On Follow Through Failure

This post is about a specific effect I have recently had named for me, much to my relief, as I'd noticed it happening on social media. The effect is 'Failure to Follow Up' and what I want to emphasize upfront is that in any of the examples below, I do not wish to commit the fallacy-fallacy. In this case, some examples deal with crimes where prior to the conclusion of an investigation narratives are asserted that satisfy some audience to explain the crime. A failure to follow up when the investigation is concluded by either the press or the demands of public interest, mean it is missed that some specific crime does not specifically support a widely held belief in some previously asserted narrative. This does not invalidate that that narrative doesn't hold in a general sense or other specific incidents. Disclaimer done.

I am of an age to remember the Columbine School Shooting Massacre, I would have been in year 10 at the time... in Australia, so being in a jurisdiction that had recently passed gun control laws back in 1996 following the Port Arthur Massacre, I mainly remember the issue that effected me as an adolescent high school student at the time - Videogames, Music and Movies.

A few years later, Michael Moore was riding high, young people like myself were learning about the republican party for the first time with George W Bush as president, and Moore's book 'Stupid White Men' was a bestseller, and his documentary 'Bowling for Columbine' released in 2002 won the Academy Award for Best Documentary. This was long after the news cycle attributing motive for the massacre to consumption of  Doom, Duke Nukem and Marilyn Manson had seen any daylight.

My impression, my confidence, I placed in my community (left-leaning-well-meaning Australians) was that this theory: that playing violent videogames, watching violent movies and listening to industrial music/metal was debunked and these discussions of motive served to distract from the questions of opportunity - largely access to fully-automatic guns, semi-automatic guns and handguns. 

So I was surprised to learn that this old dead horse gets trotted out contemporarily, the theory that violent video games inspire/motivate school shootings.

Fortunately, there exists an organization - The Heterodox Academy that is surprisingly unpopular as a Youtube Channel as at writing with views far below their reported membership, (though channel subscribers are above) and in a member spotlight video shared this presentation which taught me a few new and interesting concepts:

1. "Availability Cascade" which I can't describe better than wikipedia so won't try (I'll just add emphasis):

An availability cascade is a self-reinforcing cycle that explains the development of certain kinds of collective beliefs. A novel idea or insight, usually one that seems to explain a complex process in a simple or straightforward manner, gains rapid currency in the popular discourse by its very simplicity and by its apparent insightfulness. Its rising popularity triggers a chain reaction within the social network: individuals adopt the new insight because other people within the network have adopted it, and on its face it seems plausible. The reason for this increased use and popularity of the new idea involves both the availability of the previously obscure term or idea, and the need of individuals using the term or idea to appear to be current with the stated beliefs and ideas of others, regardless of whether they in fact fully believe in the idea that they are expressing.

Aka 'I'm not an expert but that makes sense to me'  

2. "The Follow Through Failure Effect" which I can't find a succinct link for because I lack the google-fu. Searching for it comes up with a bunch of links to business articles relating to following up on customer service etc. or personal motivation like 'I wanted to write a book but I didn't do it'.

So this is as near as I can gather (emphasis, I am conveying my impression/interpretation) the follow through failure effect.

It is largely an effect bouncing between the media who supply news stories and often speculate, and the general public who demand news stories and speculation. The character of demand for news media is novelty, and as such their is little demand to cover the follow up, so combining with the availability cascade, the general public might adopt a piece of speculative opinion as an established fact and this never gets revised.

I'll present some examples now, because I find them interesting.

The Gene-theory of Addiction

So this is pure hearsay on my part, but was presented as the earliest articulate description of this phenomen: basically that there's an 'alcoholism gene' which was published in an article way back in 1990 by Time Magazine. So I can see already the 'makes sense to me' aspect in that alcoholism appears to run in families, and certain populations. 

But as was articulated by Gabor Mate, and I'm not sure if the linked Time magazine article was the example he was referring to, when it turns out that in 1990 they didn't discover an alcoholism gene after all the correction is page 10 news, unlike the initial story that was page 1 news. 

In terms of damage done, the two most prevalent notions of addiction out in the public, again as described by Gabor Mate are the 'choice theory' (people choose to be addicted) and the 'gene theory' (people are genetically determined to be addicts) both of which let society itself off the hook.

The gene theory is what allows say, a nativist group to look at a devastated indigenous population with high frequencies of addiction problems and say 'well they just aren't genetically equipped to handle booze/horse/meth/crack.' rather than 'gee I wonder why these dispossessed, economically excluded, disenfranchised, alienated and dehumanized people would want to turn to chemistry for an escape from an oft depressing reality?'

interestingly (emphasis mine):

The alcohol dehydrogenase allele ADH1B*2 causes a more rapid metabolism of alcohol to acetaldehyde, and reduces risk for alcoholism;[74] it is most common in individuals from East Asia and the Middle East. The alcohol dehydrogenase allele ADH1B*3 also causes a more rapid metabolism of alcohol. The allele ADH1B*3 is only found in some individuals of African descent and certain Native American tribes. African Americans and Native Americans with this allele have a reduced risk of developing alcoholism.[74][90][91] Native Americans, however, have a significantly higher rate of alcoholism than average; risk factors such as cultural environmental effects e.g. trauma have been proposed to explain the higher rates.[92][93]

Violent Video Games and Sandy Hook

It's all in the afore-embedded presentation, and again, I don't think most in my circle actually believe that violent video games have any predictive power as to who will commit a violent crime. But many people I know have analogous beliefs, about the power of culture consumption to predict/address real world behavior. 

But some brief highlights are - The Sandyhook School Shooter's most played video game was 'Dance Dance Revolution' or alternately, by one account Super Mario Bros. Youth crime has been falling while video game consumption has been rising, globally there's no correlation between gun related crimes and consumption of video games etc. School shooters on average have much less interest in violent video games than the general population.

What's interesting is why this would even make intuitive sense to anyone. This is very much coming from my own perspective in my own thought experiment - which is if the police contacted me to try and predict and profile which of my friends played violent video games, so as to prevent a mass-killing. Of which my response would have to be '98% of my male friends I am confident, play violent videogames.' a causal link that is only slightly more helpful than sex, being a predictor of violent crime.

Egg Boy and Rule of Law

In the wake of the Christchurch NZ murders (where I believe the Australian perpetrator live streamed his crimes and commentated as though he were playing a videogame) some dickhead conservative politician made a tweet, and then some dickhead kid dubbed 'Eggboy' in the media cracked an egg on said dickhead politician's head while taking a selfie and the politician turned around and punched the kid before the kid was restrained by private citizens who also I believe punched and kicked the kid.

The police announced the completion of their investigation three weeks after the incident, saying that Anning would not be charged as his actions had been in self-defence, and that Connolly had received an official caution. However, a man who allegedly kicked Connolly several times while he was held down was charged with assault.[67]

Public sentiment, at least in my circle, was overwhelmingly in favor of Eggboy. Here it was revealed to me, just how little knowledge of the law almost everyone I know has (including Prime Minister Scott Morrison whom I do not know, but frankly that isn't surprising, he doesn't appear to know much), but there was no greater failure than the news media in covering this issue, to explain how lucky Eggboy probably was to get punched by an elected official who was within their rights to press assault charges.

The probable result of this lack of thorough analysis was the embarassment, charging and sentencing of Amber Holt keeping up the Aussie tradition of being a dickhead, whom attempted to egg Prime Minister Scott Morrison, and failed. Which, not being qualified or able to form an opinion on the relative lightness/harshness of her sentence for common assault, I can't actually tell how much the culpability of the media at large to not properly consult legal expert analysis of the initial Eggboy case. 

At anyrate, for me, it indicates the lack of follow up, where a white Australian Male lucks out of criminal charge and conviction, and subsequently can profit from his celebrity and a white Australian Female gets to cry in court as her sentence is read out.

The media, notably do cover these things, but again it's the page 1 speculation followed by page 10 facts some weeks or months later. This here is more the publics failing.

Murder of Eurydice and Sentencing of Eurydice's Killer

Due to it being contemporaneous with the death of somebody close to me, I remember the social media onslaught following Eurydice's death, and the rapid peaking and collapse of interest in the story.

When she was found dead, murdered, people wanted answers and people had them.

Her killer had already turned himself in, before the public determination of why it happened had even really gotten started. This was a popular view at the time (even if coming from an unpopular Prime Minister), taken from an article from The Age/Sydney Morning Herald I will link to momentarily:

The prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, urged us to start at the beginning. “We start with the youngest men, little boys, our sons and grandsons, which makes sure that they respect their mothers and their sisters and all of the women in their lives,” he told Parliament.

Turnbull’s words struck at the core of an emotive debate. To stop other women from being killed, we didn’t need more CCTV cameras or police on the streets and we didn’t need women to take more steps to protect themselves when out at night – we needed to tackle the misogyny that lurks beneath so much violence against women.

 What I noticed was that while her killer was in police custody within 24 hours of the crime, the attention/interest and opining was at its highest when the general public knew the least. By the sentencing of her killer, there was I would guesstimate close to no interest, when we knew the most. Checking on google trends, this observation holds true with the September 2019 interest in Eurydice Dixon charting at 3, around the time media would have been covering the sentencing of her killer, as compared to 100 in the immediate aftermath of her murder. I'm not sure how to read google trends but it seems pretty safe to assume about 3% of people actually followed up on that case...

...at least among the general public, the previously quoted article offers me reassurance that we have institutions and professionals that invest the time and energy to follow a case through. In the interest of honest discourse, here is a write up post sentencing that asserts a hatred of women as the motive.

Mike Brown's Death and Investigation Outcome

Mike Brown's death in Ferguson, after he was shot by a Police Officer is salient with me, for more shameful reasons. At the time, I was perplexed as to why the Ferguson police department didn't throw the officer under the bus. Something like 'You had a bad day son, and you shot an unarmed man' vis-a-vis he just wasn't good at his job, so cut him loose and spare the riots.

I was wrong, but much like the case above, the interest peak was when we knew the least, and is relatively non-existent by the time the investigation is done. 

There is, in a rare example of contemporary theatre that is excellent and innovative a play available in its entirety on youtube called 'Ferguson Verbatim'

But if you don't feel like saddling up for a virtual trip to the theatre or would rather watch a true crime Netflix documentary tonight, here's a summary from Wikipedia:

A grand jury was called and given extensive evidence from Robert McCulloch, the St. Louis County Prosecutor. On November 24, 2014, McCulloch announced the St. Louis County grand jury had decided not to indict Wilson.[11] In March 2015, the U.S. Department of Justice reported the conclusion of its own investigation and cleared Wilson of civil rights violations in the shooting. It found forensic evidence supported Wilson's account, and that witnesses who corroborated the officer's account were credible. Witnesses who had incriminated him were found to be not credible, with some admitting they had not directly seen the events.[12][13] The U.S. Department of Justice concluded that Wilson shot Brown in self-defense.[14][15]

A new St. Louis prosecutor, Wesley Bell, spent five months in 2020 reviewing the case with an eye to charging Wilson with either manslaughter or murder. In July, Bell announced he would not charge Wilson with any crime.[16]

Mike Brown however comes with a Follow up+ though, there's a documentary called 'What Killed Michael Brown' that though I haven't seen, from interviews with the film makers and Coleman Hughes, leads me to understand the documentary covers the effects on Ferguson the town of the whole debacle following Michael Brown's death.

Libertarians, Anti-Lockdown camp and the Swedish Model

Last year during the most severe Melbourne Covid lockdown, I really noticed this failure to follow up in full effect, revealing many interlocutors and pundits to be dishonest and disingenuous. 

So many people wanting the economy opened up looked to Sweden. Betting Sweden's more free-market approach to Covid would vindicate them. Here's how that turned out:

The Swedish government's approach has received considerable criticism. Some Swedish scientists had called for stricter preventative measures throughout the pandemic,[8] and an independent commission (Coronakommissionen) found that Sweden failed to protect care home residents due to the overall spread of the virus in society.[9] In December 2020 both King Carl XVI Gustaf and Prime Minister Stefan Löfven admitted they felt that Sweden's COVID-19 strategy had been a failure due to the large number of deaths.[10]

Following agency advice, the government has passed legislation limiting freedom of assembly by temporarily banning gatherings of over 50 individuals, banning people from visiting nursing homes, and physically closing secondary schools and universities. Primary schools have remained open, in part to avoid healthcare workers staying home with their children.

The Public Health Agency issued recommendations to: if possible, work from home; avoid unnecessary travel within the country; engage in social distancing; and for people above 70 to stay at home, as much as possible. Those with even minimal symptoms that could be caused by COVID-19 are recommended to stay home. The karensdag, or initial day without paid sick-leave, has been removed by the government and the length of time one can stay home with pay without a doctor's note has been raised from 7 to 21 days.

The pandemic has put the Swedish healthcare system under severe strain, with tens of thousands of operations being postponed throughout the year, and only emergency and COVID-related care being available during a surge in the winter.

and:

As of 18 March 2021, there have been 744,272 confirmed cumulative cases and 13,262 deaths with confirmed COVID-19[3] in Sweden, with Stockholm County being the most affected (during first wave).[1][12] Sweden has several times the number of confirmed cases and deaths of all neighboring Scandinavian countries; but several other European countries have higher rates of confirmed cases and deaths per capita than Sweden. Close to half of those who died had been living at nursing homes,[13][14][15] a proportion which is similar to other European countries.[16]

And yet, those still advocating abandoning restrictions appear to simply abandon the Swedish argument. 

Atlanta Spa Shootings and Future Follow Up

Bringing us into the present day, or at least present week, where the latest mass shooting is being debated at least in the American press. Speculation is happening, truths are being asserted. Particularly revolving around the role race played in the motives of the Suspect. 

As of writing the early stages of the investigation have turned up mostly evidence that an internal struggle between sex and religiosity are the major motive. Less evidence, but not none, has turned up that the suspect harbors anti-Asian sentiments. 

There's a debate that I would personally evaluate as non-controversial that race plays a role through fetishization of Asian women, this could easily be substantiated through suspects browser history, and a public debate on depictions of Asian women in media is no doubt a constructive outcome that can follow from this. 

There's also a debate that appears to take on the character that race is the primary motivator and the 'personal struggle with sex addiction' is a smokescreen. I am less confident that this notion will be born out in a competent investigation, there is already evidence to support the sex-religiosity conflict that would needs must be excluded and evidence to be found. I am open to that evidence surfacing, but not confident it will. I suspect this narrative currently being asserted though, will fall victim to the failure to follow up effect, and that it may already be a product of an availability cascade.

So I will watch this space.

Tentative Conclusion I will no Doubt Follow Up Some Day

This post is more about the failure to follow up effect, I picked high profile examples where the initially asserted narrative was not supported by the facts found in the investigation. As at the beginning of this post, once again it does not mean the narrative doesn't hold anywhere else (except maybe in the findings regarding violent videogames).

The conclusion is really that I am persuaded this effect exists, specifically > 1. something happens that captures public interest > 2. The public demands an answer, explanation. > 3. A narrative is asserted without being substantiated. > 4. Members of the public are satisfied with 'makes sense to me.' > 5. The public loses all interest in confirming/disconfirming the narrative.

Add to that the availability cascade and because the narrative wasn't followed up to see if it was true the last time, the same narratives get a second airing, which if they prove generally unsubstantiated mean it jeopardizes the chances of getting a correct diagnosis and fixing the problem.

Either way, the Failure to Follow Up effect is probably a lesser concern than good old usual suspect: confirmation bias, and you know motivated reasoning. It may though be significant when thinking about media reform, and one of the more if not most significant domains I'm virtually certain it applies is in the extremely shady business of financial and economic forecasting. 

I feel it interesting.