tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1427019156302694146.post336035977561094427..comments2024-03-19T00:13:39.122-07:00Comments on Obsession with Regression: Response To The Comments On The Sexual Assault ModelEmma Piersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04768879770449093477noreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1427019156302694146.post-21607889442500762522017-12-08T00:04:38.697-08:002017-12-08T00:04:38.697-08:00I just wrote a long and thoughtful reply to your ...I just wrote a long and thoughtful reply to your comment and then lost the whole thing because I accidently refreshed the page, so I will keep this brief and elaborate further later on (it's 3 am and I'm tired).<br /><br />Basically, I feel like "active and willing participant" would discount someone on the brink of consciousness because they would be physically incapable of meeting that criterion. Also, I feel like your reasoning stems from an assumption that sex is something that a man "does to" a woman, in which he is the actor and she is merely being acted upon. I don't see it that way, but rather as a voluntary exchange between two mutually interested parties who each possess equal agency and is responsible for his or her own actions. These are adults we're talking about, so I think the paternalistic approach is the wrong way to go.<br /><br />As for your question, I find it highly unlikely that they are *all* innocent, but I think there's a reasonable chance that at least *one* is. Therefore I believe it is imperative that we proceed with caution and carefully weigh the available evidence in each individual case. We must resist the temptation to rush to judgement just because we have a bunch of similar cases all surfacing around the same time, because the next one we examine may very well be the one in which the accused is truly innocent. As William Blackstone famously said, "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer"Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02305953502471120856noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1427019156302694146.post-28632389780560823002017-12-04T10:11:32.605-08:002017-12-04T10:11:32.605-08:00Hi!
Thanks for all these links. I’m aware of both...Hi!<br /><br />Thanks for all these links. I’m aware of both these points, as they’re fairly frequently made and I’ve worked for a while on these questions; see my pieces in the NYT or Washington Post for examples. While the statistical model abstracts away the details of assault, it does deal with the points you make. Each of these phenomena either a) lower the baseline probability that assault in fact occurred (in which case multiple accusations still increase the posterior probability) or b) create correlations between accusations (a point dealt with in point 1 above).<br /><br />I’ll note incidentally that I don’t think people who are blackout drunk can consent to sex. I think this is pretty obvious if you’ve ever dealt with someone who is blackout drunk. Adopting such a standard also creates a huge perverse incentive to get people blackout drunk so they’ll make bad decisions without fear of consequences. And it’s inconsistent with how we deal with other cases, like gambling: for example, “Nevada law prohibits permitting visibly drunk patrons to gamble, as well as serving them the aforementioned free drinks if the patron appears to already be bombed”. In general, it seems like a very bad idea to allow people to get people drunk and exploit them and claim they consented.<br /><br />The reason we claim you’re still morally responsible if you _hurt other people_ while drunk is that not doing so would create a perverse incentive: get drunk and hurt whoever you want.<br /><br />I’m curious — how likely do you think it is that all the high profile men currently being accused of assault are innocent?Emma Piersonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04768879770449093477noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1427019156302694146.post-33321959309328680732017-12-03T21:59:53.991-08:002017-12-03T21:59:53.991-08:00I don't think your statistical analysis contro...I don't think your statistical analysis controlled for these scenarios, so I just wanted to bring them to your attention.<br /><br />Additional information regarding Amherst sex scandal:<br /><br />http://reason.com/blog/2015/06/11/amherst-student-was-expelled-for-rape-bu<br /><br />https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/09/the-uncomfortable-truth-about-campus-rape-policy/538974/<br /><br />Additional information regarding the false memory phenomenon:<br /><br />http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/the_memory_doctor/2010/05/leading_the_witness.html<br /><br />https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyewitness_memory<br /><br />https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_conformityAnonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02305953502471120856noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1427019156302694146.post-29313377995964121452017-12-03T21:39:24.346-08:002017-12-03T21:39:24.346-08:002) Human memory is not very reliable. Humans frequ...2) Human memory is not very reliable. Humans frequently reinterpret their memories based on experiences they had after the event occurred. This is why eyewitness evidence is considered by legal experts to be the least-reliable for of evidence, and why witness contamination is such a major problem for criminal investigators. One famous example of this phenomenon is the crash of TWA flight 800, in which there one witness told the media they thought the plane was shot down by a missile. This was widely reported and caused other witnesses to reinterpret their memory of events and also claim it was a missile. The result was a situation in which hundreds of witnesses would swear on their life that they saw a missile, despite all of the physical evidence indicating that the plane was brought down by a fuel tank explosion. This same problem exists with sexual assault, especially on college campuses where drunken, forgetful sex is common and ideologically driven teachers and student advisors are always on the lookout for anything that could possibly be viewed a rape. There have been instances where a student who had drunken sex the previous night would swear that she was not raped, but a student student advisor demands she see a rape counselor, and after a couple hours of talking to the counselor her whole recollection of events is altered. This is a very informative lecture regarding how the shortcomings of human memory often muddy the waters around sexual assault:<br /><br />https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGMi0UtvTIcAnonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02305953502471120856noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1427019156302694146.post-69789908401456969742017-12-03T21:17:04.484-08:002017-12-03T21:17:04.484-08:001) Where do you draw the line between what is and ...1) Where do you draw the line between what is and isn't consent? I am of the opinion that any sex in which both parties give verbal consent and remain active and willing participants (ruling out unconscious or coerced sex) for the entirety of the intercourse should be considered consensual. Whether or not the parties were intoxicated shouldn't matter because chosing to consume alcohol does not mean you are no longer responsible for your actions, and being an active and willing participant in a sexual encounter is a conscious choice. For some reason this opinion is controversial, particularly on college campuses, and in the past few years we have seen incidents at Occidental, Vassar, and Amherst where a student gets expelled (and their record tarnished) in spite of on overwhelming body of evidence that the sex was in fact consensual. The Amherst case is particularly troubling as the accuser was not only the instigator of the encounter, but the accused student was not even conscious for the entirety of the intercourse. Slate has a really good article on this subject that I highly recommend reading:<br /><br />http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2015/02/drunk_sex_on_campus_universities_are_struggling_to_determine_when_intoxicated.htmlAnonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02305953502471120856noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1427019156302694146.post-51422740399579305752017-11-30T08:29:25.016-08:002017-11-30T08:29:25.016-08:00hi andrew! sure, fire away. hi andrew! sure, fire away. Emma Piersonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04768879770449093477noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1427019156302694146.post-69033323930013971572017-11-30T08:28:34.630-08:002017-11-30T08:28:34.630-08:00I have a few objections, but seeing as this is an ...I have a few objections, but seeing as this is an old blog post, I would just like to confirm that you still read new comments on this page before I write a detailed response. If you are reading this comment, can you please reply so I know you're still here?Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02305953502471120856noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1427019156302694146.post-53132115684473682332016-09-28T09:23:22.133-07:002016-09-28T09:23:22.133-07:00http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-data-detecti...http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-data-detective-story-did-a-british-nurse-kill-his-patients/ may be relevant when considering how (or whether) courts will (or should) consider statistical evidence.JimJJewetthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01264618304723135340noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1427019156302694146.post-72080935699172056192016-09-27T15:36:47.409-07:002016-09-27T15:36:47.409-07:00I think the model would be just as useful for othe...I think the model would be just as useful for other crimes (or anti-social behavior in general). I think herding would be more likely for relatively minor or anonymous crimes, like shoplifting. ("Oh, that weird guy who made me uncomfortable was just accused of shoplifting down the street. Maybe I should see if anything is missing and report him." [implicitly assuming that the missing stuff was lifted by him in particular]) I do agree that the anonymity box largely deals with this problem for sexual assault in particular.<br /><br />I won't argue about what proportion of assaults are made by serial offenders -- I have seen suggestive but not overwhelming evidence both ways. When you say that the model is robust against this, do you just mean that it won't catch as many perpetrators, but the ones it does catch are still overwhelmingly likely to be flagged correctly?<br /><br />I agree that naming-the-wrong-perpetrator is less of a problem for sex assault in particular, barring conspiracy or lots of media attention. I do worry that eyewitness testimony is quite poor compared to the confidence we give it, and once a particular stranger has been identified (even wrongly) as a suspect, he will attract more than his share of accusations. In fairness, that isn't a problem for identifying suspects; only for deciding to prosecute.JimJJewetthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01264618304723135340noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1427019156302694146.post-31582721122975000192015-09-08T11:05:03.442-07:002015-09-08T11:05:03.442-07:00Good points! Thanks.
1. Yes, I think the statist...Good points! Thanks. <br /><br />1. Yes, I think the statistical machinery could generalize...do you have another behavior you think it would be interesting to apply it to? As I explain in the post (footnote 1), I don't find "herd mentality" super-plausible when it comes to people bringing sexual assault allegations. <br />2. The conclusions in the model are robust to whether we assume serial offenders are responsible for most assaults. I think this assumption is reasonably well-substantiated by Lisak's work, though (I'm not sure what contrary evidence you're alluding to -- if it's the recent JAMA serial assaulters paper, I wasn't persuaded that that actually contradicted Lisak's results.) <br />3. Yes, false allegations might come from people the accused has not had sex with. Evidence suggests that the rate of such false accusations is very low.<br />4. Yes. Perhaps we should change our court procedures? Emma Piersonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04768879770449093477noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1427019156302694146.post-67002213532144805442015-08-04T14:00:45.878-07:002015-08-04T14:00:45.878-07:00This comment has been removed by the author.JimJJewetthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01264618304723135340noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1427019156302694146.post-22259121527011446812015-08-04T14:00:35.878-07:002015-08-04T14:00:35.878-07:001. The model does not need to be limited to sexua...1. The model does not need to be limited to sexual assault; it applies to any behavior, or at least to any "bad" behavior. Thinking about less dramatic behaviors may help explain some of the objections, such as the potential for "herd mentality", or making similar accusations as a form of solidarity/distancing.<br /><br />2. The assumption of serial predators being responsible for most assaults is a strong assumption, and there is some evidence against it.<br /><br />3. I'm not sure it is reasonable to assume that false allegations are always from the pool of people the accused actually had sex with. In other words, the question won't always be "how likely is someone to decide it wasn't consensual after all"; sometimes the question might be "if someone is making a false accusation, how likely are they to make it about person Y in particular?" (Of course, too many sliders for different categories of false starts to get into the degrees of freedom problem.)<br /><br />4. It isn't (just) that lawyers are uncomfortable with the reasoning; it is that court procedures make it (theoretically, in general) irrelevant, at least in criminal trials. In a civil trial, it might be admissible, but ... then the discomfort (of the judges) starts to matter.JimJJewetthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01264618304723135340noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1427019156302694146.post-30571280608478373752015-01-14T01:55:49.386-08:002015-01-14T01:55:49.386-08:00Thanks, Aaron! I miss you. Thanks, Aaron! I miss you. Emma Piersonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04768879770449093477noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1427019156302694146.post-85005460817213137172014-12-27T18:13:23.712-08:002014-12-27T18:13:23.712-08:00Very thoughtful and well-constructed post, Emma!Very thoughtful and well-constructed post, Emma!Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12762023998676000402noreply@blogger.com