This doesn't mean there isn't any evidence--it just means that their internal investigation didn't find any. If read carefully, this statement tells us nothing about the universe of evidence that exists, but only about what GitHub didn't find. A different investigator might come to a completely different conclusion, or find other evidence (this is where the comment about the investigators possibly not contacting key people could become important).
> ...found no evidence to support the claims against Tom and his wife of sexual or gender-based harassment or retaliation
So their internal investigation didn't find sexual or gender-based harassment or retaliation. But did that investigation find other types of harassment or retaliation?
> However, while there may have been no legal wrongdoing
"May have been none" or "there definitely wasn't any"? And then legal wrongdoing vs. just plain wrongdoing? Disclaimers/"wiggle words" everywhere.
> As to the remaining allegations, the investigation found no evidence of gender-based discrimination, harassment, retaliation, or abuse.
Again, we're seeing the term "gender-based" used as a modifier (also done in P-W's response). This makes it appear as if their attorneys primarily want to remove this controversy from the ambit of gender-based discrimination claims.
I'm not saying this memo is worse than any other corporate public statement. But reading carefully, you often find that the statements don't tell you very much, if anything.
> These memos are often more about what isn't said:
> > The investigation found no evidence...
> This doesn't mean there isn't any evidence--it just means that their internal investigation didn't find any. If read carefully, this statement tells us nothing about the universe of evidence that exists, but only about what GitHub didn't find.
You seem to be including this as part of a narrative where this statement is phrased to disguise the truth, but the sort of "loophole" you're pointing to here is not at all revelatory. The same is true of every investigation ever — the fact that an investigation didn't find something doesn't mean it necessarily doesn't exist. This falls out of the fact that you can't prove a universal negative.
An investigation can never positively prove things. It can only establish a reasonable confidence in proportion with your confidence in the investigators.
This is a great example of the type of critical looking at the evidence. The words that are used should be examined closely - especially official / legal words. There should be no reading between the lines if written properly.
Here we have "no gender based..." of Tom and his wife. Nothing mentioned about whether there was other people who did were involved in that type of activity, nor whether the two individuals were involved in other types of activity.
Basically, legal speak only addresses a specific thing. The objective is not to uncover the whole truth about an event, but to reveal only as much as necessary.
In short, the report on the investigation should not if done properly comment on anything outside of it - even if evidence of those things are found.
Thus, looking at it - it gives no evidence of other things.
> Here we have "no gender based..." of Tom and his wife. Nothing mentioned about whether there was other people who did were involved in that type of activity, nor whether the two individuals were involved in other types of activity.
Great point. I didn't notice that phrase, but now that I think about it, you're right.
That's the only thing you can say. Moving this to another, more objectively verifiable domain: let's suppose you want to buy a house, and you ask the seller whether asbestos was used in its construction. A seller would be stupid to go further than "to the best of my knowledge…". Problem is: if you buy the house and ten years later find asbestos behind some wall, and the seller said it wasn't there, he hangs, even if he couldn't know of the problem. Of course, you can refuse to buy unless you get a 100% definite answer, but that would raise the price because the seller would have to do better inspection (possible destructive) and/or find insurance and/or would want money for the risk he takes.
The same applies to this outside firm: if they categorically state that there are no problems, but it later turns out that there are, they are target for litigation both from employees of the company and from the company itself ("you told us we didn't have problems! but now our stock tanked")
The best you likely can get is a detailed description of what they did in their research. That limits the risk for that company. If they claim they read every e-mail message, and it later turns out that they could have spotted a problem from there, they are liable, but if it turns out they could have spotted a problem from the phone records, they are off the hook.
So yes, it would be nice to learn what exactly this outside firm did, so that we can gauge how hard they tried to find something, but I don't blame them for saying they found no evidence.
From what I see, it was an investigation into gender-based discrimination/harassment claims, and the result of the investigation was that, well, no evidence of gender-based discrimination was found. Does that not provide very useful information to the reader? It would be irresponsible for the report to claim that no harassment of any form exists at GitHub, and irresponsible of us to accuse (or "wonder", which is just a wiggly way of accusing) the worst given its omission.
> This doesn't mean there isn't any evidence--it just means that their internal investigation didn't find any.
Of course the results of the investigation tells us nothing about things outside the investigation. Is that not assumed? How many 3rd parties does it take before this is not true?
Apologies if I sound irate, it's just disappointing that accusations that seem to have little basis (huge disclaimer, purely based on news coverage and this published report) can cause a founder to leave his company.
My primary point was that we can't assume things that the memo doesn't say. From your comment:
> "From what I see, it was an investigation into gender-based discrimination/harassment claims"
I think you are making some assumptions, and my guess is that whoever wrote the GitHub statement wanted you to come to that exact conclusion.
This is why they kept repeating the phrase "gender-based"--they want the reader to focus on the gender claims and then GitHub can try to render those claims invalid with their investigation results.
In fact, the precise scope of the investigation was not provided in the statement--we don't know what they investigated. There are many possibilities, including the one you suggested. Another is that they might have looked into a range of issues, found a few problems, and then decided to focus their public statements on the gender-based claims because they knew they could win those.
Mostly, I'm saying that this GitHub post doesn't tell us much (not saying it should, just saying it doesn't).
"This doesn't mean there isn't any evidence--it just means that their internal investigation didn't find any."
How could you ever claim anything else, though? You can only make a claim about the things you did find (including absence of things), not about things you didn't find, because you can not know about them.
This is just another example of human communication depending on goodwill. If some involved parties want to misinterpret everything they hear, there is no way to stop them.
I think the emphasis on "gender based" stuff is because that was the gist of Horvath's accusations.
I think it's more that the "gender-based" stuff was the legally actionable part of Horvath's accusations. Her accusations also included things that do not appear to be related to gender (in particular, nothing about Theresa Preston-Warner's alleged harassment seems to be related to gender).
Again, in my comment I mention that this memo is no different than other corporate statements. My point is that some comments on here say "there is no evidence", which is not what the memo says. Saying you didn't find something isn't the same as saying that something doesn't exist.
I'm not sure I agree. Of course, very strictly speaking you are probably right. So we can never know or prove anything. We can not prove that god doesn't exist, or that the flying spaghetti monster doesn't exist, or that invisible dragons don't exist.
That doesn't seem a very useful attitude, though. I think not finding evidence is some evidence, at least in a bayesian sense.
And OK, we can know some things - I know there is no visible dragon sitting on my keyboard right now.
Right, but there is no actual way that you can say that something doesn't exist; you can't prove a negative. There is absolutely no other wording you can ever use. Pointing that out as some sort of indicator that it's possible that there is some evidence is a little silly, because... well, duh.
Ultimately it depends on whether or not you trust the investigator to be thorough, and to be able to ferret out the truth where people lie and omit details.
The investigator in this case is not about uncovering the truth of everything - it's about investigating this specific case. They do not have an obligation, for example, to mention that they found taxation irregularities during their work.
> The investigation found no evidence...
This doesn't mean there isn't any evidence--it just means that their internal investigation didn't find any. If read carefully, this statement tells us nothing about the universe of evidence that exists, but only about what GitHub didn't find. A different investigator might come to a completely different conclusion, or find other evidence (this is where the comment about the investigators possibly not contacting key people could become important).
> ...found no evidence to support the claims against Tom and his wife of sexual or gender-based harassment or retaliation
So their internal investigation didn't find sexual or gender-based harassment or retaliation. But did that investigation find other types of harassment or retaliation?
> However, while there may have been no legal wrongdoing
"May have been none" or "there definitely wasn't any"? And then legal wrongdoing vs. just plain wrongdoing? Disclaimers/"wiggle words" everywhere.
> As to the remaining allegations, the investigation found no evidence of gender-based discrimination, harassment, retaliation, or abuse.
Again, we're seeing the term "gender-based" used as a modifier (also done in P-W's response). This makes it appear as if their attorneys primarily want to remove this controversy from the ambit of gender-based discrimination claims.
I'm not saying this memo is worse than any other corporate public statement. But reading carefully, you often find that the statements don't tell you very much, if anything.