I take it the claim is roughly that people who make an effort to tackle sexual violence don’t actually believe the percentage of women on campus who’ve experienced sexual violence is around 20% and think it’s lower (while the 20% is just a belief in belief).
Once I was at a lecture about violence against women, where the lecturer told us that 20% of women are victims of domestic violence. I asked her if she knows in which country and approximately which decade was this research done; suggesting that the results for e.g. Sweden could be different than for e.g. Afghanistan, and also maybe the results now could be different from e.g. half century ago.
She said that the research was replicated many times, and that no matter which country, or which year—or even which definition of domestic violence was used! -- the results are always 20%. Somewhat ironically, after hearing about so much successful replication, my faith in the research actually decreased.
Maybe “20%” is some psychological attractor, where all values smaller than half naturally converge.
I also read somewhere an explanation (but haven’t verified it) that the number of rapes at campus was achieved by surveying students in the first grade, adding together the results for “rape” and “attempted rape”, and then multiplying the result by five (for five years of study). If that’s true, even ignoring the “attempted” part, I think the linear approximation is wrong.
First, it ignores the possibility that some factors could make being raped more likely in some parts of the population (such as binge drinking, or choosing violent boyfriends, or maybe just being in a really horrible campus), so being raped at grade X may overlap strongly with being raped at grade Y, and R(X ∪ Y) < R(X) + R(Y). Second, this approach multiplies the Lizardman’s Constant by five, which coincidentally already provides the result of 20%.
I don’t want to depreciate a serious issue, but I really wish that people doing research would start taking methodology more seriously.
She said that the research was replicated many times, and that no matter which country, or which year—or even which definition of domestic violence was used! -- the results are always 20%.
I guess lying is one option, believing a liar is another option, and… well, are there any realistic options beyond that? (Maybe something in between, like suspecting an information, but deciding to suppress the feeling in the name of the greater good and being on the right side of history.)
But how do I distinguish between these two options, in real time? Ask “hey, lady, it occured to be that you are either lying or stupid—and because I don’t want to uncharitably accuse you of something that you are not, could you please help me solve this dilemma?” I don’t suppose that would work.
I tried communicating with mindkilled people in the past, it didn’t go well. (I get accused of something; they congratulate themselves for disarming an evil person.) Now I usually suppress the urge.
If there is a forum where people could rationally communicate this kind of concerns, I don’t know about it. Christina Hoff Sommers try to address the problem of fake statistics in her book, in return she got her Wikipedia page vandalized. I don’t expect to do better.
I guess lying is one option, believing a liar is another option, and… well, are there any realistic options beyond that?
Sure. There is a very popular option of “I will look only here, I will not look there and even if I accidentally glance over there, I will quickly avert my gaze and feel guilty about my transgression”.
Deliberate ignorance combined with cherry-picking evidence can get you very very far.
But how do I distinguish between these two options, in real time?
If only there were some way to think about the two options in something like probabilities… :-)
I tried communicating with mindkilled people in the past, it didn’t go well.
You mean to tried to deconvert them? No surprise it didn’t go well.
Note that the aims of the conversation can be quite limited, though. It’s up to you to define your goals and they don’t have to be “convince that person that her belief is wrong”.
I tried communicating with mindkilled people in the past, it didn’t go well. (I get accused of something; they congratulate themselves for disarming an evil person.) Now I usually suppress the urge.
I don’t think she’s mindkilled. Basically in this case you both haven’t read the literature but she’s in a position where she’s not willing to admit to ot having read the research because that means she would lose status.
A good question might be: “Then how does it come that Louis Harris et al only found 2% of woman to have been raped?”
If there is a forum where people could rationally communicate this kind of concerns, I don’t know about it.
Skeptics.Stackexchange is a good forum for this purpose. I think it makes sense to open questions there whenever I can boil down the claim to a specific form.
“She said that the research was replicated many times, and that no matter which country, or which year—or even which definition of domestic violence was used! -- the results are always 20%”—that’s doesn’t sound like a vague assumption to me. That sounds like she’s being very specific.
I guess you can call it lying if you want, but that is a thing people do very frequently without thinking about or considering that they are lying, namely making very precise statements when in fact there is something vague in their minds.
I don’t want to depreciate a serious issue, but I really wish that people doing research would start taking methodology more seriously.
It seems to me that the woman with whom you were speaking likely wasn’t well versed in the research. Why do you think the conversation to her tells you much about whether the people doing the reserach take methodology seriously?
I may be influenced too much by Who Stole Feminism?. By the way, the lady was a university professor, and is considered a local expert on the topic (that’s why she was giving the lecture), so even if she merely doesn’t know the research in the area she specializes on, that’s disappointing.
EDIT: I recommend reading the book. It is an attempt to trace back to the origins of some famous research, and the results are quite sad. :(
so even if she merely doesn’t know the research in the area she specializes on, that’s disappointing.
Be careful to not confuse the quest about seeking truth with beliefs about the capabilites of individual people.
Another interesting counterquestion would be:
Do you really mean that there is no country that ever started a policy that reduced the amount women are victims of domestic violence? What does that say about the job that feminist activists do, when they don’t have any effects on the problem?
I recommend reading the book
Why do you consider it to be a good investment of time?
I think the book gives some insight into how popular myths are created in feminism. If you are interested in the topics feminists talk about, this could make you update probabilities of their statements. Otherwise, it can be interesting in general how easily a completely fabricated stuff or misinterpreted research can become “common knowledge”.
If you are against feminism, it gives you some argument-soldiers.
If you support feminism, then it’s like reading about scientific fraud, and realizing that it includes a few things you believe.
There appears to be some reason to doubt the intellectual honesty of the book (e.g., CHS complains that feminists say X was in favour of wife-beating and quotes something X said that points the other way … but it turns out she cut X off in mid-sentence and actually the full sentence is advocating wife-beating).
That doesn’t stop it being a useful source of things that might be wrong with contemporary feminism, but I think I’d want to check anything she said before believing it. That’s not a bad idea for any book on an inflammatory topic, but it does mean that reading it mightn’t be a very efficient way of acquiring correct knowledge about contemporary feminism.
Well, her meta-point is that no one checks sources anymore. So someone makes up a fact, or quotes a fictional research proving the fact, someone else quotes that in their book, yet another person quotes the previous book… and soon “everyone knows” it.
And if someone checks the sources, they usually don’t go beyond “the book A cited book B, and the book B really contains it, so everything is okay” (while the problem is that the book B quotes an organization that denies ever making that kind of research, or the book B makes the opposite conclusion than the original research).
her meta-point is that no one checks sources anymore.
Sure. But making that point by falsifying your own sources doesn’t seem to me like good practice. Though I guess it does then enable you to say with complete confidence that at least one book purporting to be feminist doesn’t treat its sources well.
Well, her meta-point is that no one checks sources anymore.
There no golden point in history where people used to carefully check their sources. If anything the people I discuss with are more likely to check their sources because the internet makes it much easier than it used to be.
In this case you seem to advocate an approach of being against the feminist tribe because there are people in that community who believe in myths. I on the other hand advocate to simply be in the pro-primary-source-checking-in-a-collaborative-way tribe. That’s why I have a skeptics.stackexchange T-shirt.
In this case you seem to advocate an approach of being against the feminist tribe because there are people in that community who believe in myths.
Only if you also consider telling people about bad or fake scientific research “being against the scientist tribe”. Under that definition, many people on LW would be against the scientist tribe.
And it’s not just random people in that community who believe in myths. It often includes people teaching the topic at universities. I wouldn’t expect an average person to have correct beliefs about things, but I expect better from people who pretend doing science. (Unless it is a pseudoscience or “sacred science”.)
If skeptics.stackexchange works for you, okay. (To verify that, I would have to read the book again, list the specific claims, and then either look at what stackexchange already said about them, or ask the question if it wasn’t asked before.)
And it’s not just random people in that community who believe in myths. It often includes people teaching the topic at universities.
It’s not like that’s different in a science like proper biology. You have always some issues that people care deeply enough to read the primary sources and some issues that are just fun to talk about and where myths get passed around.
There are scientistis like Feymann who don’t simply believe others that they should brush their teeth but few people care about primary sources on that level.
To verify that, I would have to read the book again, list the specific claims
The main problem with just reading the book is that it simply presents the viewpoint of one person and as gjm suggests a person with an agenda. A book has no dynamic mechanism for checking-and-balancing itself.
Skeptics has a mechanism where multiple people look at answers and vote on them. It’s not perfect but it’s a better to form my opinion than reading an opinionated book by one side of a conflict.
I have no idea how good results you get from the skeptic.stackexchange; whether people there track the citations to their original sources, and whether all questions get answered. If that works okay, then I guess the book can only point you towards some questions you wouldn’t ask otherwise.
Once I was at a lecture about violence against women, where the lecturer told us that 20% of women are victims of domestic violence. I asked her if she knows in which country and approximately which decade was this research done; suggesting that the results for e.g. Sweden could be different than for e.g. Afghanistan, and also maybe the results now could be different from e.g. half century ago.
She said that the research was replicated many times, and that no matter which country, or which year—or even which definition of domestic violence was used! -- the results are always 20%. Somewhat ironically, after hearing about so much successful replication, my faith in the research actually decreased.
Maybe “20%” is some psychological attractor, where all values smaller than half naturally converge.
I also read somewhere an explanation (but haven’t verified it) that the number of rapes at campus was achieved by surveying students in the first grade, adding together the results for “rape” and “attempted rape”, and then multiplying the result by five (for five years of study). If that’s true, even ignoring the “attempted” part, I think the linear approximation is wrong.
First, it ignores the possibility that some factors could make being raped more likely in some parts of the population (such as binge drinking, or choosing violent boyfriends, or maybe just being in a really horrible campus), so being raped at grade X may overlap strongly with being raped at grade Y, and R(X ∪ Y) < R(X) + R(Y). Second, this approach multiplies the Lizardman’s Constant by five, which coincidentally already provides the result of 20%.
I don’t want to depreciate a serious issue, but I really wish that people doing research would start taking methodology more seriously.
Did it occur to you that she was just lying?
I guess lying is one option, believing a liar is another option, and… well, are there any realistic options beyond that? (Maybe something in between, like suspecting an information, but deciding to suppress the feeling in the name of the greater good and being on the right side of history.)
But how do I distinguish between these two options, in real time? Ask “hey, lady, it occured to be that you are either lying or stupid—and because I don’t want to uncharitably accuse you of something that you are not, could you please help me solve this dilemma?” I don’t suppose that would work.
I tried communicating with mindkilled people in the past, it didn’t go well. (I get accused of something; they congratulate themselves for disarming an evil person.) Now I usually suppress the urge.
If there is a forum where people could rationally communicate this kind of concerns, I don’t know about it. Christina Hoff Sommers try to address the problem of fake statistics in her book, in return she got her Wikipedia page vandalized. I don’t expect to do better.
Sure. There is a very popular option of “I will look only here, I will not look there and even if I accidentally glance over there, I will quickly avert my gaze and feel guilty about my transgression”.
Deliberate ignorance combined with cherry-picking evidence can get you very very far.
If only there were some way to think about the two options in something like probabilities… :-)
You mean to tried to deconvert them? No surprise it didn’t go well.
Note that the aims of the conversation can be quite limited, though. It’s up to you to define your goals and they don’t have to be “convince that person that her belief is wrong”.
I don’t think she’s mindkilled. Basically in this case you both haven’t read the literature but she’s in a position where she’s not willing to admit to ot having read the research because that means she would lose status.
A good question might be: “Then how does it come that Louis Harris et al only found 2% of woman to have been raped?”
Skeptics.Stackexchange is a good forum for this purpose. I think it makes sense to open questions there whenever I can boil down the claim to a specific form.
My question Is a woman who dresses sexually suggestively more likely to get raped? for example also produced good answers.
It’s just as likely that she heard that statistic many times and assumed that this must be because there were many studies with that result.
“She said that the research was replicated many times, and that no matter which country, or which year—or even which definition of domestic violence was used! -- the results are always 20%”—that’s doesn’t sound like a vague assumption to me. That sounds like she’s being very specific.
I guess you can call it lying if you want, but that is a thing people do very frequently without thinking about or considering that they are lying, namely making very precise statements when in fact there is something vague in their minds.
People lie (defined as intent to mislead) frequently, yes :-/
It seems to me that the woman with whom you were speaking likely wasn’t well versed in the research. Why do you think the conversation to her tells you much about whether the people doing the reserach take methodology seriously?
I may be influenced too much by Who Stole Feminism?. By the way, the lady was a university professor, and is considered a local expert on the topic (that’s why she was giving the lecture), so even if she merely doesn’t know the research in the area she specializes on, that’s disappointing.
EDIT: I recommend reading the book. It is an attempt to trace back to the origins of some famous research, and the results are quite sad. :(
Be careful to not confuse the quest about seeking truth with beliefs about the capabilites of individual people.
Another interesting counterquestion would be: Do you really mean that there is no country that ever started a policy that reduced the amount women are victims of domestic violence? What does that say about the job that feminist activists do, when they don’t have any effects on the problem?
Why do you consider it to be a good investment of time?
I think the book gives some insight into how popular myths are created in feminism. If you are interested in the topics feminists talk about, this could make you update probabilities of their statements. Otherwise, it can be interesting in general how easily a completely fabricated stuff or misinterpreted research can become “common knowledge”.
If you are against feminism, it gives you some argument-soldiers.
If you support feminism, then it’s like reading about scientific fraud, and realizing that it includes a few things you believe.
There appears to be some reason to doubt the intellectual honesty of the book (e.g., CHS complains that feminists say X was in favour of wife-beating and quotes something X said that points the other way … but it turns out she cut X off in mid-sentence and actually the full sentence is advocating wife-beating).
That doesn’t stop it being a useful source of things that might be wrong with contemporary feminism, but I think I’d want to check anything she said before believing it. That’s not a bad idea for any book on an inflammatory topic, but it does mean that reading it mightn’t be a very efficient way of acquiring correct knowledge about contemporary feminism.
Well, her meta-point is that no one checks sources anymore. So someone makes up a fact, or quotes a fictional research proving the fact, someone else quotes that in their book, yet another person quotes the previous book… and soon “everyone knows” it.
And if someone checks the sources, they usually don’t go beyond “the book A cited book B, and the book B really contains it, so everything is okay” (while the problem is that the book B quotes an organization that denies ever making that kind of research, or the book B makes the opposite conclusion than the original research).
Sure. But making that point by falsifying your own sources doesn’t seem to me like good practice. Though I guess it does then enable you to say with complete confidence that at least one book purporting to be feminist doesn’t treat its sources well.
There no golden point in history where people used to carefully check their sources. If anything the people I discuss with are more likely to check their sources because the internet makes it much easier than it used to be.
In this case you seem to advocate an approach of being against the feminist tribe because there are people in that community who believe in myths. I on the other hand advocate to simply be in the pro-primary-source-checking-in-a-collaborative-way tribe. That’s why I have a skeptics.stackexchange T-shirt.
Only if you also consider telling people about bad or fake scientific research “being against the scientist tribe”. Under that definition, many people on LW would be against the scientist tribe.
And it’s not just random people in that community who believe in myths. It often includes people teaching the topic at universities. I wouldn’t expect an average person to have correct beliefs about things, but I expect better from people who pretend doing science. (Unless it is a pseudoscience or “sacred science”.)
If skeptics.stackexchange works for you, okay. (To verify that, I would have to read the book again, list the specific claims, and then either look at what stackexchange already said about them, or ask the question if it wasn’t asked before.)
It’s not like that’s different in a science like proper biology. You have always some issues that people care deeply enough to read the primary sources and some issues that are just fun to talk about and where myths get passed around.
There are scientistis like Feymann who don’t simply believe others that they should brush their teeth but few people care about primary sources on that level.
The main problem with just reading the book is that it simply presents the viewpoint of one person and as gjm suggests a person with an agenda. A book has no dynamic mechanism for checking-and-balancing itself.
Skeptics has a mechanism where multiple people look at answers and vote on them. It’s not perfect but it’s a better to form my opinion than reading an opinionated book by one side of a conflict.
As I said above, my general heuristic is to post questions that are clear enough that one can think about probabilities to skeptic.stackexchange.
How would reading that book improve on that heuristic?
I have no idea how good results you get from the skeptic.stackexchange; whether people there track the citations to their original sources, and whether all questions get answered. If that works okay, then I guess the book can only point you towards some questions you wouldn’t ask otherwise.