“Frankly, it is irritating that anybody would be distracted by which statistics are accurate.”
—Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo), in response to Justice Department statistics that show that the “1 in 5 women will be raped on campus” statistics cited by her and other elected officials and women’s rights advocates were not just inflated, but ridiculously so.
“1 in 5! That’s an outrage..what? It’s NOT 1 in 5? It’s more like…1 in 200? OK, now let’s not get hung up on statistics…”
Yes, Senator, isn’t it irritating when stubborn facts interfere with ideological narratives?
Yet it is not half as irritating as knowing that we have so many elected leaders who think like McCaskill. That 20% statistic has been used by the Obama Administration to bully colleges into removing due process and fairness from campus sexual assault allegations, and to push the false impression on the public that there is a rape epidemic, when in fact the incidence of rape, on campus and elsewhere, has fallen precipitously.
In September, when President Obama announced his “It’s On Us” initiative to address college sexual assault, he said that “an estimated 1 in 5 women has been sexually assaulted in her college years—one in 5.” Like the infamous “women make only 77% of what men are paid for the same job” fake statistic that Democrats and women’s rights advocates still repeat despite definitive debunking, it is a number designed to fool the gullible and satisfy those infected by confirmation bias, but it is much, much worse. The recently Justice Department statistics on rape and sexual assault on college age females showed that the chances of a women being raped on campus was 6.1 per thousand, juuust a bit less, at .61 %, than the 20% figure touted by Obama and McCaskill.
And her response? The translation of the quote above is my late father’s own standby, “My mind’s made up, don’t confuse me with facts.”
How can the public trust anyone who would say something like this to tell the truth, admit when they are wrong, and not try to mislead the public or warp policy to satisfy interest groups?
It can’t.
Ethics Alarms 
If only the Republicans didn’t run Akin in 2012…
The sad thing is that much of what the democrats say is just as outrageous as Akin, only they aren’t called on it.
Hey, I had to look at both their names on my ballot back in 2012. There’s a reason I cast more votes on the propositions than on the candidates.
But why are they not called on it?
I wonder if Akin drew the wrong conclusions from the 1-in-5 statistic. After all, if 1-in-5 women get raped, and yet so few of those rapes result in pregnancy, something must be happening that deters conception in the case of rape…
The movie “Idiocracy” is actually a documentary.
Water? Like… Outta the toilette? Hey guys! This dumbass drinks toilette water!
1 in 5 is the rape rate in the Congo, where rape is used as a weapon of war.
It’s one thing to deny relevant statistics or present statistics in such a manner as to deceive (both common these days and damn unethical politics), but to manufacture them to support a false cause? Yet, this too has become common practice. After all, Al Gore got clean away with it and prospered besides.
If this works and we let them get away with it, we can expect more of this to happen, because liars and cheats would be the only ones willing to campaign.
“In September, when President Obama announced his “It’s On Us” initiative to address college sexual assault, he said that “an estimated 1 in 5 women has been sexually assaulted in her college years—one in 5.” Like the infamous “women make only 77% of what men are paid for the same job” fake statistic that Democrats and women’s rights advocates still repeat despite definitive debunking, it is a number designed to fool the gullible and satisfy those infected by confirmation bias, but it is much, much worse. The recently Justice Department statistics on rape and sexual assault on college age females showed that the chances of a women being raped on campus was 6.1 per thousand, juuust a bit less, at .61 %, than the 20% figure touted by Obama and McCaskill.”
Won’t you merely be called on the fact that you rebutted the inflated number of sexual assaults with the documented statistics of rapes? I feel certain someone will claim you are comparing a basket of fruit to apples…
It’s the same as saying “an estimated 90% of all shots taken in basketball don’t score is a clearly fake stat because only 20% of free throws miss…”
Since the stat is based on a terrible study of only two schools and has been trashed on the basis of methodology, size and bias, citing THAT study for anything at all is dishonest or irresponsible. It’s a made up, manufactured statistic, whatever it purports to measure.
Precisely. And that’s the angle to attack it. Using an apples and oranges analogy only gives the stat users a diversion to focus on.
I heard that the definition of sexual assault was dumbed down for this study.
Part of the problem is that, as part of a time honoured feminist tradition, lines have been blurred. What is a sexual assault? Depending on who you listen to, sexual assault could be synonymous with rape or the proper label for a man tripping and brushing his arm against a boob.
In the survey that brought out the 1 in 5 statistic, they only measured respondents who were between the ages of 18 and 24, and who were enrolled less than full time in studies. That is, they took the group most likely to be sexually active, and imbibing alcohol. Then they made any sexual activity that happened after an intake of alcohol, ruled that consent was impossible, and that said contact was per se assault. Then they took those numbers and extrapolated them to every American woman. Even if you want to compare apples to apples, which is so damnably hard with all the moving goalposts, the number isn’t anywhere in the same building as 20%.
But what really scatters by brains on this subject, is juxtaposing this survey with the UVA response.
In the UVA response, feminists said things like: The most spectacular thing you can do in the case of a rape accusation is believe her (Anita Sarkeesian) or “It doesn’t matter if the UVA accusation was false, we should believe women.” The theme is belief. We should believe women when they say things. Well, not all things, necessarily, because in order to get the 1 in 5 statistic, the surveyors had to take the responses to the question “have you ever experienced sexual assault” and ignore them. Women who answered no were still counted as sexually assaulted, because they just didn’t know what had happened to them.
So believe women when they say they’ve been raped or assaulted, because they know, but don’t believe them when they say they haven’t been raped or assaulted, because….? I can’t even sarcasm right now.
Yep. So it’s best to attack the stat for its inherent flaws.