| Revision as of 17:42, 29 April 2015 editSonicyouth86 (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users, Pending changes reviewers, Rollbackers7,527 edits →Attempt to conflate false with withdrawn: unbelievable← Previous edit | Revision as of 17:54, 29 April 2015 edit undoEllieTea (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users527 edits →Attempt to conflate false with withdrawnNext edit → | ||
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| :Where have I said that withdrawn allegations are conflated with false allegations? I do not believe that and cannot see where I said that. ] (]) 17:35, 29 April 2015 (UTC) | :Where have I said that withdrawn allegations are conflated with false allegations? I do not believe that and cannot see where I said that. ] (]) 17:35, 29 April 2015 (UTC) | ||
| ::You and later information about withdrawn accusations, accusations that resulted in formal charges and a host of other related but still off-topic stuff. This article is about ''false'' accusations. Yet you insist on your sentence about ''withdrawn'' accusations, clearly in an attempt to conflate the two. --] ] 17:41, 29 April 2015 (UTC) | ::You and later information about withdrawn accusations, accusations that resulted in formal charges and a host of other related but still off-topic stuff. This article is about ''false'' accusations. Yet you insist on your sentence about ''withdrawn'' accusations, clearly in an attempt to conflate the two. --] ] 17:41, 29 April 2015 (UTC) | ||
| :::The reason was explained in the Edit Summary. Here is the relevant quote from the WP article. {{quote|the contested claim by psychologist David Lisak that only 2%-10% of sexual-assault reports are false. This statistic is misleading. Mr. Lisak’s 2010 study (like others often cited by anti-rape activists) treat as presumptively true all sexual-assault complaints that authorities have not formally labeled either true or false (the vast majority), including most of those dropped for insufficient evidence.}} | |||
| :::To only give the "false" figure is misleading, because many people will assume that all the non-false cases are true. In fact, only a small percentage is known to be true. | |||
| :::The word "withdrawn" is currently only in the section on the Australian study; so I assume that is what you are referring to. We know that 2.1% were false and 15% were very probably true; we do not know about the rest. What do you recommend as an alternative wording to the present text? ] (]) 17:54, 29 April 2015 (UTC) | |||
Revision as of 17:54, 29 April 2015
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 | This page has been cited as a source by a notable professional or academic publication: Rape Is Rape: How Denial, Distortion, and Victim Blaming Are Fueling a Hidden Acquaintance Rape Crisis by Jody Raphael (Chicago Review Press, 2013) ISBN 9781613744796 "...between 2010 and 2011, Misplaced Pages users edited and added some of the new studies—as well as Professor Lisak's critique of Eugene J. Kanin—to the site's "False Accusation of Rape" entry. As recorded by the entry's "Talk" page, the article's author, a rape denier, then removed some of the new material. These actions caused the new research, non-Kanin material to be unavailable to Misplaced Pages readers. The hullabaloo stands as a mini-version of the whole controversy." |
| This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the False accusation of rape article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
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Survey of 20 police officers
In the section False_accusation_of_rape#Police_opinions_on_false_rape I have removed this:
According to a small-scale survey of 20 US law enforcement officers conducted in 2004, officers believe that the typical person making a false accusation is "female (100%), Caucasian (100%), 15–20 years of age (10%), 31–45 years of age (25%), or 21–30 years of age (65%)". A false accusation may be perpetrated out of a desire for attention or sympathy, anger or revenge, or to cover up behavior deemed "inappropriate" by the accuser's peers.
'Small-scale survey' is an understatement. 20 US law enforcement officers is an absurdly low number of participants for a survey. This sounds more like a survey conducted for a grade-school assignment. Unfortunately, the source is non-free so I can't read more about their methodology. If anyone has access to this, I would appreciate if someone could post information on the methodology (particularly selection methodology) for this specific survey. ― Padenton |☎ 18:36, 24 March 2015 (UTC)
DiCanio
Why is the DiCanio citation being removed? EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 03:25, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
- Thank you for asking and discussing. My reasons were given in my edit summary. The main reason is that it is strongly contradicted by the cited table from Rumney (2006); note that Rumney is a research article in a respected journal, and that the WP article has a whole section devoted to Rumney. The other reason is that, in my experience, Facts on File is not the best in terms of reliability (though it is not bad either).
- I do not feel strongly about removing DiCanio. If DiCanio is kept, however, then I feel strongly that the article should deal with the contradiction with Rumney.
- My own preference would be to remove that entire section, including the citation of Greer. EllieTea (talk) 03:35, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
- It's not for us editors to resolve contradictions in data. The DiCanio piece is a tertiary source in an encyclopedia. Rumney is a secondary source and a literature review. Both are decent sources so I see no reason to remove either.
- What exactly do you see as being contradictory to Rumney? I don't want to assume. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 03:44, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
- Dicanio is cited as saying that researchers generally agree on a range of 2% to 10%. That is contradicted by Rumney's table (in the WP article): the table has a majority of research studies finding a figure greater than 10%, and close to half the studies finding at least 20%. EllieTea (talk) 04:00, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
- We'd need a reliable source to point that fact out. Otherwise it would be WP:SYNTH. I don't have access to DiCanio, but they could be considering more sources than Rumney. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 04:15, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
- I do not have a copy of DiCanio readily available either. There is a strong contradiction with Rumney, though, and I feel strongly about addressing that.
- Regarding SYNTH, see WP:What SYNTH is not#SYNTH is not a rigid rule, which states "Never use a policy in such a way that the net effect will be to stop people from improving an article"; addressing a strong contradiction improves an article. Additionally, SYNTH is "when two or more reliably-sourced statements are combined to produce a new thesis"; it seems arguable that pointing out the contradiction is a new thesis. In any case, though, there might be a way to address the contradiction that sidesteps this issue, e.g. "DiCanio (1993) claims that while researchers and prosecutors do not agree on the exact percentage of false allegations, they generally agree on a range of 2% to 10%; the range claimed by DiCanio can be compared with the rates reported in Rumney's survey of the research literature". EllieTea (talk) 09:09, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
- It's also ignoring Rumney's own observations, which noted that a lot of the estimates are overestimates due to police skepticism of accusations, and singles out a few of the higher numbers as coming from particularly flawed studies. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 04:36, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
- I have looked through Rumney, and I did not find enough to resolve the contradiction. Moreover, I found the following two statements.
... quote one police officer thus: "If rape was treated as any other crime you would probably no-crime a lot more. But because rape is treated as something special, and indeed it is a serious crime, it is much more difficult to no-crime it".
Smith notes that it was not possible to tell whether reports that were not recorded because of insufficient evidence, may in fact, have been false.
- Those statements indicate that the police might well be underreporting the true rate of false rape accusations.
- Additionally, the WP article cites a (valid) problem with Stewart (1981), but fails to note that Rumney also tells the following.
Stewart examined 18 allegations of rape and concluded that 16 were false. Of these 16, it was claimed that the complainant admitted to making a false complaint in 14 cases.
- Thus, the WP article seems to misrepresent the issues with Stewart.
- Relatedly, Turvey (2014) states the following.
Unfortunately, it is common for even seasoned investigators to accept an alleged victim’s statement or story without question or suspicion. This uncritical aspect may arise out of a fear of disturbing the alleged victim, being viewed as politically incorrect by victim advocates and colleagues, or a lack of knowledge about the investigation of potential false reports.
... an overall political environment that sanctions such identifications and investigations can promulgate a fearful investigative mindset. This fear of political reprisal routinely provides for the failure to correctly identify and investigate false reports to their fullest conclusion. As discussed in Palmer and Thornhill (2000, p. 160), “To some feminists, the concept of false rape allegation itself constitutes discriminatory harassment.” It is not unreasonable in such an environment for investigators and forensic examiners to be concerned that the investigation of a false report, and even the consideration of false reporting as a viable case theory, will result in negative consequences from colleagues, superiors, the media, victim advocates, and the general public.
- Again, it is being argued that the police underreport false accusations.
- EllieTea (talk) 09:09, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
- I have looked through Rumney, and I did not find enough to resolve the contradiction. Moreover, I found the following two statements.
- We'd need a reliable source to point that fact out. Otherwise it would be WP:SYNTH. I don't have access to DiCanio, but they could be considering more sources than Rumney. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 04:15, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
- Dicanio is cited as saying that researchers generally agree on a range of 2% to 10%. That is contradicted by Rumney's table (in the WP article): the table has a majority of research studies finding a figure greater than 10%, and close to half the studies finding at least 20%. EllieTea (talk) 04:00, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
Statistics in the lede
The lede said the following.
... in the United States, the FBI Uniform Crime Report in 1996 and the United States Department of Justice in 1997 stated 8% of rape accusations in the United States were regarded as unfounded or false Studies in other countries have reported their own rates at anywhere from 1.5% (Denmark) to 10% (Canada).
The statistic for the FBI/DoJ is highly misleading, for reasons discussed in the section "FBI statistics".
The statistic from Denmark is taken from Rumney (2006). Here is what Rumney actually says.
... use of the 10% figure is part of a study of false complaints by the Institute of Medicine in Copenhagen. As noted earlier, the 10% figure is the highest given during the five year period covered by this study, the lowest number ... was 1.5%.
Thus, the figure for Denmark that is quoted in the lede is also misleading.
The statistic for Canada is also taken from Rumney. The statistic is for a single city (Toronto) in 1970; moreover, the statistic was disputed by the Toronto police. Thus this statistic, too, is misleading.
Considering the above, I have removed all the statistics from the lede. EllieTea (talk) 12:07, 29 April 2015 (UTC)
- I'm extremely disinclined to trust anything you say about the statistics given the blatantly nonsensical "8 of 52" edit you made. That is flat-out not what the source says, and I'm guessing your goal is to imply that the ones which weren't cleared were all false. I am strongly inclined to revert all your edits wholesale, back to the version from a few days ago, unless a trustworthy editor confirms that they actually conform to sources. User:EvergreenFir, would you want to help with that? –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 13:00, 29 April 2015 (UTC)
FBI statistics
User:Roscelese is again making false accusations against me and refusing to read the sources. Here is what the FBI report states (page 7).
The 1996 violent crime clearance rate was 47 percent, up from 45 percent in 1995. Among the violent offenses, the 1996 clearance rates ranged from 67 percent for murder to 27 percent for robbery. Over half of all forcible rapes (52 percent) and aggravated assaults (58 percent) were cleared.
If someone disagrees with the way that I presented that in the article, then fine: revert the edit and explain why. EllieTea (talk) 13:20, 29 April 2015 (UTC)
Further reading
Links to websites under Further reading are subject to the same guidelines as external links. The links that editor EllieTea added give undue weight to a particular POV (e.g., Cathy Young as an expert on false accusations of rape anyone?) or do not provide more detailed coverage of the subject. For example, what's a 7-setence article about an Italian Supreme Court decision that women in jeans can't be raped doing in the Further reading section? I'll remove both for now. --SonicY (talk) 17:21, 29 April 2015 (UTC)
- The item about jeans is related to the following quote from the WP article.
Stewart, in one instance, considered a case disproved, stating that "it was totally impossible to have removed her extremely tight undergarments from her extremely large body against her will".
- My idea was that somebody might think that it was just a rogue police officer who had such an absurd idea. In fact, the Italian Supreme Court had basically the same idea.
- How do you think the two "give undue weight to a particular POV"? The jeans link supports the idea that police overreport the number of false accusations. The piece from Cathy Young clearly does nothing like that, and it has been referred to by many and seems to present some important information. The two are clearly not with the same POV. I ask you to give more justification for removing the two. EllieTea (talk) 17:33, 29 April 2015 (UTC)
Attempt to conflate false with withdrawn
There have been some serious POV changes in the last few days. User:EllieTea wrote that it's "misleading" to describe what RS say about false accusations. Instead, he adds and re-adds content about withdrawn accusations, thus implying that they're the same. Please follow the WP:BRDC cycle instead of just reverting, especially as a "new" editor. --SonicY (talk) 17:28, 29 April 2015 (UTC)
- Where have I said that withdrawn allegations are conflated with false allegations? I do not believe that and cannot see where I said that. EllieTea (talk) 17:35, 29 April 2015 (UTC)
- You added and later re-added information about withdrawn accusations, accusations that resulted in formal charges and a host of other related but still off-topic stuff. This article is about false accusations. Yet you insist on your sentence about withdrawn accusations, clearly in an attempt to conflate the two. --SonicY (talk) 17:41, 29 April 2015 (UTC)
- The reason was explained in the Edit Summary. Here is the relevant quote from the WP article.
the contested claim by psychologist David Lisak that only 2%-10% of sexual-assault reports are false. This statistic is misleading. Mr. Lisak’s 2010 study (like others often cited by anti-rape activists) treat as presumptively true all sexual-assault complaints that authorities have not formally labeled either true or false (the vast majority), including most of those dropped for insufficient evidence.
- To only give the "false" figure is misleading, because many people will assume that all the non-false cases are true. In fact, only a small percentage is known to be true.
- The word "withdrawn" is currently only in the section on the Australian study; so I assume that is what you are referring to. We know that 2.1% were false and 15% were very probably true; we do not know about the rest. What do you recommend as an alternative wording to the present text? EllieTea (talk) 17:54, 29 April 2015 (UTC)
- The reason was explained in the Edit Summary. Here is the relevant quote from the WP article.
- You added and later re-added information about withdrawn accusations, accusations that resulted in formal charges and a host of other related but still off-topic stuff. This article is about false accusations. Yet you insist on your sentence about withdrawn accusations, clearly in an attempt to conflate the two. --SonicY (talk) 17:41, 29 April 2015 (UTC)