It sounds like they meant they used to work at CFAR, not that they currently do.
Also given the very small number of people who work at CFAR currently, it would be very hard for this person to retain anonymity with that qualifier so…
I think it’s safe to assume they were a past employee… but they should probably update their comment to make that clearer because I was also perplexed by their specific phrasing.
It sounds like they meant they used to work at CFAR, not that they currently do.
The interpretation of “I’m a CFAR employee commenting anonymously to avoid retribution” as “I’m not a CFAR employee, but used to be one” seems to me to be sufficiently strained and non-obvious that we should infer from the commenter’s choice not to use clearer language that they should be treated as having deliberately intended for readers to believe that they’re a current CFAR employee.
I like the local discourse norm of erring on the side of assuming good faith, but like steven0461, in this case I have trouble believing this was misleading by accident. Given how obviously false, or at least seriously misleading, many of these claims are (as I think accurately described by Anna/Duncan/Eli), my lead hypothesis is that this post was written by a former staff member, who was posing as a current staff member to make the critique seem more damning/informed, who had some ax to grind and was willing to engage in deception to get it ground, or something like that...?
FYI I just interpreted it to mean “former staff member” automatically. (This is biased by my belief that CFAR has very few current staff members so of course it was highly unlikely to be one, but I don’t think it was an unreasonably weird reading)
It sounds like they meant they used to work at CFAR, not that they currently do.
Also given the very small number of people who work at CFAR currently, it would be very hard for this person to retain anonymity with that qualifier so…
I think it’s safe to assume they were a past employee… but they should probably update their comment to make that clearer because I was also perplexed by their specific phrasing.
The interpretation of “I’m a CFAR employee commenting anonymously to avoid retribution” as “I’m not a CFAR employee, but used to be one” seems to me to be sufficiently strained and non-obvious that we should infer from the commenter’s choice not to use clearer language that they should be treated as having deliberately intended for readers to believe that they’re a current CFAR employee.
I like the local discourse norm of erring on the side of assuming good faith, but like steven0461, in this case I have trouble believing this was misleading by accident. Given how obviously false, or at least seriously misleading, many of these claims are (as I think accurately described by Anna/Duncan/Eli), my lead hypothesis is that this post was written by a former staff member, who was posing as a current staff member to make the critique seem more damning/informed, who had some ax to grind and was willing to engage in deception to get it ground, or something like that...?
It seems misleading in a non-accidental way, but it seems fairly plausible that their main motive was to obscure their identity.
FYI I just interpreted it to mean “former staff member” automatically. (This is biased by my belief that CFAR has very few current staff members so of course it was highly unlikely to be one, but I don’t think it was an unreasonably weird reading)
PhoenixFriend edited the comment.