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When there have already been numerous well-documented instances of people making false accusations that absolutely RUIN THE LIVES of the defendants, it can hard

When there have already been numerous well-documented instances of people making false accusations that absolutely RUIN THE LIVES of the defendants, it can hardly be a surprise that people with a lot to lose would take drastic, if ill-though-out, measures to protect themselves from that possibility. As another comment said, even when the false accusations are found to be false, it's usually too late for the defendant, and their life has already been ruined. The only way this gets fixes is if we stop implicitly believing people who accuse someone of a crime, just because of the nature of that crime. Innocent until proven guilty applies globally, not based on context or scandals.

danesparza 8y ago
Numerous? Well-documented? I don't mean to be inflammatory -- but I must reading different news that you are. Can you please cite your sources? To be clear: Numerous (to me) means approaching 20% of all accusations. That's only 1 in every 5 accusations. Does numerous mean something else to you?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- wrs 8y ago
  I’m wondering if this is something like the numerous and well-documented instances of child kidnapping that have kept a generation of kids from being allowed outside by themselves.
- YorkshireSeason 8y ago
  Can you please cite your sources? There is no serious, solid research on this question. "News" is certainly not where you can get serious figures on this matter. Even the very definitions of what counts as sexual harassment / assault / rape / hate speech etc are deeply controversial. A most prominent example are radical feminists like Dworkin who essentially say that all heterosexual intercourse is rape.
  - CiPHPerCoder 8y ago
    > A most prominent example are radical feminists like Dworkin who essentially say that all heterosexual intercourse is rape. That's a stupid argument. Can we please not equivocate exceptionally dumb arguments with serious ones? (Also, while we basically live in a post-satire society, I still like to call Poe's Law on exceptionally dumb arguments.)
  - repolfx 8y ago
    There is such research actually. Look at the studies by Kanin, Jan, and their replications. The topic of what proportion of allegations are false is studied from time to time, but not often, because the studies that are done usually report eye-wateringly high figures. In the UK, official government research put the figure at 10% of all (rape) accusations being false. But if you read the reports, you'll see that the true figure must be much higher, as the methodology reclassifies lots of data points to avoid them being considered false.
    - YorkshireSeason 8y ago
      This is interesting, and coheres with my working hypotheses about this subject. I'm planning to write a paper about this subject. Which paper do you mean by Jan and what replications have you got in mind? And where do you recommend I look for the UK figures?
      - repolfx 8y ago
        Sure. Here are some citations if you want to do further research. A word of warning. I've found that there is a shocking rate of lying about these studies, both in other academic papers and the media. Moreover you have to read the papers carefully because they're often written by people with an explicit agenda (to minimise the false reporting rate - exception is Kanin who appers to have no agenda). You really have to watch out and not take any claims at face value, even when they'd appear to be in credible reports from credible sources. It's very sad but it appears that in a rather meta way, the topic of false reports of rape is dogged by false reports about studies of false reports about rape! The idea that the rate of false reporting is very high is probably once of the most controversial and dangerous topics in our society today. If you write your paper you are very likely to be attacked for it, at least if your paper is based on police report data. Good luck! Kanin, 1994 https://ia800209.us.archive.org/4/items/FalseRapeAllegations/false-rape-allegations-archive.pdf https://ia800209.us.archive.org/4/items/FalseRapeAllegations... He reviews police reports for every single rape allegation in an unnamed American town, selected because the police department had the time and resources to investigate every allegation thoroughly. In 41% of the cases, the allegation was false. In this study, for a report to be considered false the accuser had to agree it was false. Thus the true rate must be higher, as there was no real incentive for the women to admit they lied to the police. The study provides data on the motives for why the false allegations were made. Note the appendix. The original Kanin study was done on an unnamed American town. In the appendix they replicate the findings in a US university. Actually the percentage there is slightly higher at exactly 50% false reports (admitted false by the accuser). The data Kanin provides on why false allegations are made has been replicated by the Dutch police: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313830325_Motives_for_Filing_a_False_Allegation_of_Rape https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313830325_Motives_f... This Dutch replication doesn't examine the percentage of all claims that are false, just the motives for cases proven false. Jan Jordan, 2004 http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/jhamlin/3925/4925HomeComputer/Rape%20myths/Police.pdf http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/jhamlin/3925/4925HomeComput... This study examines New Zealand police reports and replicates Kanin, by finding a 41% false reporting rate. The paper is horrendously biased, but nonetheless contains useful ground truth data about the NZ police conclusions in a large number of rape reports. The breakdown is: - Genuine cases, 21% - Uncertain/insufficient evidence, 38% - Police investigated and concluded the complaint was false, 33% - The complainant themselves said their own report was false, 8% If we add together 33% and 8% we get 41%. The paper goes into a lot of detail if you're looking for material. Finally, the UK study is here: https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110218141141/http://rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs05/hors293.pdf https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110218141141/ht... It states that in 9% of cases the claims were considered false by the police. This is quite far off Kanin and Jan, so what's going on? Again, it requires careful reading. About 20% of all reports are "no crimed", that is, the police classify the report as "no crime occurred". This classification is intended for very narrow and unusual situations like the original report being made accidentally, but the prevalence shows it's not being used like that. The UK has put considerable pressure on its police to always 'believe the victim' etc, and they appear to have come up with this way to minimise the number of reports classified as false. It should be clear that if someone files a report of rape (which can't really be accidentally reported), and the police conclude no crime occurred, this is the same thing as a false report. These two categories take the UK to 29%. Lower than Jan and Kanin but still very high. The missing chunk is probably the category where the accuser withdrew their police report so investigation did not continue. These reports may or may not be false. This study also contains some data on motives. One theme that crops up in quite a few of these papers is that when police officers are interviewed and asked to estimate the rate of false reports, they give rates in the 40-50% range. In media reports you will frequently see a rate of 2% being quoted, so this is an exceptionally large difference in perception between journalists writing about the topic and police who deal with it. The UK study has some anonymised quotes from police talking about the problem. There are many posts in this discussion thread stating that men are wrong to worry because "the statistics prove false allegations are not a problem". That claim appears to be false: replicated studies show the problem is vastly larger for rape than any other crime (false report rate for murder is ~2%). Men are probably right to be wary.
neaden 8y ago
Hey, can you show me some of these well documented instances? The Duke Lacross case gets brought up a lot, but all those guys were exonerated and as far as I'm aware doing fine. Kavanaugh just got appointed to the Supreme Court and Lois C.K is popping up to do comedy sets, so I'm curious to see these many well documented cases you refer to.
- jerf 8y ago
  Even accepting your cited cases as the limit (which they are not), I can't accept being nationally and universally condemned and smeared for months or years on end despite being innocent as a perfectly acceptable outcome for a baseless accusation. I suspect you'd be a lot less flippant about how everything turned out fine if you'd be in any of their positions.
- tomp 8y ago
  A few outhers are: Oxford Union president, Jian Gomeshi, "The Mattress Girl".
  - neaden 8y ago
    I'm not familiar with the Oxford Union president. Jian Gomeshi was credibly accused, the fact that he was found not guilty does not mean his accuser was false. I don't know why you include Emma Sulkowicz, I know of no evidence at all that she falsely accused someone. Also Jian Gomeshi is writing articles for the New York Review of Books and the man Emma Sulkowicz accused graduated, so neither of their lives were ruined.
    - SpicyLemonZest 8y ago
      The idea that Ghomeshi was “credibly accused” is rather the point. In the only cases that went to court, he was found not guilty, and the judge went on quite a tangent about how the witnesses had lied to and hid evidence from the court. If that’s not enough to clear his name, how can anyone ever escape the stain of a credible accusation? It seems prudent given that problem to ensure that no accusation will be credible.
jklinger410 8y ago
"It is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer"
thenayr 8y ago
Would love it if you would provide one high profile instance of this occurring
CelestialTeapot 8y ago
"When there have already been numerous well-documented instances of people making false accusations that absolutely RUIN THE LIVES of the defendants" *Citation needed on that claim. The reality is that "false" sexual assault/harassment claims are around 2% to 10%. And that number is likely higher than reality because some law enforcement agencies will call a claim "false" simply because they could not find enough corroborating evidence. [1] If anything, there is a disincentive to report sexual harassment/assault, because the victim has HISTORICALLY been victimized again in the media. The vast majority of sexual assault crimes go unreported because of this and other reasons. [2, 3] [1] https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/03/health/sexual-assault-false-reports/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/03/health/sexual-assault-false-r... [2] https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/vnrp0610.pdf https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/vnrp0610.pdf [3] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-compassion-chronicles/201711/why-dont-victims-sexual-harassment-come-forward-sooner https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-compassion-chron...

danesparza 8y ago

Numerous? Well-documented? I don't mean to be inflammatory -- but I must reading different news that you are. Can you please cite your sources? To be clear: Numerous (to me) means approaching 20% of all accusations. That's only 1 in every 5 accusations. Does numerous mean something else to you?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
wrs 8y ago
I’m wondering if this is something like the numerous and well-documented instances of child kidnapping that have kept a generation of kids from being allowed outside by themselves.
YorkshireSeason 8y ago
Can you please cite your sources? There is no serious, solid research on this question. "News" is certainly not where you can get serious figures on this matter. Even the very definitions of what counts as sexual harassment / assault / rape / hate speech etc are deeply controversial. A most prominent example are radical feminists like Dworkin who essentially say that all heterosexual intercourse is rape.
- CiPHPerCoder 8y ago
  > A most prominent example are radical feminists like Dworkin who essentially say that all heterosexual intercourse is rape. That's a stupid argument. Can we please not equivocate exceptionally dumb arguments with serious ones? (Also, while we basically live in a post-satire society, I still like to call Poe's Law on exceptionally dumb arguments.)
- repolfx 8y ago
  There is such research actually. Look at the studies by Kanin, Jan, and their replications. The topic of what proportion of allegations are false is studied from time to time, but not often, because the studies that are done usually report eye-wateringly high figures. In the UK, official government research put the figure at 10% of all (rape) accusations being false. But if you read the reports, you'll see that the true figure must be much higher, as the methodology reclassifies lots of data points to avoid them being considered false.
  - YorkshireSeason 8y ago
    This is interesting, and coheres with my working hypotheses about this subject. I'm planning to write a paper about this subject. Which paper do you mean by Jan and what replications have you got in mind? And where do you recommend I look for the UK figures?
    - repolfx 8y ago
      Sure. Here are some citations if you want to do further research. A word of warning. I've found that there is a shocking rate of lying about these studies, both in other academic papers and the media. Moreover you have to read the papers carefully because they're often written by people with an explicit agenda (to minimise the false reporting rate - exception is Kanin who appers to have no agenda). You really have to watch out and not take any claims at face value, even when they'd appear to be in credible reports from credible sources. It's very sad but it appears that in a rather meta way, the topic of false reports of rape is dogged by false reports about studies of false reports about rape! The idea that the rate of false reporting is very high is probably once of the most controversial and dangerous topics in our society today. If you write your paper you are very likely to be attacked for it, at least if your paper is based on police report data. Good luck! Kanin, 1994 https://ia800209.us.archive.org/4/items/FalseRapeAllegations/false-rape-allegations-archive.pdf https://ia800209.us.archive.org/4/items/FalseRapeAllegations... He reviews police reports for every single rape allegation in an unnamed American town, selected because the police department had the time and resources to investigate every allegation thoroughly. In 41% of the cases, the allegation was false. In this study, for a report to be considered false the accuser had to agree it was false. Thus the true rate must be higher, as there was no real incentive for the women to admit they lied to the police. The study provides data on the motives for why the false allegations were made. Note the appendix. The original Kanin study was done on an unnamed American town. In the appendix they replicate the findings in a US university. Actually the percentage there is slightly higher at exactly 50% false reports (admitted false by the accuser). The data Kanin provides on why false allegations are made has been replicated by the Dutch police: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313830325_Motives_for_Filing_a_False_Allegation_of_Rape https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313830325_Motives_f... This Dutch replication doesn't examine the percentage of all claims that are false, just the motives for cases proven false. Jan Jordan, 2004 http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/jhamlin/3925/4925HomeComputer/Rape%20myths/Police.pdf http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/jhamlin/3925/4925HomeComput... This study examines New Zealand police reports and replicates Kanin, by finding a 41% false reporting rate. The paper is horrendously biased, but nonetheless contains useful ground truth data about the NZ police conclusions in a large number of rape reports. The breakdown is: - Genuine cases, 21% - Uncertain/insufficient evidence, 38% - Police investigated and concluded the complaint was false, 33% - The complainant themselves said their own report was false, 8% If we add together 33% and 8% we get 41%. The paper goes into a lot of detail if you're looking for material. Finally, the UK study is here: https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110218141141/http://rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs05/hors293.pdf https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110218141141/ht... It states that in 9% of cases the claims were considered false by the police. This is quite far off Kanin and Jan, so what's going on? Again, it requires careful reading. About 20% of all reports are "no crimed", that is, the police classify the report as "no crime occurred". This classification is intended for very narrow and unusual situations like the original report being made accidentally, but the prevalence shows it's not being used like that. The UK has put considerable pressure on its police to always 'believe the victim' etc, and they appear to have come up with this way to minimise the number of reports classified as false. It should be clear that if someone files a report of rape (which can't really be accidentally reported), and the police conclude no crime occurred, this is the same thing as a false report. These two categories take the UK to 29%. Lower than Jan and Kanin but still very high. The missing chunk is probably the category where the accuser withdrew their police report so investigation did not continue. These reports may or may not be false. This study also contains some data on motives. One theme that crops up in quite a few of these papers is that when police officers are interviewed and asked to estimate the rate of false reports, they give rates in the 40-50% range. In media reports you will frequently see a rate of 2% being quoted, so this is an exceptionally large difference in perception between journalists writing about the topic and police who deal with it. The UK study has some anonymised quotes from police talking about the problem. There are many posts in this discussion thread stating that men are wrong to worry because "the statistics prove false allegations are not a problem". That claim appears to be false: replicated studies show the problem is vastly larger for rape than any other crime (false report rate for murder is ~2%). Men are probably right to be wary.

neaden 8y ago

Hey, can you show me some of these well documented instances? The Duke Lacross case gets brought up a lot, but all those guys were exonerated and as far as I'm aware doing fine. Kavanaugh just got appointed to the Supreme Court and Lois C.K is popping up to do comedy sets, so I'm curious to see these many well documented cases you refer to.

jerf 8y ago
Even accepting your cited cases as the limit (which they are not), I can't accept being nationally and universally condemned and smeared for months or years on end despite being innocent as a perfectly acceptable outcome for a baseless accusation. I suspect you'd be a lot less flippant about how everything turned out fine if you'd be in any of their positions.
tomp 8y ago
A few outhers are: Oxford Union president, Jian Gomeshi, "The Mattress Girl".
- neaden 8y ago
  I'm not familiar with the Oxford Union president. Jian Gomeshi was credibly accused, the fact that he was found not guilty does not mean his accuser was false. I don't know why you include Emma Sulkowicz, I know of no evidence at all that she falsely accused someone. Also Jian Gomeshi is writing articles for the New York Review of Books and the man Emma Sulkowicz accused graduated, so neither of their lives were ruined.
  - SpicyLemonZest 8y ago
    The idea that Ghomeshi was “credibly accused” is rather the point. In the only cases that went to court, he was found not guilty, and the judge went on quite a tangent about how the witnesses had lied to and hid evidence from the court. If that’s not enough to clear his name, how can anyone ever escape the stain of a credible accusation? It seems prudent given that problem to ensure that no accusation will be credible.

jklinger410 8y ago

"It is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer"

thenayr 8y ago

Would love it if you would provide one high profile instance of this occurring

CelestialTeapot 8y ago

"When there have already been numerous well-documented instances of people making false accusations that absolutely RUIN THE LIVES of the defendants" *Citation needed on that claim. The reality is that "false" sexual assault/harassment claims are around 2% to 10%. And that number is likely higher than reality because some law enforcement agencies will call a claim "false" simply because they could not find enough corroborating evidence. [1] If anything, there is a disincentive to report sexual harassment/assault, because the victim has HISTORICALLY been victimized again in the media. The vast majority of sexual assault crimes go unreported because of this and other reasons. [2, 3] [1] https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/03/health/sexual-assault-false-reports/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/03/health/sexual-assault-false-r... [2] https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/vnrp0610.pdf https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/vnrp0610.pdf [3] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-compassion-chronicles/201711/why-dont-victims-sexual-harassment-come-forward-sooner https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-compassion-chron...