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I’m curious what other professions have analogous issues. Police who seed crime? (Surely.) Developers who insert bugs?
Key information: There’s roughly 100 firefighter arsonists convicted every year in North America and all of them are serial arsonists, which means three or more fires,” Nordskog told CBC. According to Nordskog, firefighter arsonists tend to be young males who recently joined the fire service, who may become bored, desire recognition and struggle with anger or frustration. All things considered, it’s probably a smalle…
I don't think you can extrapolate it to every profession lol. Even in your example, doctors and cops face much more scrutiny and doing an "undoctor" thing can mean your career is gone. It is far easier for them to comit arson tbh than do the equivalent opposite of their profession's general aims
eg: earlier this month https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-03/perth-paediatrician-c...
> “There’s roughly 100 firefighter arsonists convicted every year in North America and all of them are serial arsonists, which means three or more fires,” OK, so why should I care? A brief Google shows the population of North America at ~600 million people. And the number of firefighters in North America at ~1.3 million. So your likelihood of being victimized by a serial firefighter arsonist is about the same as bein…
I looked it up: About a million firefighters in the US, including volunteer firefighters. Having 1 in 10,000 of them convicted of arson each year is a wild statistic.
More sobering thought: conviction rates are typically a small percentage of the people who do the foul deed. The definition of "arsonist", for example. What if someone started "just one" fire?
A more sobering thought: of the total fires fought each year, how many are started by those rogue firefighters?
A most sobering thought: why is it that there is so much fallow time, that they get bored?
Key information: There’s roughly 100 firefighter arsonists convicted every year in North America and all of them are serial arsonists, which means three or more fires,” Nordskog told CBC. According to Nordskog, firefighter arsonists tend to be young males who recently joined the fire service, who may become bored, desire recognition and struggle with anger or frustration. All things considered, it’s probably a smalle…
So, the number '100', has to wildly low, as some arsonists will not have been caught, or only started one or two fires.
Key information: There’s roughly 100 firefighter arsonists convicted every year in North America and all of them are serial arsonists, which means three or more fires,” Nordskog told CBC. According to Nordskog, firefighter arsonists tend to be young males who recently joined the fire service, who may become bored, desire recognition and struggle with anger or frustration. All things considered, it’s probably a smalle…
There's roughly 200 doctors convicted every year in the U.S. alone of criminal 'patient abuse or neglect', for data compiled between 1988 and 2026 [1]. While I'd prefer to cite the 'patient abuse' figure since 'patient harmer' is the most equivalent behavior to 'firefighter arsonist' (both cause the problem they treat), I think it's worth remembering that human beings — regardless of their profession — have a slim but non-zero chance of deciding to create problems that give them professional satisfaction to solve.
[1] https://plaindiscipline.com/action-type/conviction-patient-a... —
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think you can extrapolate it to every profession lol. Even in your example, doctors and cops face much more scrutiny and doing an "undoctor" thing can mean your career is gone. It is far easier for them to comit arson tbh than do the equivalent opposite of their profession's general aims
Despite which there's a steady trickle of paediatricians (doctors specialising in child care) being rumbled for various forms of child related sexual activity. eg: earlier this month https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-03/perth-paediatrician-c...
Key information: There’s roughly 100 firefighter arsonists convicted every year in North America and all of them are serial arsonists, which means three or more fires,” Nordskog told CBC. According to Nordskog, firefighter arsonists tend to be young males who recently joined the fire service, who may become bored, desire recognition and struggle with anger or frustration. All things considered, it’s probably a smalle…
This may also be subject to survivorship bias, and there may be a portion of firefighter arsonists who escape prosecution or conviction
I’m curious what other professions have analogous issues. Police who seed crime? (Surely.) Developers who insert bugs?
Why will developers insert bugs and make their own work harder? there is no extra recognition there, which is primarily a reason why they are doing it. But if you are regularly shipping bugs because you feel good at then fixing it and expect people to appreciate you for it, how long do you think that dev will last at a role?