this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2024
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Ministry of Justice workers call researcher a 'bitch' in online conversation (www.rnz.co.nz)
submitted 4 months ago by Dave to c/newzealand
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Two Ministry of Justice workers are in hot water for describing a researcher as a "bitch" in an online conversation.

Academic and author Barbara Sumner made a number of Official Information Act requests as part of her PhD research into the systems around adoption. Then, in October last year, she asked for all correspondence mentioning her by name.

"Because I had felt all along that there was a resistance to everything I sent in and you know, just the sort of snottiness, I guess, of some of the responses that came in that request. I wanted to understand how they were treating me throughout the process."

One page of the response stood out among more than 100 others. A November 2022 Teams conversation between two staffers, whose names were redacted, complained about Sumner's latest request.

They described it as "a waste of time" and said it "should have been refused on the ground of substantial collation" or that the ministry should "charge her for it and get a contractor".

"our ministerial services team sucks cuz they wouldnt let us refuse, and helen didnt push back hard [sic]," one worker wrote.

"but also shes a bitch for wanting everything. does she think govt just has unlimited resources for this type of crap lol.

"like theres no public interest in our emails back and forward."

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[–] Dave 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It kinda makes sense, since studies are more often "some people are getting better and we think it might be X, maybe, lets give it to 1000 people and measure against a control to see if it works" than they are "we understand the interactions in detail and based on how they interact it's certain to cure it".

[–] liv 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Definitely, there's also what I think of as the Listerine factor.

(The people who invented Listerine had no idea what to do with it. They wanted doctors to wash their hands in it, then they tried to market it as a floor cleaner. Finally they worked out they could sell it as a cure for bad breath if they called bad breath a scarier name, "halitosis").

[–] Dave 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Haha yes. More generalised, everyone assumes that others know what they are doing but really everyone is just making it up as they go along.

[–] liv 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Not everyone though surely. At the other end of the scale there's stuff like scientists trying to create a compound that will cause a very specific molecular behaviour in a particular set of blood vessels.

[–] Dave 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

I bet it is everyone 😆. I bet if you ask those scientists, they would say they have a general idea of what should work but within that scope they are just trying things too see if they work.

I don't mean everyone has no idea what they are doing, but that there's a bit of "I have no idea what I'm doing" in everyone (whether they realise it or not).

[–] liv 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I get what you mean now. Totally agree. There's an element of creativity in STEM and creativity itself has an element of chaos.

On a related tangent there's the idea of vocation - the people who most seem to know what they are doing tend to be doing it because they are "driven" or it "comes naturally" and both those things are essentially black box.

[–] Dave 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

On a related tangent there’s the idea of vocation - the people who most seem to know what they are doing tend to be doing it because they are “driven” or it “comes naturally” and both those things are essentially black box.

I'll counter that with the Peter Principle 😆

[–] liv 2 points 4 months ago

Fair point, we have all met plenty of those!