Re: perspective of discussion about I-D.farresnickel-harassment

[Dave Crocker <[e-mail]>]

On 3/22/2015 3:53 PM, Dan Harkins wrote:
>   If you haven't realized that non-governmental committees to
> deal with harassment in their organizations have been greeted
> with quite a few false accusations of late then you PROBABLY
> aren't paying attention.
> 
>   Furthermore, if you haven't realized that when these committees
> dispense justice it sometimes violates due process and opens up
> those organizations to great risk then you are the focus of why this
> discussion is happening.


>From the Lisak study:

     "A recently published comprehensive review of studies and reports
on false  rape allegations listed 20 sources whose estimates ranged from
1.5% to 90% (Rumney,  2006). However, when the sources of these
estimates are examined carefully it is clear that only a fraction of the
reports represent credible studies and that these credible studies
indicate far less variability in false reporting rates."

The 'of late' in your text was an interesting stylistic touch, adding a
sense of immediacy and a sense of growth in mis-reporting, neither of
which was supported by the citations you provided.

Adding to Brian's counter to the interpretation you chose for the citations:

   The citations refer to rape, not harassment. They are dramatically
different behaviors and occur in dramatically different contexts.

Attempting to apply statistics about one to the other is grossly
inappropriate methodology.

   The first citation's own study has a number of unfortunate
assumptions, such as:

        "its police agency is not inundated  with serious felony cases
and, therefore,  has the  freedom and the motivation to record and
thoroughly pursue all rape complaints."

The presumption that the agency has motivation, given that it has
freedom, is without basis.

     "investigation  of all rape  complaints always involves a serious
offer  to polygraph the complainants and the suspects."

I wonder how intimidating this 'offer' is likely to be, for a victim,
serving to alter their choice of making an accusation?

The list of biasing factors in that study goes on.  Yet it still
produces a result that 95% of rape claims in that small mid-western town
were valid.  95 fucking percent.

Then, of course there are quite a few counter-citations available from a
simple web search on false felony charges, such as:

     http://web.stanford.edu/group/maan/cgi-bin/?page_id=297

(It is almost interesting that searching for items on false accusations
seems to produce google results only concerning rape and no other pages
or articles on statistics for other kinds of false felony accusations. I
was looking for a baseline, so that a statistic on false rape
accusations could be compared against reports on other kinds of false
felony accusations.  The rate of 1, 5 or 10% might be higher than for
other crimes, or lower.)


Besides the problems with the meager citations you offered -- while
ignoring material against your claim -- all of this, as others have
noted, is secondary to the irrelevance of your original posting, to the
discussion at hand.  The proposed procedure includes assessment of
validity.  (It's handling of that phase of processing could be written
more clearly, but that's a different discussion.)

Equally unfortunate is your responding to criticism by making a direct
and vigorous ad hominem attack.  That's against IETF rules, Dan.

d/


-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net