, etc... ) , many police deparment whistle blowers and undercover investigators have pointed out this fact over the years.
        nate_meurer 5y ago
        No, the person in that video was never positively identified, and it's unclear whether there's even an open investigation. Back in Summer 2020, the police showed off a search warrant against one Mitchell Carlson, and media ran with it as proof of their whole right-wing-agitator narrative. But the police appear to have quietly dropped the matter, and nothing more came of it in the year and a half since. It's interesting that the cops released that affidavit soon after rumors started spreading that "umbrella man" was a cop. At least that problem got fixed :) So... is this really your "evidence"? I mean, sure, that could have been an outside agitator. But maybe not. You have no idea. But I suppose you can believe whatever you want. Look, I recognize that were probably some outside agitators mixed in with the BLM protesters. For example, look at the two guys that Kyle Rittenhouse killed: neither was local, and both were hardened criminals-- Joseph Rosenbaum was a convicted child rapist, and Anthony Huber was a serial domestic violence offender. Maybe these two characters had travelled to Kenosha to participate in a strictly peaceful demonstration. Maybe not. We have no direct evidence either way, so here again I suppose you can believe whatever you want. On the other hand, we have hundreds of videos of everyday trash humans looting, breaking windows, burning shit in the street. Take your pick. Here's one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6preTw28GWE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6preTw28GWE. How many right-wing agitators do see there? The riots in Minneapolis damaged or destroyed thousands of buildings, and some neighborhoods may never recover. Again, you're free to believe that this all the work of mysterious white supremacists or whatever, but you sure haven't given me any reason to believe one way or the other.
  - awb 5y ago
    The idea that BLM was protesting during the day and then went home, put away their signs, changed clothes and came back out at night to riot and cause these $2B in damages has been debunked. The protests and riots happened at similar times but they were largely different groups with different agendas. In many cases the looting even happened while peaceful protests were happening elsewhere which diverted police resources.
    - blmzd 5y ago
      Oh, so every major city was not burned to the ground by people shouting "All Cops are Bad" and "Defund the Police", and wait for it.... "Black Lives Matter" ?
      - awb 5y ago
        Correct, not every major city was burned to the ground. And yeah people shouting things doesn’t mean they’re part of a BLM protest. Just like not every Jan. 6 rioter is part of [insert right wing group here]. Life is more complex than that and just like the Rodney King riots, things start out about one thing and devolve into another thing all the time. Sometimes it’s just about looting, no political agenda, just taking what you can when there’s an opportunity. Just watch video of kids looting Beverly Hills or people streaming into Target and walking out with large screen TVs. No signs, no slogans, no organization, just theft. Multiple things can happen at the same time and it doesn’t mean that BLM is out there coordinating violence or looting nation wide.
- Nicksil 5y ago
  >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. Your comment lacks supporting information and attempts to paint an entire political ideology with an overly broad, vague brush. Such comments do little to improve the quality of current discourse and are borderline polemic. >The author is clearly trying to paint BLM as responsible for the property damage, which has been widely debunked. This may be true, but you've provided no information to support your claim. What claims, specifically, have been debunked and by whom? >It goes on and on reiterating the right-wing perspective of 2020 in an attempt to defend the data scientist. "The right-wing perspective" is such a broad characterization and, as such, almost completely useless in this context. To which of the many perspectives of the right wing (conservative) political ideology do you refer? You mention how challenging it has become to have a constructive conversation or debate on these topics -- and I largely agree -- but, with genuine respect, your comments here aren't constructive and contribute more to the challenge than the solution.
  - awb 5y ago
    It’s a long article and I don’t care to go point by point. If you think the author is presenting an unbiased argument, there’s probably little I can do to change your mind. But as someone who’s searching for the injustice in this employee’s termination, I didn’t like how they went down the “blue bubble” checklist of BLM, white privilege, etc. in an exasperated undertone like: “Could you believe what these liberals at Reuters believe?” and “Can you believe this poor guy was fired for daring to have a different opinion?” If you want me to have sympathy for this individual, tell me what he did and why it wasn’t a fireable offense per his employee contract/handbook. Instead the author is trying to poke at culture war points to win hearts while ignoring our minds. Or if the employee contract / handbook is the problem, then focus on that.
    - awb 5y ago
      FYI, here’s the author’s Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Rufo https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Rufo > Christopher F. Rufo (born August 26, 1984)[1] is an American conservative activist. So yeah, I’d say he’s biased. The article reads like an activist wrote it: little to no substance and tons of half-developed thoughts trying to appeal to people’s outrage.
rgavuliak 5y ago
I like this part that is glossed over in the closing paragraphs towards the end: > 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.
- nate_meurer 5y ago
  Maybe it was glossed over because it doesn't fucking matter. In exactly what way would it justifiable if this fellow was persecuted simply for non-conforming social graces?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - awb 5y ago
    People get fired all the time for being harsh, abrasive, confrontational, etc. Maybe that’s what they meant?
    - civilized 5y ago
      Kriegman was harassed in terms far harsher than he used, and unlike his post, the harassing replies were completely lacking in evidence and argument. Anyone want to bet how many of Kriegman's harassers were fired?
  - rgavuliak 5y ago
    My point was that he might have been fired for the way he communicated the content and not so much the content. After his essay was removed from the internal forums the first time, he fought tooth an nail to get it back. Either way, this is also a sign of a poor cultural fit (regardless of whether the culture was good or bad). I am not saying whether it was justifiable to fire him, just that there are more aspects than just the message.
screye 5y ago
It doesn't surprise me anymore. Aren't we well into the mainstreaming of woke opinions by now ? The elect are as allergic to sociological statistics as the right to vaccines. 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.
- cowvin 5y ago
  "Two of his colleagues warned him that he was potentially heading toward disaster; another, according to Kriegman, screamed that he “should fucking do [his] job” instead of spending time fighting about Black Lives Matter. (None of the Reuters employees returned a request for comment.)" It sounds like instead of doing the job they hired him to do, he was spending his time arguing about BLM. I mean expressing his opinion is one thing but if it's to the point that his presence is an overall negative for the company, he should be fired. I mean this guy knew he'd be fired if he kept doing what he was doing and chose to get fired, so it's hard to have any sympathy for him. It's like if someone goes to work for Fox News and spends all their time arguing with everyone at the company about how Democrats are great and Republicans are evil, they will get fired too.
  - civilized 5y ago
    This opinion makes sense if we're fine casting Thomson Reuters as merely the flip side of Fox News, rather than an organization that aspires to a higher integrity culture.
awb 5y ago
For those wanting more context, here is the post that got him fired: https://kriegman.substack.com/p/post-leading-to-termination-blm-falsehoods https://kriegman.substack.com/p/post-leading-to-termination-... > 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.

35 points by Bostonian 5y ago

[dead]

awb 5y ago

Maybe there’s an important conversation to be had around this incident but this article is littered with biased reporting. > 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.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ehvatum 5y ago
“Widely debunked”. What? Label me as you like, but Kenosha happened. CHAZ happened. David Dorn’s shop was looted and David Dorn was murdered during a BLM protest.
- mint2 5y ago
  There were blm protests in nearly every city, a handful of cities had opportunistic looters. There are documented cases of white nationalists pretending to be blm and trying to cause trouble[1]. Some cops do bad things, do you think all cops are bad? Or is there a double standard? If anything cops should be held to a higher standard not a lesser because it’s their purpose to protect people. [1] just one example to show they do this https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/twitter-takes-down-washington-protest-disinformation-bot-behavior-n1221456 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/twitter-takes-down-was...
  - nate_meurer 5y ago
    This is anecdata. You found one news story. Maybe you can find a handful of others. But do you have evidence that infiltration by white nationalists was a significant contributing factor to the widespread anarchy and destruction in places like Kenosha or Portland?
    - ashwagary 5y ago
      There is video evidence of agent provocateurs setting fire to stores, one was confronted and potentially exposed as a police officer. Tbh, we are extremely lucky to have any video evidence of the sabotuers, most arent stupid enough to commit crimes on video.
      - nate_meurer 5y ago
        Uh huh. So who were these agent provocateurs? Are there arrrest records, or any sort of reporting that confirms their identities? Or are you just going on rumors here?
        ashwagary 5y ago
        >Or are you just going on rumors here? It's literally video evidence as I stated above, are you choosing to have a hard time with this on purpose? "Minneapolis 'Umbrella Man' who sparked AutoZone fire is Hells Angels member" https://www.foxnews.com/us/minneapolis-umbrella-man-autozone-fire-hells-angels-police https://www.foxnews.com/us/minneapolis-umbrella-man-autozone... Don't be surprised that the largest gang in America (law enforcement) supports and is heavily controlled by white supremacists (KKK, Hells Angels, The Executioners, etc... ) , many police deparment whistle blowers and undercover investigators have pointed out this fact over the years.
        nate_meurer 5y ago
        No, the person in that video was never positively identified, and it's unclear whether there's even an open investigation. Back in Summer 2020, the police showed off a search warrant against one Mitchell Carlson, and media ran with it as proof of their whole right-wing-agitator narrative. But the police appear to have quietly dropped the matter, and nothing more came of it in the year and a half since. It's interesting that the cops released that affidavit soon after rumors started spreading that "umbrella man" was a cop. At least that problem got fixed :) So... is this really your "evidence"? I mean, sure, that could have been an outside agitator. But maybe not. You have no idea. But I suppose you can believe whatever you want. Look, I recognize that were probably some outside agitators mixed in with the BLM protesters. For example, look at the two guys that Kyle Rittenhouse killed: neither was local, and both were hardened criminals-- Joseph Rosenbaum was a convicted child rapist, and Anthony Huber was a serial domestic violence offender. Maybe these two characters had travelled to Kenosha to participate in a strictly peaceful demonstration. Maybe not. We have no direct evidence either way, so here again I suppose you can believe whatever you want. On the other hand, we have hundreds of videos of everyday trash humans looting, breaking windows, burning shit in the street. Take your pick. Here's one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6preTw28GWE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6preTw28GWE. How many right-wing agitators do see there? The riots in Minneapolis damaged or destroyed thousands of buildings, and some neighborhoods may never recover. Again, you're free to believe that this all the work of mysterious white supremacists or whatever, but you sure haven't given me any reason to believe one way or the other.
- awb 5y ago
  The idea that BLM was protesting during the day and then went home, put away their signs, changed clothes and came back out at night to riot and cause these $2B in damages has been debunked. The protests and riots happened at similar times but they were largely different groups with different agendas. In many cases the looting even happened while peaceful protests were happening elsewhere which diverted police resources.
  - blmzd 5y ago
    Oh, so every major city was not burned to the ground by people shouting "All Cops are Bad" and "Defund the Police", and wait for it.... "Black Lives Matter" ?
    - awb 5y ago
      Correct, not every major city was burned to the ground. And yeah people shouting things doesn’t mean they’re part of a BLM protest. Just like not every Jan. 6 rioter is part of [insert right wing group here]. Life is more complex than that and just like the Rodney King riots, things start out about one thing and devolve into another thing all the time. Sometimes it’s just about looting, no political agenda, just taking what you can when there’s an opportunity. Just watch video of kids looting Beverly Hills or people streaming into Target and walking out with large screen TVs. No signs, no slogans, no organization, just theft. Multiple things can happen at the same time and it doesn’t mean that BLM is out there coordinating violence or looting nation wide.
Nicksil 5y ago
>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. Your comment lacks supporting information and attempts to paint an entire political ideology with an overly broad, vague brush. Such comments do little to improve the quality of current discourse and are borderline polemic. >The author is clearly trying to paint BLM as responsible for the property damage, which has been widely debunked. This may be true, but you've provided no information to support your claim. What claims, specifically, have been debunked and by whom? >It goes on and on reiterating the right-wing perspective of 2020 in an attempt to defend the data scientist. "The right-wing perspective" is such a broad characterization and, as such, almost completely useless in this context. To which of the many perspectives of the right wing (conservative) political ideology do you refer? You mention how challenging it has become to have a constructive conversation or debate on these topics -- and I largely agree -- but, with genuine respect, your comments here aren't constructive and contribute more to the challenge than the solution.
- awb 5y ago
  It’s a long article and I don’t care to go point by point. If you think the author is presenting an unbiased argument, there’s probably little I can do to change your mind. But as someone who’s searching for the injustice in this employee’s termination, I didn’t like how they went down the “blue bubble” checklist of BLM, white privilege, etc. in an exasperated undertone like: “Could you believe what these liberals at Reuters believe?” and “Can you believe this poor guy was fired for daring to have a different opinion?” If you want me to have sympathy for this individual, tell me what he did and why it wasn’t a fireable offense per his employee contract/handbook. Instead the author is trying to poke at culture war points to win hearts while ignoring our minds. Or if the employee contract / handbook is the problem, then focus on that.
  - awb 5y ago
    FYI, here’s the author’s Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Rufo https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Rufo > Christopher F. Rufo (born August 26, 1984)[1] is an American conservative activist. So yeah, I’d say he’s biased. The article reads like an activist wrote it: little to no substance and tons of half-developed thoughts trying to appeal to people’s outrage.

rgavuliak 5y ago

I like this part that is glossed over in the closing paragraphs towards the end: > 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.

nate_meurer 5y ago
Maybe it was glossed over because it doesn't fucking matter. In exactly what way would it justifiable if this fellow was persecuted simply for non-conforming social graces?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- awb 5y ago
  People get fired all the time for being harsh, abrasive, confrontational, etc. Maybe that’s what they meant?
  - civilized 5y ago
    Kriegman was harassed in terms far harsher than he used, and unlike his post, the harassing replies were completely lacking in evidence and argument. Anyone want to bet how many of Kriegman's harassers were fired?
- rgavuliak 5y ago
  My point was that he might have been fired for the way he communicated the content and not so much the content. After his essay was removed from the internal forums the first time, he fought tooth an nail to get it back. Either way, this is also a sign of a poor cultural fit (regardless of whether the culture was good or bad). I am not saying whether it was justifiable to fire him, just that there are more aspects than just the message.

screye 5y ago

It doesn't surprise me anymore. Aren't we well into the mainstreaming of woke opinions by now ? The elect are as allergic to sociological statistics as the right to vaccines. 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.

cowvin 5y ago
"Two of his colleagues warned him that he was potentially heading toward disaster; another, according to Kriegman, screamed that he “should fucking do [his] job” instead of spending time fighting about Black Lives Matter. (None of the Reuters employees returned a request for comment.)" It sounds like instead of doing the job they hired him to do, he was spending his time arguing about BLM. I mean expressing his opinion is one thing but if it's to the point that his presence is an overall negative for the company, he should be fired. I mean this guy knew he'd be fired if he kept doing what he was doing and chose to get fired, so it's hard to have any sympathy for him. It's like if someone goes to work for Fox News and spends all their time arguing with everyone at the company about how Democrats are great and Republicans are evil, they will get fired too.
- civilized 5y ago
  This opinion makes sense if we're fine casting Thomson Reuters as merely the flip side of Fox News, rather than an organization that aspires to a higher integrity culture.

awb 5y ago

For those wanting more context, here is the post that got him fired: https://kriegman.substack.com/p/post-leading-to-termination-blm-falsehoods https://kriegman.substack.com/p/post-leading-to-termination-... > 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.