Talk:False accusation of rape

sections

I hope I don't have to copy/paste examples (i will though if i need to) of the the organization of "Estimates of the prevalence of false accusations" with most of the studies discussed have the criticism along with the main description while the criticism for the "Kanin" section is separate with it's own subheadNailo1234 (talk) 18:59, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

On the scientific validity of Lisak's study and methods

David Lisak's study is presented in such a way that it is being used to suggest that allegations that aren't shown to be false with evidence should be assumed to be true. In science, a statement usually is considered false without evidence supporting its truth. No evidence should be required to suggest that a claim is false when there is insufficient evidence establishing a claim's truth. This isn't intended to be a personal attack on Lisak or a discrediting of rape allegations, this is just a criticism of Lisak's methods. Astrohoundy (talk • contribs) 21:53, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

If "Lisak's study is flawed in this way" isn't just your personal opinion, you should be able to find the same opinion in a reliable source. It is actually quite simple. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 23:29, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

I found a source that challenges the validity of IACP guidelines a while ago and I posted it, but mention of it still follows mention of DiCanio's listing. I think it should be placed ahead of DiCanio's study. Astrohoundy (talk) 16:54, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Is this in the Greer source, do you mean? –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 18:09, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Weasel words

I tagged the following paragraph as containing weasel words: "Rates of false accusation may have been misrepresented as larger than they are. A rape case may be closed as "unfounded" without a conclusion, but there are many reasons other than falsity for which a report that is not false may be classified as "unfounded."'

This is an awful introductory paragraph for a number of reasons: 1. It attacks a position without identifying that position. 2. "May have" are weasel words. 3. Its second sentence makes a point that is irrelevant, since, again, the alleged misrepresentations have not been identified or discussed. Until you can point to someone calculating false accusation rates by "unfounded" classifications, the sentence has no place here. 4. It's true that rates of false accusation may have been misrepresented as larger than they are. It's also true that they may have been misrepresented as lower than they are. In fact, considering the range of estimates, BOTH are almost certainly true. Discussing one without the other, implies that these rates tend to be overrepresented rather than underrepresented. Considering that all numbers in this area are estimates, it's very hard to see how such a claim can be proven. 5. The paragraph is poorly sourced: the first source links to an entire book, and the second source redirects to a blank search page. It's impossible to see what the sources for this paragraph are supposed to be. 6. In any case, the paragraph is gratuitous. Simply quoting the various studies and estimates on the matter is sufficient, without a biased editorial comment to introduce them.

At first I simply tagged the more problematic words of this paragraph ("may have", "misrepresented" by whom?) but these tags were deleted by editor Roscolese, who, judging from his numerous edits to this article, has an agenda to push. At this point, I am removing the paragraph for the reasons cited above. JudahH (talk) 23:45, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Various responses: The sentence perfectly reflects what is stated in the source. We can't make our own decisions about what it really means or about whether we think the evidence supports it. The paragraph is appropriately sourced and your inability to access the sources doesn't affect their reliability; I'm looking at page 185 of the book and a cached version of the article. It's not intended as an introduction to the studies, but rather as a reliably sourced fact about the prevalence of false rape accusation. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 02:06, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

OK, first of all, in terms of sources: a reader's ability to access the sources may not reflect their reliability, but they do reflect their verifiability, to the reader, at any rate. Thanks for clarifying what page the material was from (maybe that information should be in the footnote). As for the second source, apparently you need to have a subscription to something for that to work; it would be better if a free version were available, but if one isn't, would you quote the relevant part, please?

Second, sourced or not, it's an inappropriate sentence to pluck out of a book and use as the introduction to a sentence. We do have to make our own decisions about what information to present and how to present it, and I believe this is a poor choice for a number of reasons. 1) It's skewed to one side. I have little doubt that I could find a source to state that "the frequency of false rape accusations may often be understated". If I found such a source, would it be appropriate for me to use that as the introductory sentence instead? Introductions should be balanced, and this one is not. 2) It's vague. It doesn't help to have a reliable source if that source is making only the vaguest of statements. I've read the original source now, and I'll copy the paragraph here for reference:

Because of this method of "closing" an investigation, rates of false allegation may have been inflated and misrepresented. For example, it may be reported that false allegations of rape occur at the rate of 30%, when what is really meant is that 30% of cases have been closed as "unfounded

This is not making a definite statement about anything. It's saying "this may plausibly have happened in some places at some times". It's simple speculation. I'm not saying that this doesn't have a place in the article at all. It could be included as part of a discussion of what goes into counting false allegations, and the classification of "unfounded" being one potential pitfall. However, as an introduction to the whole topic, I believe that it is one-sided and misleading.

As a sign of good faith, I won't take the paragraph out again before giving you a chance to respond, but I honestly believe that this paragraph should not be the introduction. JudahH (talk) 05:39, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Like I said - We can't do our own background research to find out which studies (or even which popular ideas) the source may be talking about. It's not an introduction, but simply a fact cited to multiple sources that doesn't belong in any subsection since those are all about particular studies; your insistence on misunderstanding as an excuse to remove sourced material is childish. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 15:39, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Interpreting a source based on its own words is hardly "original research". The source, which I quoted above, does not refer to any studies in particular, but to a hypothetical example. Meanwhile, you may claim that it's not an introduction, but its placement at the beginning of the section and the general nature of its statements certainly makes it read that way.

Judging from this talk page, a consensus seems to be emerging against you: most editors who have weighed in agree that this paragraph's tone and placement are inappropriate, yet you keep on reverting back to it, on your own. However, on the principle of compromise, I've refrained from deleting the paragraph again. Instead, I attempted to balance it by adding a consideration on the other side, with source. JudahH (talk) 20:35, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Your "consideration" is unfortunately not reflected in the source. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 23:10, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

It certainly is. Just as your source points out that a conclusion of "unfounded" does not necessarily imply a false accusation, mine demonstrates that a conviction does not necessarily imply that an accusation was correct. JudahH (talk) 01:21, 23 July 2013 (UTC) However, I've added another source that directly addresses the issue of false allegations leading to convictions that are later overturned. The study found that 23% of such convictions involved perjury or false accusation. JudahH (talk) 01:58, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

JudahH, I agree wholeheartedly that it should either be taken out of the article altogether, or be included with other studies that are currently being removed despite having the same, or even more stringent, standards of evidence and encyclopedic content. Astrohoundy (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 12:14, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Astrohoundy, you've already stated that you're coming at this from the scientifically unsound position of "all accusers are perjuring themselves," so I'm not inclined to believe this professed interest in including well-conducted studies. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 15:36, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

I've never said anything of the sort. I've said that, in science, a positive statement is considered to be false until evidence suggests that it is true. This is the Closed World Assumption. Astrohoundy (talk) 15:43, 21 July 2013 (UTC)Astrohoundy

What about rape is scientific? Rape is a social problem, not a scientific problem. Binksternet (talk) 16:35, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Binksternet wrote "What about rape is scientific? Rape is a social problem, not a scientific problem. " Any process that involves determining truth or falsehood is inherently an attempt at science. This includes the analysis of all social evils. Perhaps I was incorrect to state that any statement is considered false until evidence suggests its truth, as the Closed World Assumption isn't always used(though it is used the majority of the time), but I was abundantly correct to state that it is patently unscientific to assume that all false statements have evidence supporting their falseness, especially when there is no, or insignificant, evidence supporting statements' truthfulness. It's like this:

Consider 100 accusations made. Of these 100 accusations, 30 have strong evidence such as blood, positive DNA, and poisons like ketamine supporting their truthfulness. Say 6 have strong evidence supporting their falseness such as alibis, negative DNA testing, previous statements from the accuser indicating a likely plot to make a false accusation, and video footage. What about the other 64 accusations? There isn't much evidence that they're false, but there isn't much, or any, evidence of truth either in these cases. In this case, it would be incorrect to assert that the false accusation rate is only 6 percent, as this implies that 94% of the accusations are correct. However, there's no evidence to support the 94% accuracy rate. There's only evidence to support a 30% accuracy rate. This is the heart of the matter. The proven, or demonstrably, false accusation rate ranges from 2%-8%, which is not necessarily the actually false accusation rate.

Given all of the awards and accolades prosecutors receive for pursuing spurious rape trials often, considering the contracts Wendy Murphy got after defending Mike Nifong, considering statements often made by former prosecutors like Craig Silverman and Linda Fairstein, it's reasonable to consider this true-until-proven-false mentality to be ridiculous.Astrohoundy (talk) 17:39, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

I've already explained this to you and it's also in the article text. Making false accusation is an action that someone commits, not an abstract concept floating around in the ether; what you're saying is that, without any actual evidence, we must nonetheless believe that the accusers are perjuring themselves. There's a reason "unfounded" is a category at all, and it's because sometimes there's not enough evidence one way or the other. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 20:23, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Just a passerby arriving here via the OR noticeboard. There are some things that are very unclear in the article that may be why this discussion is so difficult to have (and I apologize if I'm way off base -- I haven't been to this page before). Can I suggest a section right at the top called something like "definitions" or something to the effect of "research difficulty"? The current list of studies is kind of unwieldy, with several sections offering similar evaluations and criticisms but without clear connections between kinds of criteria, data, and measurements used. A section explaining the different kinds of criteria, separating legal from common use terms, and explaining the kinds of entities doing the studies would be very helpful (e.g. the police surveying their own data, lawyer reviewing court cases, sociologist interviewing defendants, etc.). It seems the authors of these studies have a lot to say about methods they and others use which would make for a useful lead-in to the statistics themselves. The "Other Studies" section does not contain studies like the others and its contents could simply be folded into this introductory section. At the very least, it reduces the most controversial aspects of this article to one section and allows the various findings to stand on their own without selective responses and criticisms (except perhaps where particularly notable).

The reason I say the lack of clarity may be part of this discussion is because it seems like scientific and legal terms might be getting conflated at times and contrasted at others. Our legal system can be understood as scientific, but "Innocent until proven guilty in a court of law" is not the same as saying the events themselves did not actually happen in the world until a judge or jury declares it so. It's a question of criteria/data. If the measure is based on legal filings, you have a statistic about what happened in court, which is open to criticism for not telling the whole story. If the measure is based on interviews with accusers/accused or other means, you have a different kind of figure subject to its own criticisms. All that could be explained up front and the reader primed to better understand all of this great information you've compiled. --Rhododendrites (talk) 02:47, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

The idea of a section on research methods is interesting and potentially useful, but your conflation of definition with research methods is less appealing. The definition is not at issue; regardless of what certain unconstructive editors would like you to believe, it is an accusation by a supposed victim of a rape that did not happen, and we won't waste space on whatever poorly sourced "all accusations are false" or "incorrect DNA identification proves that women are lying bitches" nonsense is out there. (I'm not accusing you of this, I just happen to have been keeping an eye on this article for a while.) I'm somewhat confused about your last paragraph. Can you clarify what sort of material you are suggesting adding? –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 03:58, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Hmm. I'm not sure why the conflation of definition and research methods is mine. While the definition may be simple and clear to you and is clearly stated in the first sentence, the rest of the article complicates it in a steadily increasing litany of definition, legalese and legal definition, data sources, methodological language, and constraints and criticisms of all of them. I'm not supporting basing any of this article on the above arguments which seem to boil down to tenuous extensions of "innocent until proven guilty" because doing so turns a discussion about what things happen in the world into one about jurisprudence. My point was only that having a section up top explaining the studies and the terms they use would make it not just a clearer article but also easier to prevent (or wrangle) some of the talk page rhetoric.--Rhododendrites (talk) 05:33, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Can you explain what it is that you're confused about? Nothing seems unclear to me about the various studies - in a given set of accusations, some are provably true, a few are provably false and thus the subject of this article, some others can be proven neither false nor true (= not enough evidence to convict the accused, but also not enough evidence to convict the accuser). A methodology section, as you suggest, might be useful for collating information about how such studies/statistics are conducted, but the actual definition of a false rape accusation is not at issue - an accusation by the supposed victim of a crime that didn't happen is the definition used in all the relevant literature. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 05:56, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

"Can you explain what it is that you're confused about? Nothing seems unclear to me about the various studies - in a given set of accusations, some are provably true, a few are provably false and thus the subject of this article, some others can be proven neither false nor true (= not enough evidence to convict the accused, but also not enough evidence to convict the accuser)." It is this third category that is the point of much contention and conflict. If the article emphasizes that the studies in question only dealt with the demonstrable false accusation rate, but presents the results in such a way that it suggests that over 90% of rape accusations are true. It appears to me that this is based on a desire to see simply see the accused convicted in courts on little more than accusation alone. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Astrohoundy (talk • contribs) 17:48, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

You're asking us to engage in original analysis, and that's a request we simply cannot accommodate. If it's a question of providing the percentage of "unfounded" reports in addition to the percentage of false ones when the sources provide the split, that's one thing, but your repeated insistence that we insert your own personal views on the sources is not going to get you anywhere. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 17:53, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

No, I'm not. That isn't original analysis. Simply reading the study to determine the standards of evidence used to estimate the percent of allegations that are true is not original analysis. The article needs to clarify that many of these studies assume allegations to be true unless evidence suggests them to be false, which is not a scientifically sound position.--Astrohoundy (talk) 19:54, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

"reading the study to determine the standards of evidence used to estimate the percent of allegations that are true" is precisely original analysis. Anything you read into it that isn't stated in the source is original analysis. I've already addressed, repeatedly, your false claim that reports which are not proven false are assumed true and subsequent fallacious contention that there is something scientifically unsound about not making claims about perjury people have committed without any evidence. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 20:48, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

FBI Results 2006

I quote: "Every year since 1989, in about 25 percent of the sexual assault cases referred to the FBI where results could be obtained (primarily by State and local law enforcement), the primary suspect has been excluded by forensic DNA testing. Specifically, FBI officials report that out of roughly 10,000 sexual assault cases since 1989, about 2,000 tests have been inconclusive (usually insufficient high molecular weight DNA to do testing), about 2,000 tests have excluded the primary suspect, and about 6,000 have "matched" or included the primary suspect.1 The fact that these percentages have remained constant for 7 years, and that the National Institute of Justice's informal survey of private laboratories reveals a strikingly similar 26-percent exclusion rate, strongly suggests that postarrest and postconviction DNA exonerations are tied to some strong, underlying systemic problems that generate erroneous accusations and convictions."

From this we see consistently a 20% minimum false accusation rate. This does not mean false accusation by person raped necessarily, but false accusation rate by the justice system certainly. Reference may be found at the National Criminal Justice Reference Service https://www.ncjrs.gov/txtfiles/dnaevid.txt SunSw0rd (talk) 00:04, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Please read the sources and the previous discussions instead of making us go through all this again. Incorrect identification of a suspect is not part of this topic, even if you coin a phrase "false accusation by the justice system." –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 02:50, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Agreed Thereandnot (talk) 12:59, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Would you prefer "erroneous accusation"? The error rate is valid. SunSw0rd (talk) 21:22, 17 September 2013 (UTC)