Clinging to Questionable Statistics

Accuracy in Academia ^ | March 22, 2016 | Malcolm A. Kline

[Academiadotorg]

Academia is supposed to be a place in which scholars pursue inquiries. Perhaps more academics should have inquiring minds.

"One in five women and one in 71 men will be raped at some point in their lives, according to the National Sexual Violence Center," Ingrid Sturgis, an associate professor at Howard University, writes in a special supplement to The Chronicle of Higher Education in an article which appeared on March 18, 2016. Actually, that ratio was rebutted widely and vigorously two years ago.

Christina Hoff Sommers of the American Enterprise Institute summed up the case in a column which appeared in Time magazine. "The one-in-five figure is based on the Campus Sexual Assault Study, commissioned by the National Institute of Justice and conducted from 2005 to 2007," she wrote. "Two prominent criminologists, Northeastern University's James Alan Fox and Mount Holyoke College’s Richard Moran, have noted its weaknesses:

'The estimated 19% sexual assault rate among college women is based on a survey at two large four-year universities, which might not accurately reflect our nation's colleges overall. In addition, the survey had a large non-response rate, with the clear possibility that those who had been victimized were more apt to have completed the questionnaire, resulting in an inflated prevalence figure.'

"Fox and Moran also point out that the study used an overly broad definition of sexual assault," Sommers noted. "Respondents were counted as sexual assault victims if they had been subject to 'attempted forced kissing' or engaged in intimate encounters while intoxicated."

"Defenders of the one-in-five figure will reply that the finding has been replicated by other studies. But these studies suffer from some or all of the same flaws. Campus sexual assault is a serious problem and will not be solved by statistical hijinks."

[Academiadotorg]

With apologies to Socrates, the unexamined statistic is not worth repeating.

[IronJack]

But ... but ... if you examine those statistics closely, they don’t bear out the victimist agenda! You big spoilsport!

[SkyPilot]

Here is a statistic they won't like. Over 90% of all reported incidents were where both students were drinking and had sex. It is obvious that a great majority of the incidents are false reports filed by women who have remorse and guilt following their own actions. The frightening thing is that they have no problem or guilt associated with ruining the lives of young men or throwing them into prison based on their own lies. I am not approving drunkeness or fornication. But the majority of these incidents are NOT rape.

[wildbill]

Reason magazine, no right wing outlet they, had several articles during the time when the ‘mattress girl” was lumbering around Columbia University, complaining after the fact that the provider of the anal sex she requested wouldn’t write or call no mo.

The article from which this 1 in 5 was proved to be bogus but the left continues to use it because it is such an attractive statistic to sell their argument about sexual abuse on campus and to engender Title IX investigations of colleges and students.

Do you recall the figure of 30,000 homeless on the streets of America from several decades ago. It came from a community organizer in D.C. who, when pressed for a source for the number, actually admitted that he made it up out of whole cloth because it was so startling that the press would run with it. It remains as one of those “everybody knows” myths to this very day.