msmith wrote:
alphytha wrote:
To be fair to China, this sort of thing happens in other countries too. Last year a homeless man in New York defended a woman from an attacker, and ended up getting stabbed in the process. He lay on the footpath dying for over an hour while over twenty people walked past, some stopping to take cellphone pictures.

Yeah, and it's not even a new phenomenon. Every law school in the country teaches the Kitty Genovese case to illustrate the proposition that failing to report a crime is not usually a crime itself. Something like 38 people watched Kitty Genovese get raped and murdered on a street in New York in the 1960s, and not only did no one try to help her, no one even bothered to call the police.
Since the group has already argued the misconception of the McDonald's coffee case, I guess it's time to bring up the misconception of the Kitty Genovese case. Most people still believe it was a bunch of people sitting and watching, when in fact it was a rather complicated situation that took place in different areas of a building complex, and there were no witnesses at all to the whole thing - people saw moments that weren't necessarily overly alarming.   I can't find the very detailed article I read a few years ago that went through a clear timeline of events and what the neighbors would have heard/seen and their actions, but the gist is (quoted from Wikipedia) "The lead is dramatic but factually inaccurate. None of the witnesses observed the attacks in their entirety. Because of the layout of the complex and the fact that the attacks took place in different locations, no witness saw the entire sequence of events. Most only heard portions of the incident without realizing its seriousness, a few saw only small portions of the initial assault, and no witnesses directly saw the final attack and rape in an exterior hallway, which resulted in Genovese's death.[1] Additionally, after the initial attack punctured her lungs (leading to her eventual death from asphyxiation), it is unlikely that she was able to scream at any volume.[19]"

It's now considered more of a parable than an actual event.  Interesting!

CHG