Re: A reality check on Koss.

On 3 Dec 2003 10:36:45 -0800 Rich <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...

> Let's get some numbers first.
> Starting with the number of women in college.
> 
> -----------------
> 
> http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/school/cps2001.html
> http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/school/cps2001/tab10.pdf
> 
> ( note, the table legend says that the numbers are in thousands )
> 
> .TOTAL," 15,873 "
> 
> ..Male,,,,,,,
> ...Total," 6,875 "
> 
> ..Female,,,,,,,
> ...Total," 8,998 "
> 
> -------------------
> 
> Now lets get some numbers for rape.
> 
> -------------------
> 
> http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_02/pdf/2sectiontwo.pdf
> 
> Page  5(PDF) Page11 (page number): Forcible rapes: 0.8%
> 
> Page 23(PDF) Page29 (page number):
> 
> (I started with the table but added material from the text)
> 
>                           Trend
>                           
>                          Rate per  Per 100,000
> Year  Number of Offenses  100,000   females      Arrests
> ----  ------------------  --------  -----------  -------
> 2001              90,863      31.8         62.6     
> 2002              95,136      33.0         64.8   28,288
> 
> percent change     +4.7%     +3.6%        +3.5%
> 
>  Definition Forcible rape, as defined in the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) 
>  Program, is the carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.
>  Assaults or attempts to commit rape by force or threat of force are also 
>  included; however, statutory rape (without force) and other sex offenses 
>  are excluded.
> 
> There was no conviction data in this report.
> 
> -------------
> 
> OK, the numbers (and sources) are above.
> 
> Let's look at Koss's numbers.
> 
> She reports that 27% of all female college students had been
> the vicitms of rape or attempted rape.
> 
> I've not seen anyone claim that the situation is different today,
> so I'll use todays (or actually 2001) data. I just happen to have
> all the numbers for 2001.

Actually the number of reported rapes in the USA fell by about a third since
the mid 80s.  This is partly an artefact of demographic change (the sixties
babyboomers aging out of the high risk of being raped age-bracket), partly a
genuine reduction caused by demographic change (the sixties babyboomers
aging out of the high risk of raping age-bracket) and partly due to the
general reduction in crime over the past decade.

> 27% of 8,998,000 is 2,429,460.
> 
> Koss asserts that 2.5 million female college students have been
> the victims of rape or attempted rape.

That's throughout the woman's entire college career.

> The FBI says that the number is 90,863 nationwide.

That's in a single year.

> Anyone note a small discrepancy?

Yes.  Not every student goes to college for exactly one year, and rape is
not always reported to the FBI.  Given that many of Koss's victim's did not
identify what was done to them as rape, it is not surprising that they did
not report it as such.

> The number of reported rapes and attempted rapes nationwide is 
> 90,863/2,429,460 = 3.8% of the number Koss reports for college 
> campuses alone.

This might be an interesting calculation, if you could find the relevant
data for 1984 (I think) when Koss did her study, and aggregate the reported
rapes over a meaningful number of years.

> Anyone interested in keeping things real (sorry Kate) must conclude
> that there is something vastly wrong with at least one of the numbers.
> 
> Depending on the methodology used, and the sampling used, research
> can (and does) give vastly different results. And in the case of rape,
> many surveys *have* given vastly different results...

This is true.  I regard surveys like this to be order-of-magnitude estimates
- no better.

One possible methodology would be to ask your subjects whether they had been
raped, allowing them to define for themselves what the word meant.  Of
course, if Koss had done that, antifeminists would be howling in protest,
claiming (correctly) that it allowed women to count morning-after regrets as
rape.

But Koss didn't do that.  She used objective definitions based upon
applicable law, and disregarded the women's own personal definitions.  So
antifeminists...  howl in protest anyway.

> ...But when the discrepancies are so large, you need to consider that they
> may well be measuring different things,...

In the case of the comparison you just made, it is.  The UCR does not
purport to measure rape.  It purports to measure rape reported to the
police, a quite different thing.

> ...or there may be sampling problems.
> Self-selected samples are one way to get extreme results. 

If you have specific criticisms about how Koss's sample was selected, please
state them.

> I note that the FBI, like Koss, reports rapes and attempted rapes
> together, the text says that 91% were rapes and the rest attempts.
> This, of course, has the appearance of inflating the number of rapes.

I agree.

> I've seen Kate's web page, and she jumps through flaming hoops
> defending Koss's numbers, numbers so extreme as to cause any
> thinking man to pause, but sadly not many women.

This is the argument from incredularity.  'I don't believe it, therefore
it's not true'.

> Is rape a problem? Yes.
> 
> Are false rape reports a problem? Yes.
> 
> Irrespective of the numbers, both are affronts to everything that 
> is right and just. Kate seeks to minimize false rape reports to
> insignificance, she simply ignores or denies all the evidence for
> a high incidence. If Kate thinks false rape reports are a problem,
> she hides it well.

I've not seen much evidence pointing to a high frequency of false rape
*accusations*.  I have seen *some* evidence of a high frequency of false
rape *allegations*.  For an allegation to be an accusation, someone must be
accused, as Kate recently pointed out, and as I have been arguing for years. 
Merely saying 'I was raped' is not an accusation.

> Koss's numbers are ridiculous, regardless of any rhetoric to support
> it. In SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) there is
> something known as the Fermi paradox. It asks the musical question,
> if there are all these intelligent ET's, where are they? I posit
> the Koss paradox. If all these rapes are occuring, where are they?
> Where is the evidence for their existence? The FBI does not have
> the evidence for all these rapes. 

The same question can be made about false accusations.  If it's common,
where are the falsely accused people?  They can't be all in prison, because
the conviction rate is so low.  (6% in the UK).  So why aren't they posting
to soc.men complaining about their treatment at the hands of the lying
bitches?

Alan says he can't remember anyone posting to t.r about having been falsely
accused.  I can remember two - one was questionable.  (He claimed that he
was accused in divorce proceedings, but also claimed that he faced criminal
penalties.  He refused to answer, when questioned about this discrepancy.) I
remember one other case of false arrest.  (He took a genuine victim home
from a party at which she was raped.  Her sister misunderstood what had
happened, and told the police it was him.  They arrested him without
checking with the victim first.)

I can remember one other who posted to alt.support.rape.survivors.

That's a total of two unquestionable cases, plus one questionable, and one
near miss.  In the same time, I've spoken to scores of women and a few men
who have been raped.

> No rhetorical arguments about Koss's questions or methodology will
> create these 2.5 million rapes on college campuses. Show me that these
> rapes actually exist Kate.
> 
> Rich

-- 
Daran

2^20996011-1 is prime!  <http://www.mersenne.org>