To lighten things up a little: I am sad that Steve Jobs departed this world too early. I have used Macs for around 25 years, and noticed that soon after Jobs died, the Mac OS started to become a little more buggy and glitchy than it had previously been.
At work, Jobs was a complete slave driver. He was abusive to his staff, and people in his office were frightened to be alone with him in the elevator. He would sometimes even sack people on the spot when they happened to ride the elevator with him.
An obsessed perfectionist, he whipped every last ounce of effort out of his employees, in his striving to create an inspired and perfect product. People who worked for Jobs remember him as rude, hostile, and sometimes bringing staff nearly to tears.
Yet he was a brilliant visionary of the digital age, and he sure made damn good computers!
I understand, HIP where you are going wit this and I'm glad you brought it up because I believe that many others in the community feel the same way. They believe that Coyne's abusive tirade was acceptable collateral damage when you compare it to the benefit he is bringing to this community.
There are a few problems with this type of thinking and with the Job's comparison. As far as Jobs is concerned, it is debatable whether his narcissistic personality is what brought him the great success of Apple. Many leaders and CEOs of companies have narcissistic personalities and that might achieve them success because they lead with fear but, in Jobs case, it was his 'thinking out of the box' and being able to envision what people will want in the future that brought his ideas ahead of others. Jobs was actually fired from Apple because of his character and abusive ways. He started another company on his own which never reached great success.
Apple employees had a choice to remain in their jobs and take the abuse or leave and take a job at another company. I wish ME patients had the same choice. I wish I could decide today to NOT have ME and instead just have a cold.
The comparison with brilliance is obviously flawed. I see an ability in Coyne of being tenacious and making a lot of noise - no brilliance there. Furthermore, it is questionable at this point whether having him on our side is a benefit to us. So the comparison really fails.
The greatest problem that I have with this type of thinking is that what measure of abuse is acceptable as collateral damage? and who decides the limits?
This is a slippery and dangerous slope. Did the Germans think that Hitler's outrageous words and actions were acceptable collateral damage in order to take them out of their economic woes?
Some think that Saddam Hussein was an effective leader of Iraq. During his tyrannical control of the country, there was no room or possibility of a hostile take over such as ISIS today. Was all of Saddam's torture and murders acceptable collateral damage?
Coyne's tirade harmed ME patients and advocates. I cannot and will not accept that collateral damage.