Think through the following scenario. One of the other employees at work has bee

Question

Think through the following scenario. One of the other employees at work has been stealing from the company, and there's an investigation into who is doing it. The company's investigator turns up a great deal of evidence that all fits Person A. (Let's call her "Alice.") With all of this evidence that Alice has been stealing, she's quickly called into the boss's office to be fired. She's angry, of course, and claims to be innocent. She demands to know what the evidence was that supposedly identified her. The boss decides to tell her, thinking that it doesn't make much difference at this point anyway. When Alice hears the evidence, she admits that it all builds a good case that she's guilty; but she also points out that every single piece of evidence that points to her also points (at the same time) to her coworker Bob. So although the boss has a lot of evidence that she's guilty, it's also evidence of Bob's guilt. Furthermore, there's no evidence that decides between Bob and Alice, and no expectation that any will be found in the future.

At this point, the boss is somewhat stuck. He's already told HR that Alice is the thief and announced that she's going to be fired. So he looks again at all the evidence he has against her. It's a LOT of evidence. So he decides to ignore the possibility of Bob's guilt and fires Alice anyway. He says that he knows she's guilty because of all the evidence he has against her, and that amount of evidence is usually enough to decide these sorts of things.

The stealing stops, though it's unclear whether it's because Alice was the thief and is now gone, or because Bob was the thief but he stopped when he came too close to being caught.

Answer the following questions:

1) When the investigator first gave the boss all the evidence against Alice, was the boss justified in believing that she was the thief? (Note that at this point Alice hadn't mentioned that the evidence could be used to implicate Bob instead.) Explain your thinking.

2) Once Alice pointed out that the evidence could be used to implicate Bob instead, was it okay for the boss to claim to KNOW that Alice is guilty? Explain your thinking.

Feel free to respond to the posts of other students, though I urge you to remember our forum rules.

Explanation / Answer

1) Boss was very convinced that Alice is the thief,it was not justified because he didn't give a second thought about it and asked for a thorough investigation about the theft before calling in a Alice.

2) It wasn't okay for the boss to claim that Alice is guilty,he should have probed into the claim of Alice and could have asked for a thorough analysis of the theft ,with proper and fool proof evidence would have proved so.

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