Following the link, I found that the issue in question is a recent column by George Will regarding sexual assault statistics. If only Vox Day would follow his own good advice.
Here’s a rationality quote from the above link that expresses the same notion as Vox Day’s, but has the virtue of concluding a post that actually exercises the kind of critical thinking in question:
when [George Will’s] numbers didn’t add up, he didn’t think critically about what the numbers mean and where they came from. He didn’t research the source of the data or determine if they were compatible, and instead, he willfully tried to minimize the assaults that 1 in 5 college women say they have personally experienced (which, for the record, comes from several different studies). He looked for a loophole, rather than applying critical thinking.
Estimates vary greatly as to the number of women who experience a sexual assault during college, with surveys focused on the United States placing it as low as 1 in 50 (2%)[1] to as high as 1 in 4 (25%).
It seems to me that if studies get so much variance they are likely to be methodologically flawed, if not outright fraudolent.
Rape prevalence among women in the U.S. (the percentage of women who experienced rape at least once in their lifetime so far) is in the range of 15–20%, with different studies disagreeing with each other. (National Violence against Women survey, 1995, found 17.6% prevalence rate;[7] a 2007 national study for the Department of Justice on rape found 18% prevalence rate.[8])
A 15–20% overall rape prevalence in the general female population seems inconsistent with a ~20% prevalence in the female college population, unless you assume that college women are have an exceptionally high risk of being raped, which I would find surprising (I expect that the majority of rapes occurs to victims from socially degraded and impoverished backgrounds).
Not all studies use the same definition of sexual assault. Surveys in particular are subject to question wording and question order effects. As army1987 notes, the ~20% proportion is for sexual assault, not just rape.
Keep in mind that the object-level question here is whether a rape-reporting rate of 12% can possibly be consistent with a ~20% sexual assault rate. Will (and the media in general) misstated the class of events to which the “12%” referred; Will then stated that it could not possibly be the case that the 12% and the 20% were consistent. This is a very strong claim, which means that checking/refuting it is easy in absolute terms. To refute the argument, it is not necessary to have precise estimates—it is only necessary to show that the statistics being reported are broadly consistent.
Following the link, I found that the issue in question is a recent column by George Will regarding sexual assault statistics. If only Vox Day would follow his own good advice.
Here’s a rationality quote from the above link that expresses the same notion as Vox Day’s, but has the virtue of concluding a post that actually exercises the kind of critical thinking in question:
According to Wikipedia:
It seems to me that if studies get so much variance they are likely to be methodologically flawed, if not outright fraudolent.
Moreover:
A 15–20% overall rape prevalence in the general female population seems inconsistent with a ~20% prevalence in the female college population, unless you assume that college women are have an exceptionally high risk of being raped, which I would find surprising (I expect that the majority of rapes occurs to victims from socially degraded and impoverished backgrounds).
Not all studies use the same definition of sexual assault. Surveys in particular are subject to question wording and question order effects. As army1987 notes, the ~20% proportion is for sexual assault, not just rape.
Keep in mind that the object-level question here is whether a rape-reporting rate of 12% can possibly be consistent with a ~20% sexual assault rate. Will (and the media in general) misstated the class of events to which the “12%” referred; Will then stated that it could not possibly be the case that the 12% and the 20% were consistent. This is a very strong claim, which means that checking/refuting it is easy in absolute terms. To refute the argument, it is not necessary to have precise estimates—it is only necessary to show that the statistics being reported are broadly consistent.
IIRC sexual assault is a broader category than rape.
Fair point.
Though In informal discussions the terms are often conflated.