This from @jk_rowling comes closer than anything else I've read to capturing why, as the Jason Arday story was unfolding over the past few weeks, I was terrified for him. It's not that I thought the criticism of him was unwarranted - that isn't what this is about. Rather it's that I wished there were some way we could collectively recognize when the harsh light of unwelcome stardom is likely to be too much for someone it has fallen on, and somehow back away from it a bit to give them space to breathe - space to go on living. Part of my fear is that he seems to have been a fabulist, and, as Rowling points out, fabulists are almost definitionally more sensitive than most to how they are seen. But there is another aspect to this that I unfortunately know a lot about, which is that I don't think people appreciate how difficult it is when powerful institutions come after you - and X very much is an institution - even when you believe you are wholly in the right, and probably more so when you do not. I admit I am particularly sensitive to this because it is exactly what happened to my father. For those of you who don't know, he was an intramural scientist at the NIH and uncovered someone in his lab fabricating data. When the NIH investigated, the fraudster didn't show up, and the powerful section head who had hired him decided to shift the blame to my father. Believing that he couldn't fight the institution, and convinced that they were going to take away his career and life, he killed himself. I also know a little bit about what it's like to be at the center of uncontrollable firestorms that seemed like they might - and in one case actually did - unravel my life. I don't know why their effect on me was different - probably because both my father and Arday seemed to deeply respect the institutions that came after them, whereas I did not. But I definitely felt a little bit of the despair that ultimately consumed them, and so I understand how potent it is. What does this mean? I don't really know. I'm not interested in trying to hang Arday's or my father's death on anyone. I don't think we should try to implement rules about who's allowed to criticize who when. And I don't think people should escape scrutiny for their actions because they might kill themselves if they do. I do hope, however, that people learn something from this. Maybe it would help if we all remembered that we are all fragile in our own ways, and that it's rarely clear to strangers how. And maybe those of us who believe that even people whose actions we disdain don't deserve to be driven to suicide for them can modulate our actions accordingly.