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by zaat 753 days ago
> I pointed out that Hansen had suffered professionally and personally, and that she now feels those experiences tainted her career. “I didn’t say I was a nice guy,” Johnson replied, and laughed

I might be off, but my sense from the journalist report of the meeting is that Johnson was/is a jerk.
2 comments
neilv 753 days ago
(Thanks, I missed that part of the article, maybe due to an incomplete page load. I'd done a keyword search for "Johnson", to check whether my skim missed something, and that part didn't come up.)

Possibly is/was a jerk, but also strangely candid about it. Like he takes/took some pride in loyalty and his importance, and is asking to be grilled by a prosecutor, and perhaps held accountable (contempt of court, co-conspirator). That's not taking it to your grave.

> Some of his assignments had come directly from company lawyers, he added, and he couldn’t discuss them with me. “I didn’t even report it to my boss, or anybody,” he said. “There are some things you take to your grave.” At one point, he also told me that, if he were asked to testify in a PFOS-related lawsuit, he would probably be of little help. “I’m an old man, and so I think they would find that I got extremely forgetful all of a sudden,” he said, and chuckled.

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ethbr1 753 days ago
Given >1 mutually incompatible moral directives, people filter them through their personal moral code and generate the most compliant behavior they can.

Sometimes that behavior seems illogical or inconsistent, but if the problem is unsolvable... can we judge whatever comes out?

"My job is to accurately analyze chemicals" + "My job is to protect the company" + "My job is to protect the public" is a hard set to satisfy.

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Mr_Minderbinder 752 days ago
>I might be off, but my sense from the journalist report of the meeting is that Johnson was/is a jerk.

How generous. Psychopath was what came to my mind. No idea why he thinks that is funny. He is complicit in a scheme that is, according to the researcher estimate cited in the article, costing up to ~$60 billion a year; undoubtedly an enormous amount of harm and suffering has been caused (with more yet to come) and that is all he has to say for himself?

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