Recent events have made many Hongkongers question the competence of their government officials and leading health professionals. How should blame be ascribed? Are 'fall guys' (self-designated or otherwise) really in Hong Kong's best interests?
To a certain extent, yes - particularly in the case of personally unpopular officials. They have failed in one important part of their job: to represent satisfactorily the mood of the population which they serve. This can be justifiable, some believe. The ultra-right in the US is fond of evoking US president Lincoln's and British prime minister Winston Churchill's unpopularity, when supporting President George W. Bush's increasingly unpopular stand on Iraq. But such paternalism takes tremendous political power.
One advantage of a fall guy (or gal) is that all sorts of unpleasantness can be projected on to the unfortunate and dumped along with him or her, giving a population the sense of being able to start afresh. The past problems, not to put too Freudian a spin on it, are purged.
But what about an unelected medical professional who has earned a position through academic and professional achievement? Cronyism exists in every field. But some doors cannot be opened without certain academic accomplishments. So, when these professionals fail to perform adequately, should they be fired or retrained?
This is a worldwide dilemma. It is the conflict between the status of formal, knowledge-based education on the one hand and what psychological research has taught us about the nature of competence on the other. They just do not match.
Most assume that when people are bad at their jobs, it is because of some sort of deficit in technical or logic-based knowledge. Even among 'enlightened' circles, a highly trained medical professional, for example, following a poorly handled series of events, would be sent on some sort of training course loaded with facts that do not actually touch on the problematic behaviour.
An example of this was documented by T. Becher in Competence in the Learning Society. An anaesthetist reported on a surgeon who consistently failed to study the effects of his actions - and so never took appropriate corrective action when he made mistakes. One reason the surgeon avoided addressing his errors was because it would inevitably involve many members of staff - a prospect that neither the surgeon nor the hospital was willing to stomach. Ultimately, it was easier to get rid of the anaesthetist.