
Can behavioral science help in Flint? - nature24
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/23/can-behavioral-science-help-in-flint
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mladenkovacevic
Maybe they can redirect all this wonderful behavioral science to train the
politicians to actually care about ordinary lower-income citizens so they can
fix the fucking pipes instead of placing the responsibility on tax-payers by
teaching them songs and dances about when to change their filters or devising
clever tricks on how their can regain their "trust".

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noir_lord
Spending money collected from people with a higher income/net worth sensibly
on people disadvantaged by a system that disadvantaged the lower income/net
worth people by its very existence....that sounds a lot like _Socialism_.

Also yes I agree, safe potable water in the worlds richest country should not
be an issue in 2017.

I also think that natural monopolies should be heavily state governed if not
state owned.

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sp332
The water supply was state-governed. The Flint City Council voted to approve
switching water sources.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis#Switching_t...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis#Switching_to_a_new_water_source)

~~~
noir_lord
Yep and that's a problem, I think the solution there is harsher penalties
actually enforced, if you need to increase the salary to make people take that
job then so be it.

Other countries do infrastructure better and have water that is demonstrably
better than in a lot of places in the US.

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virmundi
Please keep in mind that the US water supply naturally has higher
concentrations of pollutants than many other countries. We also have a higher
population drinking straight from the water table pump.

It makes it hard to do a direct comparison since other countries don't have to
do as much.

[https://water.usgs.gov/nawqa/trace/pubs/gw_v38n4/](https://water.usgs.gov/nawqa/trace/pubs/gw_v38n4/)

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bparsons
I think new water pipes would help in Flint.

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qwrusz
This is one of the worst "articles" I have experienced reading since joining
Hacker News.

 _TL;DR This is all personal opinion: My main issue is with the journalism
here. To me this article was disrespectful to readers, scientists and the
people of Flint. Without making any accusations, I would be curious to know
how this article was researched and in what capacity the journalist and the
scientist this article is about knew each other before the article was
written? Were they friends or classmates? (I don 't have a problem if a
journalist wants to write about one of their friends per se, especially if
that person is part of an interesting story worth telling, but from an ethics
and respect for readers standpoint I think that should be disclosed)._

I like The New Yorker and read it regularly but after reading this long, long
piece something felt very off. There was a noticeable lack of substance and
accuracy, along with flowery misleading writing when it came to the
science/behavioral science stuff suggesting the article was under-researched.
But then the tenor of the writing about the scientist was a completely
incongruity to the rest of the article (the language often felt like a letter
of recommendation to a grad school on behalf of a friend).

Honestly, I have no idea if there was conflict of interest and I don't really
care. The writing just made it feel like something fishy is going on. I think
most importantly, behavioral science is interesting and has potential to do
good work in many areas and all. But the people of Flint have fucking lead in
their water...So a fluff piece connecting behavioral science to the Flint
water issue is misleading at best and potentially harmful. It's misleading
about what behavioral science can and can't accomplish; Flint was a government
fuck-up in a place with serious systemic issues that need to be addressed.
Plus 99% of what the article connects to behavioral science is really just
people paying attention and helping other people in person. No behavioral
science magic involved. Also the fucking "write a song" part of the article
was a joke, that's an idea any Joanne Shmoe can come up with, that part of the
story was not real behavioral science and pretty disrespectful to everyone.

Also New Yorker: I get your readers might not be interested in detailed
science articles and they might prefer people stories. But I am very confident
they want accurate stories whatever the topic. If you waste their time overly
long articles of bullshit you will lose more readers. Come on.

