JackSkeptic wrote:Tigzy wrote:Oh, Peez. Peez, Peez, Peez. You've gone and done it again, haven't you.
His latest post is concerned with this:
http://www.fearus.org/uploads/1/8/6/8/1 ... 85.jpg?353
And though Peez, to his credit, explains that the conclusions are not the result of simple yes/no answers, but are instead extrapolated from 5 point scale results, he goes on to say this:
Excerpts from the paper reveal that only 24% of men categorically rejected all use of violence against women…so apparently, about 76% of us considered some of those circumstances a possible reason to rape. That is disturbing.
Also disturbing: only 44% of the women categorically rejected all uses of violence against them. So 56% have absorbed the idea that they can be at fault for leading men on? Weird.
However, Peez has forgotten the part about the study being based upon high-school students - which is why the figures may
not actually have some bearing on society at large. Leaving all questions aside as to how developed an idea these adolescents (some of whom were only 14 -
http://www.fearus.org/the-study.html) may have about sex, there's also the fact that the question posited by the
original study was this:
Under what circumstances is it okay for a guy to hold a girl down a force her to have sexual intercourse?
http://www.fearus.org/
You see the problem here - it's a leading question, one which inadvertantly suggests (to impressionable highschoolers, no less) that in some circumstances, it may indeed be okay to hold a girl down and force her to have sex. Frankly, if I'd have put down such an obviously leading question on one of my GCSE sociology surveys, my teacher would have...well, told me to change it and make not so leading. As such, the numbers have to be taken as pretty suspect. Not that this has stopped most of the commentariat taking them as gospel, of course, displaying as they do such naked comfirmation bias as to be nigh-on pornographic about it.
Surveys designed to force or trick a respondent are useless. Young people are particularly vulnerable to the 'when did you last beat your wife?' style questions. It is this lack of honesty which seriously impairs genuine discussion and resolutions to complex issues. Most atheists know this due to national surveys assuming a religion with badly formed questions. But these people have no interest in atheism except as a vehicle to promote their political philosophy and they certainly are not critical thinkers and skeptics.
Which is yet another reason why I feel SJL's do considerable damage to what they claim to believe in, equal rights, and damage promoting understanding of atheism. Which is why I oppose them.
It's interesting to see that Peezus just takes the conclusions of the table at face value and assumes they must be correct and then laments that the population at large has such a lax attitude to rape.
His commentariat, of course, do likewise.
As far as I can tell NOBODY commenting on the matter has actually read the original study, they are all commenting on this table which seems to be a very bad summary of the study, that was published in a later book.
The fearus.org site makes the valid point that there was no yes/no option involved for each of the answers, there was a five point scale of approval or the question from 1 (don't agree) to 5 (agree completely.) Without seeing how the figures in the table match up with these 5 point answers we have no way of telling how close the table corresponds to the original study. As it stands, each of the answers would have to be 100% at the five point answer for the figure quoted in the table (for example, 39% of males answer to option one "He spent a lot of money on her" would have to be "Agree completely", with 12% of females giving the same answer.)
The other thing about the study is the fact that it was not originally a peer reviewed journal article but was described as a "Paper presented as a contribution to the Western Psychological Association Meeting Symposium, 'Acquaintance Rape and Adolescent Sexuality,' in San Diego, California, April 1979."
Really, we cannot say on way or the other,
anything about the validity of this study.
The shocking result is based on a leading question that respondents answered on a five point scale but which has been reported as a simple yes/no series of answers.
It was probably not peer reviewed if it was just a symposium paper.
And nobody seems to have gotten hold of the paper to comment on it - presumably because most of the commenters are not academic students and so have no access to journal or print collections without requiring the payment of a large fee.
Well Peezus, as a University prof, shouldn't have this restriction. He should be able to clear up this mess quickly.
He doesn't hesitate to jump in to complain about standards in biological research publications.
Why should things be different with sociological papers?
As far as I can see Peezus had two responsible options before him.
First, he could have told everyone to back off - don't draw any conclusions without reading the original paper.
Second, he could have retrieved the original paper PRIOR to writing about it, and thus actually added some REAL information to the question rather than simply adding to the tut-tuttery and assuming the conclusions of the table are unquestionable.
But, of course, there are so many SJW eggshells to avoid and he's left with no option but presume this is exhibit A against rape culture.
