Speaking of where/how people get news (or maybe we weren’t, but I’m not scrolling up):
I read the other day of a 2015 Gallup survey reporting that over half the people polled believed that at least 20% of the U.S. population was gay (33% felt that the number was >25%). This is in contrast to an earlier survey of theirs, which found ~4% of the participants self-identifying as LGBT, and a 2014 NHIS survey reporting 1.6% as L/G and 0.7% as B.
Only about a thousand people participated, but it still makes one wonder to what extent the gay rights movement may have benefited from the public misconception that this is an issue affecting 1 in 5 people versus 1 in 50.
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Anyway, I feel this might be heading for a train wreck hijack so I’m not going to pursue it any more in the thread haha[/quote]
No way, man. Talking about political activism masquerading as objective research is definitely in the spirit of things 'round here.
Just so long as we all agree to not spend the next 200 posts arguing about the veracity of climatostratigraphic measurement apparatuses, all’s good.
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Hate to break it to you, but there are a lot of academic scientists that are neither disinterested or objective about this[/quote]
$$$
Clinical research ain’t much better, if I’m being honest.
I completely agree to that. If someone wants to do that make it a different thread specifically about climate. Ugh.
Although I can’t claim disinteredness, as climate research is something I actively attempt to stay abreast of and informed on. Still…for the love of all that is good let nobody turn this thread into that.
Spot on about the money (also let’s not forget prestige and power and political clout)
Have to agree to disagree on clinical research however. They are worlds apart in terms of objectivity and robustness of checks and balances (or for that matter, research quality itself)
Yeah, in hindsight, comparing it to climate change is a bit of a stretch. But from working in Phase IIA/IIB and Phase III trials, I’d personally have major reservations about taking a drug that hasn’t been out in the wild for at least 5 years, unless absolutely necessary.
Great video of the Kimmel show. I hope in making fun of PC that at least some in show biz are actually turning their backs on this foolishness. In part I think that’s one of the reasons that Trump won. People are fed up with pc nonsense.
Thanks for posting this I got a real kick out of it.
That’s really interesting. We know misuse of statistics is very common.
I’ve seen some numbers about the incidence of sexual assault on college campuses. One of these often repeated, “The campus rape industry’s central tenet is that one-quarter of all college girls will be raped or be the targets of attempted rape by the end of their college years (completed rapes outnumbering attempted rapes by a ratio of about three to two).”
Do we all of a sudden have a huge increase in college rapists, or is this mostly a function of new reporting rules? Some terribly inaccurate survey? A belief that we now have a college rape culture? More drinking and a shift in the culture/ hookup scene? A combination of factors?
Some of this is due to Obama’s Dear Colleague letter related to campus sexual violence, and new Title IX standards for defining what is sexual assault and consent. Many more sort of minor infractions are being reported as sexual assault. I’ve read several articles that debunk the hysteria about rape culture. Not saying we don’t have some issue with it here, but I suspect there’s some misuse of stats going on. Kind of an older article form City Journal about it that I remembered.
About bias, we’re all prone to cognitive bias when we look at information. Stuff like the availability cascade, which is “a self-reinforcing process in which a collective belief gains more and more plausibility through it’s increasing repetition in public discourse. Repeat something long enough and it will become true.” If I read a couple of articles about rape culture, a famous person tweets about it, and then I hear it from a professor, it must be true.
If an authority figure repeats it, we may be subject to authority bias. We are more likely to decide the opinion or information is accurate, and we’re more likely to be influenced by it. This is why it’s particularly damaging when the President, or maybe even the morning show anchor passes along bad statistics or misinformation. We tend to believe they have special knowledge that we can trust.
Detroit is America’s most violent city. Its violent crime rate for all four violent felonies—that’s rape, murder, aggravated assault, and robbery—is 2%. Its rape rate is 0.05%. A 20% crime rate for any crime, much less one as serious as rape, is virtually unheard of. Not even in Africa’s most brutal civil wars has anything been experienced in human history like a 20% crime rate. And yet despite a rape rate that is allegedly 400 times that of Detroit’s, sophisticated, highly educated baby boomer mothers are beating down the doors of campuses to try to get their daughters in.
From on Heather MacDonald. This really got rolling from a very unscientific survey in Ms. magazine. Ridiculous.
An article and survey in Ms. magazine started all this in 1986. They reported—at that point it was a one-in-four figure— that 73% of the women who Ms. magazine and their researcher, Mary Koss, declared to be rape victims, when asked directly, “Have you been raped?” said they hadn’t been. Forty-two percent of those alleged rape victims went on to have sex again with their alleged assailants.
What might have started as data from some really poorly constructed survey gets used to fit a political narrative. And fund campus women’s centers, counseling resources, or educational programs about assault, etc… This is a growing bureaucracy.
Of course, Trump’s comments about Mexican rapists can fit into this category. Yes, there are some criminals, but the average immigrant is not a rapist. I think he made some very blanket comments about crime, without citing any numbers that I’m aware of. We should deport or incarcerate criminals, but we shouldn’t be worried because there’s some really high percentage of rapists crossing the border.
To arrive at such a number, the definition of sex had to be expanded to things like a woman being unwantedly kissed by a man, or her butt pinched. That behavior isn’t ok but I wouldn’t equate it to unwanted forceful sex.
Yes. You’d be hard pressed to find a woman who hasn’t had a man put his hand over her hip, or breast when dancing, or who ended up getting kissed by someone when she didn’t really want to be kissed. It’s been awhile, but I never recall a young man asking me, “Do I have your consent to drop my hand down from your waist to your butt next time we’re slow dancing?” or “Would it be alright if I lean in and kiss you next time you look up at me?” Under these kinds of rules, most of us have been “assaulted.”
It’s actually a pretty negative thing because it makes us question behavior that REALLY is assault and should be taken seriously. There’s a constant report of sexual assaults on the campus where I work. I think most are much more serious than the examples I just gave, but we don’t want to trivialize truly violent behavior by over reporting stuff that isn’t violence.
It’s been awhile since I read up on this, but as I recall it went beyond the surreptitious kiss or touching when dancing. I’m probably a rapist because I’ve been to concerts and ridden on crowded subway cars where I’ve bumped or been pushed into women who probably didn’t want me touching them. And I don’t mean creepy old aqualung grinding his crotch into a woman’s ass but me standing next to you and my hip bumping your hip. They would call that unwanted touching and therefore rape. It’s absurd, and has been de-bunked for years but they won’t let it go away.
Not rape, but could be broadly considered assault. I know what you’re saying though about that stat being junk. The definitions vary a bit by state, and college campuses have their own codes. Unwanted touching, but also a lot of language about getting verbal consent every step of the way. If you break down what that would look like, everybody here would be guilty of assault so it’s a little silly. Two students who have been drinking really can’t give consent, and shouldn’t be engaging in sex at all. Tell that to everybody at a frat party, right? I don’t know the stats, but it seems that one or both parties drinking is involved in most campus assaults. Guess what comes in the UCLA freshman welcome package? A UCLA shot glass!
I don’t want laws or rules that become unenforceable or that make most of us technically violators. That becomes silly, and takes away from the person who has really been assaulted.
What has happened with all these rules is, you basically have to leave planet Earth to have fun these days. Safe spaces, dry campuses, rules requiring consent…it’s like you have to walk around wearing an anthrax suit on.