Is it time sociology started researching incompetence?

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There appears to be a mismatch between apparent incompetence in the world and the amount of sociological research it attracts. Edmund Chattoe-Brown outlines a sociology of incompetence.

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There appears to be a mismatch between apparent incompetence in the world and the amount of sociological research it attracts. Edmund Chattoe-Brown outlines a sociology of incompetence.

Image courtesy of interviewee. March 25, 2024

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This video video discusses the complexities of defining and assessing incompetence in various contexts, emphasizing that the perception of incompetence is often subjective and influenced by implicit standards. The speaker reflects on how incompetence is challenging to measure and how it can stem from external factors, such as unforeseen circumstances, rather than individual failure.

There is a focus on the difficulties of researching incompetence, as people tend to conceal their own shortcomings due to stigma, making survey data unreliable. The speaker proposes looking into existing data sources, such as official complaints and whistleblower reports, as potential insights into incompetence. Additionally, they suggest conducting experimental research to observe reactions to intentional incompetence in controlled settings.

This video video also highlights the broader societal implications of incompetence, including the significant effects of poor practices in fields like journalism and education, which may not be as visible as critical failures in areas like healthcare. The speaker calls for increased research to better understand incompetence and to develop systems for accountability and improvement across various professions. Overall, they aim to establish practical strategies to reduce incompetence in various fields by learning from high-profile failures and implementing better standards of accountability.

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The flippant answer is that nobody seems to be quite sure.

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Um, my answer is that you can get quite a long way

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by thinking of it as performance relative to a standard.

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Um, that's easy to understand.

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For something like packing up glassware, you can see

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how fast other people do it

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and then compare it with how fast

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a particular person can do it.

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It gets trickier when it's something like an organization,

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how effectively do an insurance company process insurance

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claims, how many mistakes get made,

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how many claims get the wrong determination.

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Um, and then when you add in things like power

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and secrecy, it can get really difficult.

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So to what extent was the horizon,

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fan of worms, a matter of incompetence

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or of kind of politicking or greed or whatever it is?

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So it can get really tricky,

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but that'll do for startles that'll kind of get you going

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with, with trying to research the topic is

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what is the standard and when do people meet it

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or fail to meet it?

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It took the reviewers of the article to help me

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to realize this, for which I'm very grateful,

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that these standards are very rarely objective set as it

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as it were by machines.

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They always require interpretation.

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Uh, unless you are doing a really mechanical job,

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there's always gonna be a certain amount of interpretation.

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There are gonna be things that aren't written down,

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standards that aren't written down.

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Um, and then somebody is going to have to say, well,

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you were incompetent based on the way we

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do things round here.

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Um, you may not have been incompetent in terms

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of the written rules, but you were

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nonetheless incompetent by the prevailing standards

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and people can then respond.

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Um, it wasn't made clear to me what the goals were.

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It wasn't made clear to me what the hidden agenda was.

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So I can't be responsible for failing to perform according

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to these standards that weren't, weren't made clear to me.

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Uh, so again, the the devil is in the details.

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Um, it starts off looking like a fairly simple animal,

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but if we actually look at accusations

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and counter accusations of incompetence,

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it rapidly gets quite complicated

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and subjective, potentially subjective.

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We notice the really disastrous cases when bridges fall down

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and patients die.

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Um, but I suspect probably it's important everywhere.

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The difficulty is it's not equally visible.

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So what's the, what's the cost

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of poor journalism, for example?

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How much does that affect our society when people

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report things that aren't true?

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Um, what's the cost of bad universities?

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Bad academic training.

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They're not as obvious as people dying

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or bridges falling down.

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But the effects can be, can be pretty much incalculable.

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I mean, how much harm can a bad teacher do over the years

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putting off students, not allowing them

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to get reach their full potential?

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Um, I think this is one of the reasons I want

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to explore the topic, not just for its own interest,

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but to get some sense of just what the cost might be.

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It's a bit of an oddity in the sense that

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what academics are supposed to do is they're supposed

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to start with a literature review.

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And I tried that and it worked really badly

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because, a lot of people use in competence

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without really knowing what they're talking about.

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There are a whole bunch of medical, uses

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of incompetence like incompetent cervix,

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which affects your ability to give birth,

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and incompetent to plead in court.

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So I thought what I'm, what I'm gonna have

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to do is I'm gonna have to step back

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and I'm gonna have to say, well, how do people

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actually use this term somewhere

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where it matters somewhere sociological?

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So the reason I scrap the British Journal of Sociology is

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because it's a good quality journal.

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It's a general journal.

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So if people are doing incompetence research,

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it should be visible there.

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Um, and I thought, well, we have

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to start from absolute first principles.

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So what can we learn by what people say about the word?

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And then maybe we can go on

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to do a proper literature review.

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And it was nice to have my hypothesis confirmed

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that this is not really a topic of research in sociology,

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but it was also interesting to see just how unformed

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people's ideas were about incompetence.

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So peer review is supposed to ensure a certain quality of,

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research published,

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and yet there were people calling each other names.

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So a significant fraction of my sample were,

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were just unjustified accusations of incompetence

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to the government, to organizations, one scholar by another.

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And I was kind of like, surely peer review is supposed

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to get rid of this stuff.

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You, you shouldn't have random name calling.

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Um, so my, my basic working hypothesis was confirmed.

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Most people use this word as if it's obvious what it means.

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And actually, I'm not sure it is so obvious.

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Um, but then more interesting things came up in the details.

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So for example, the idea of attribution,

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you assume somebody's incompetent

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because something has gone wrong.

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So for example, somebody turns up for a meeting, you say,

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they're, they're incompetent.

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Um, but actually the train was late,

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so they're not incompetent.

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The railway company potentially is incompetent,

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but maybe the train broke down and that was unavoidable.

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So maybe nobody's incompetent, they're just unlucky.

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So how we establish reasonably that somebody has

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behaved in competently again, is not so simple.

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We have to make sure we don't just jump to conclusions about

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what other people have done

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and should have done and so on and so forth.

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Um, so that would be one example,

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but that was a very small sample of the whole population.

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That was just one kind of flash of insight in a sea of sort

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of sloppy usage.

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So the plan now is to try

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and do the proper literature review with a bit more kind

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of information and try and figure out

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What I missed.

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Um, but it's interesting that this phrase is so widely used

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and so little understood.

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Well, this was something that was occupying me a lot,

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probably on about three different dimensions.

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Firstly, people don't want to admit to incompetence,

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and as the horizon of fair shows, they will go

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to almost any length to cover up previous incompetence,

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doing shocking things, frankly.

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Um, so we are not going to be able to just ask people,

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we can't collect a survey of incompetence

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and ask them questions about their marital status

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or their age or whatever.

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Um, we might be able to do, research,

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ethnographic research, covert research,

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but sociology is quite uncomfortable with misleading people.

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You just sneak into an organization

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and see what you can see.

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Um, so that's tricky.

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So what I'm proposing is that we have

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to start in two directions.

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One is to try and find data that's already there.

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So to analyze things like industrial tribunals,

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official complaints, whistleblowers reports,

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these things are kind of floating out there,

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but they've never been used as far as I can see

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to inform a proper insight into incompetence.

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And the other approach is to take a kind

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of experimental approach.

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So we'll say, well, let's set up a situation.

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Let's get people to do a task

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and then deliberately make one of those people incompetent.

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They'll be in the, in the pay of the researcher

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and then see how other people respond to that.

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Do they freeze them outta the exercise?

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Do they try and talk them out of their incompetence?

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Do they put them in a particular role

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where it doesn't matter?

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So we have to kind of control the environment so

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that we can see what we want to see,

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because finding it in its natural environment is actually

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quite tricky for ethical reasons.

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And because it's, it's quite heavily disapproved of,

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I think one of the problems with a field like this

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that hasn't jelled is it's hard to know,

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how far it will go.

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So for example, there's a whole area in law of negligence,

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and I have no idea at this stage

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how much negligence overlaps with incompetence.

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And it's one of the things I, I'd like to find out.

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Um, but I suspect I'll have to proceed as I go

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and this will give me more insight,

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which will then suggest more research.

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Um, I have this fantasy that I will set up an email address

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and people just email me their tales of incompetence,

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which I think would be fascinating data.

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Um, and once people get used to the idea, they tend to react

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and say, yes, let me tell you about this thing

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that happens to me.

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Um, so I think I'm never gonna be short of data,

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but it will be a start.

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It will allow us to control the environment to the point

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where we start to get rich understandings of

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how people decide that other people are incompetent,

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how they respond to deciding that somebody is incompetent,

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how they make judgements, in social situations.

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So we'll be, we'll have more to work with.

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It won't be the definitive solution

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because this seems to be so, so new.

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If we can understanding in competence better,

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better we might be able to do some things about it.

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Um, one of the things that occurs to me is the,

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the importance of power in various forms in being able

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to cover up incompetence.

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And I think it's really important that we engage with that

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and try to figure out how to minimize the ability to,

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to cover up incompetence.

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Um, and these high profile media scandals like Lucy Let Be

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or Horizon give us some insight into

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how badly wrong things can go.

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But the thing you keep returning to is if people have power,

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they have the power to cover things up

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and they seem to go to any lengths to do that.

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So I think that the main aim for me is to start being able

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to say sensible things about how we would

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reduce incompetence.

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Um, you know, in some areas like medicine may have really

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good systems in place, you now have professional training

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to certain standards you have kind of interviewing

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and all sorts of things to find out

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how competent people are.

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And there are mistakes made.

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There are doctors who turn out to be incompetent,

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but I suspect they're the tiny minority.

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So what we need to do is we need to try

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and get these systems in place in, in other fields,

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in teaching and universities in business to try

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and reduce the amount of incompetence there is.

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Um, I hate to to say

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that the main aim is we need more research,

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but unfortunately I fear it is true in this case.

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We know so little about the phenomenon, even how

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to use the word that we are gonna have to do some more work

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before we we start to deliver policy value.

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I really hope we can do that.

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We can start giving practical advice on how

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to root out incompetence and, and minimize it

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and set up systems to make it less of a problem.

Understanding Incompetence in Performance Standards

00:00:00 - The flippant answer is that nobody seems to be quite sure. my answer is that you can get quite a long way by thinking of it as performance relative to a standard. that's easy to understand. For something like packing up glassware, you can see how fast other people do it and then compare it with how fast a particular person can do it. It gets trickier when it's something like an organization, how effectively do an insurance company process insurance claims, how many mistakes get made,
00:00:34 - and then when you add in things like power and secrecy, it can get really difficult. So to what extent was the horizon, fan of worms, a matter of incompetence or of kind of politicking or greed or whatever it is? So it can get really tricky, but that'll do for startles that'll kind of get you going with, with trying to research the topic is what is the standard and when do people meet it or fail to meet it?
00:01:04 - to realize this, for which I'm very grateful, that these standards are very rarely objective set as it as it were by machines. They always require interpretation. unless you are doing a really mechanical job, there's always gonna be a certain amount of interpretation. There are gonna be things that aren't written down, standards that aren't written down. and then somebody is going to have to say, well,
00:01:34 - do things round here. you may not have been incompetent in terms of the written rules, but you were nonetheless incompetent by the prevailing standards and people can then respond. it wasn't made clear to me what the goals were. It wasn't made clear to me what the hidden agenda was. So I can't be responsible for failing to perform according to these standards that weren't, weren't made clear to me. so again, the the devil is in the details. it starts off looking like a fairly simple animal,
00:02:07 - and counter accusations of incompetence, it rapidly gets quite complicated and subjective, potentially subjective. We notice the really disastrous cases when bridges fall down and patients die. but I suspect probably it's important everywhere. The difficulty is it's not equally visible. So what's the, what's the cost of poor journalism, for example? How much does that affect our society when people report things that aren't true?
00:02:40 - Bad academic training. They're not as obvious as people dying or bridges falling down. But the effects can be, can be pretty much incalculable. I mean, how much harm can a bad teacher do over the years putting off students, not allowing them to get reach their full potential? I think this is one of the reasons I want to explore the topic, not just for its own interest, but to get some sense of just what the cost might be. It's a bit of an oddity in the sense that what academics are supposed to do is they're supposed

Exploring the Complexity of Incompetence

00:03:10 - And I tried that and it worked really badly because, a lot of people use in competence without really knowing what they're talking about. There are a whole bunch of medical, uses of incompetence like incompetent cervix, which affects your ability to give birth, and incompetent to plead in court. So I thought what I'm, what I'm gonna have to do is I'm gonna have to step back and I'm gonna have to say, well, how do people actually use this term somewhere where it matters somewhere sociological?
00:03:42 - because it's a good quality journal. It's a general journal. So if people are doing incompetence research, it should be visible there. and I thought, well, we have to start from absolute first principles. So what can we learn by what people say about the word? And then maybe we can go on to do a proper literature review. And it was nice to have my hypothesis confirmed that this is not really a topic of research in sociology, but it was also interesting to see just how unformed
00:04:15 - So peer review is supposed to ensure a certain quality of, research published, and yet there were people calling each other names. So a significant fraction of my sample were, were just unjustified accusations of incompetence to the government, to organizations, one scholar by another. And I was kind of like, surely peer review is supposed to get rid of this stuff. You, you shouldn't have random name calling. so my, my basic working hypothesis was confirmed.
00:04:49 - And actually, I'm not sure it is so obvious. but then more interesting things came up in the details. So for example, the idea of attribution, you assume somebody's incompetent because something has gone wrong. So for example, somebody turns up for a meeting, you say, they're, they're incompetent. but actually the train was late, so they're not incompetent. The railway company potentially is incompetent,
00:05:21 - So maybe nobody's incompetent, they're just unlucky. So how we establish reasonably that somebody has behaved in competently again, is not so simple. We have to make sure we don't just jump to conclusions about what other people have done and should have done and so on and so forth. so that would be one example, but that was a very small sample of the whole population. That was just one kind of flash of insight in a sea of sort
00:05:51 - So the plan now is to try and do the proper literature review with a bit more kind of information and try and figure out What I missed. but it's interesting that this phrase is so widely used and so little understood. Well, this was something that was occupying me a lot, probably on about three different dimensions. Firstly, people don't want to admit to incompetence, and as the horizon of fair shows, they will go to almost any length to cover up previous incompetence, doing shocking things, frankly.

Researching Incompetence: Challenges and Solutions

00:06:24 - we can't collect a survey of incompetence and ask them questions about their marital status or their age or whatever. we might be able to do, research, ethnographic research, covert research, but sociology is quite uncomfortable with misleading people. You just sneak into an organization and see what you can see. so that's tricky. So what I'm proposing is that we have to start in two directions. One is to try and find data that's already there.
00:06:57 - official complaints, whistleblowers reports, these things are kind of floating out there, but they've never been used as far as I can see to inform a proper insight into incompetence. And the other approach is to take a kind of experimental approach. So we'll say, well, let's set up a situation. Let's get people to do a task and then deliberately make one of those people incompetent. They'll be in the, in the pay of the researcher and then see how other people respond to that.
00:07:25 - Do they try and talk them out of their incompetence? Do they put them in a particular role where it doesn't matter? So we have to kind of control the environment so that we can see what we want to see, because finding it in its natural environment is actually quite tricky for ethical reasons. And because it's, it's quite heavily disapproved of, I think one of the problems with a field like this that hasn't jelled is it's hard to know, how far it will go. So for example, there's a whole area in law of negligence,
00:07:57 - how much negligence overlaps with incompetence. And it's one of the things I, I'd like to find out. but I suspect I'll have to proceed as I go and this will give me more insight, which will then suggest more research. I have this fantasy that I will set up an email address and people just email me their tales of incompetence, which I think would be fascinating data. and once people get used to the idea, they tend to react and say, yes, let me tell you about this thing that happens to me.
00:08:29 - but it will be a start. It will allow us to control the environment to the point where we start to get rich understandings of how people decide that other people are incompetent, how they respond to deciding that somebody is incompetent, how they make judgements, in social situations. So we'll be, we'll have more to work with. It won't be the definitive solution because this seems to be so, so new. If we can understanding in competence better, better we might be able to do some things about it.
00:09:01 - the importance of power in various forms in being able to cover up incompetence. And I think it's really important that we engage with that and try to figure out how to minimize the ability to, to cover up incompetence. and these high profile media scandals like Lucy Let Be or Horizon give us some insight into how badly wrong things can go. But the thing you keep returning to is if people have power, they have the power to cover things up

Strategies for Reducing Incompetence Across Fields

00:09:31 - So I think that the main aim for me is to start being able to say sensible things about how we would reduce incompetence. you know, in some areas like medicine may have really good systems in place, you now have professional training to certain standards you have kind of interviewing and all sorts of things to find out how competent people are. And there are mistakes made. There are doctors who turn out to be incompetent, but I suspect they're the tiny minority. So what we need to do is we need to try
00:10:02 - in teaching and universities in business to try and reduce the amount of incompetence there is. I hate to to say that the main aim is we need more research, but unfortunately I fear it is true in this case. We know so little about the phenomenon, even how to use the word that we are gonna have to do some more work before we we start to deliver policy value. I really hope we can do that. We can start giving practical advice on how
00:10:34 - and set up systems to make it less of a problem.

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