[cratermoon]

The goal is to divert discussion from the issue and make the discussion about her personality. The "disgusting" part is not what Facebook says about her (their folks clearly don't have much to smear Haugen with if this is the worst), it's that they don't want to address the allegations directly. The "smear" such as it is, falls flat, but it's reprehensible for Facebook's people to want to make the discussion about her rather than about the practices of the company that employed her.

[true_religion]

If she were in a visible position where she'd have learned this information, the people in PR could easily look up what projects she was on them come up with a targeted response disclosing only those facts.

However, since she didn't work on anything relevant, they have to do research without any guidance.

It's Day 1. They can't come out and say "we don't know what she's talking about or where she got her data, so we can't refute it."

As PR, the worst thing for them to do is deny something only to be hit by factual evidence; they'd rather know all the evidence to begin with them try to put it in a good light or reveal a good reason for things being that way.

[cratermoon]

Which is why the correct response is along the lines of "we take these allegations very seriously but have no comment at this time". Coming out of the gate with a response that does nothing but attempt to cast aspersions on the individual immediately brings to mind what happened to people like climatologist Michael E. Mann