When good intentions, without clear thinking, lead to bad outcomes

From The Unintended Consequences of #MeToo: Evidence from Research Collaborations by Marina Gertsberg.  From the Abstract.

How did #MeToo alter the cost of collaboration between women and men? I study research collaborations involving junior female academic economists and show they start fewer new research projects after #MeToo. The decline is driven largely by fewer collaborations with new male co-authors at the same institution. I show that the drop in collaborations is concentrated in universities where the perceived risk of sexual harassment accusations for men is high - that is, when both sexual harassment policies are more ambiguous exposing men to a larger variety of claims and the number of public sexual harassment incidents is high. The results suggest that the social movement is associated with increased cost of collaboration that disadvantaged the career opportunities of women.

On the one hand, I am pretty skeptical about our ability to measure these effect with any great confidence.  On the other hand, from a systems perspective, it is an absolutely valid question that should explored.

If the probability is increased of being accused of something and there is also an increase in the negative consequences of such an accusation (well or ill-founded), and if there is no due-process protections (all consequences of the MeToo movement), then individuals likely to be exposed to such accusations (again, whether the accusations are justified or not), will take actions to reduce their exposure.  Particularly those who are in fact not predators.  

Obviously sexual harassment is a serious issue which needs to be addressed.  But MeToo with its indiscriminate accusations, its extreme punishments, and its complete abandonment of due process, was not the strategy to address harassment.

Advocates get all excited about whatever might be their belief or ideological interventions.  As long as it was mitigated by three considerations, that might almost be alright.  Whatever the intervention:

Does it achieve the stated objective?

Does it do so at the least cost possible?

What are the trade-offs involved?

Who benefits and who loses?

What are the unintended consequences?

You need to ask at least these questions (there are others).  If the answer to any of them are "No" or "Don't know," then there is a strong presumption that the intervention should be put on hold.  

Gertsberg is answering the fifth question.  Did raising the risk of being (falsely) accused lead to male researchers constraining the degree of their collaboration with female colleagues?  Gertsberg is suggesting that there was a material decline in collaboration to the detriment of the women researchers.

An unintended consequence but an easily anticipated outcome from a systems perspective.