1. It will succeed in stopping some incidents of bullying.
2. Victims will feel emotional relief that others are standing up for them.
3. Those standing up for victims will feel proud of themselves.
4. Kids will learn that it is good to help people who are suffering.

What are the minuses of this approach? This list is longer than the list of pluses.  Admittedly, it might reflect my own bias, but as far as I know, this is the only place in the world where you will read these explanations. So I hope you will thank me for it despite my possible bias. This list should help you understand why the wonderful intervention in the research study failed to have a wonderful outcome.

1. It puts bystanders in the role of judge. As any judge will tell you, it is not always obvious who is the innocent party and who is the guilty one. Many people use their weakness to manipulate others. How are students supposed to acquire the wisdom to judge who is the good one and who is the bad one in every situation?
2. Judging is serious business. A judge, at best, can make one side happy. Both sides still hate each other, and one side hates the judge, too. Judges do not win popularity contests. There have been judges who were killed by people whom they judged against.
3. It reinforces kids for playing the victim role. They will learn that by showing distress, others step in to help them. So they will become further entrenched in their victim role.
4. Having learned that it pays to get upset because others step in to help them, kids are likely to continue getting upset when they are bullied. But getting upset is precisely what fuels the bullying. Furthermore, they will be more brazen in taking on their bullies, knowing that others will step in to take on their bullies for them, so even more bullying incidents will follow.
5. Kids will learn that it is not their responsibility to handle social difficulties on their own, but should expect others around them to solve their problems for them. What will they do when there are no bystanders around to help them? Who will be there to take their side when they grow up and are tormented by their spouses, children, in-laws, colleagues and bosses?
6. We want children to develop self-confidence and self-esteem. How can they possibly develop these traits when they are told they can’t handle bullies on their own, but need to depend upon others to help them?
7. When kids stand up against bullies, the hostilities can escalate. Is there any guarantee that the bullies will quietly give in and leave the victims alone? Just as victims are enlisting help of allies, the bullies may enlist their own allies. This is what happened to Sharif in the news story cited above.
8. Instructing kids to stand up against bullies encourages them to think of others in this demeaning manner–bullies. Rather than seeing people as basically similar but less-than-saints, they will think of anyone acting mean as a "bully," which, as the anti-bully experts are teaching them, means a cowardly, evil person who gets pleasure in causing pain to those weaker than themselves. Such an attitude towards people can only hurt their future interpersonal relationships.
9. Kids who are taught in school that the morally correct thing is to stand up for victims against bullies are likely to continue doing so throughout their lives. But professionals who understand interpersonal dynamics know that protecting people from each other usually causes more harm than good. It is often referred to as “enabling.” When the kids grow up and become parents, they will protect their younger children from the older ones, which will cause endless sibling rivalry, destroying the home atmosphere and making themselves and their children miserable. When they feel their spouse is bullying their child, they will take their child’s side against the spouse. But this is precisely what leads many kids to become defiant. They discover that when they get one parent mad at them, the other parent defends them. Then the two parents fight each other, so it’s “divide and conquer” for the child. And this dynamic sometimes leads the couple to divorce.
10. This intervention does what anti-bully education in general does: encourages the irrational belief that we are entitled to a life in which no one is ever mean to us. This belief is likely to make us feel angry and vengeful whenever we are faced with the inevitable reality that people are often mean to us.

So, before you blindly support an intervention, consider the potential minuses as well as the pluses.