WBGhiro: https://archive.is/sVG61 UN admits they really fucked up on the cyberviolence report
Oh god...
"Really, the big problem was footnoting which was not up to standard and we very much regret that," said Parkes. "That is being revised very thoroughly. We are adamant that we will have these [footnotes] all corrected." For the 99% that only read the title of the report and look no further than the abstract, that is true. The problem is the 1% that have the mental capacity to read a report and derive their own conclusions based on the evidence presented, whether said conclusions agree with the author or not. "Footnoting" is the fundamental key to academic articles, without proper references you have no backing to your claims; how can anyone be so indifferent to the scientific method and peer review?
"It is just to raise awareness," she said. "We just wanted to stimulate debate and say this is an area of increasing concern and it needs to be discussed." Discussion of a problem without veritable proof said problem exists causes more problems. In truth, sociology is a very slow moving field and while people are pushing sensationalist pieces left and right, these studies also retain the fault of multiple testing. Unlike the more mature studies that retain places in textbooks, the recent ones often start with a hypothesis of what is intended to be proven (heresy!)
Multiple testing points out that if 10 people do different tests with p=0.05 with the intent to prove a hypothesis, that there is a 40% (1 - (1 - p)^10) chance of getting "significant" results just due to random chance. Statistics are often misused to indicate a correlation instead of "a variable of interest." This is why peer review is so important, not only to confirm the results aren't pure chance, but also to verify that the provided conclusion is the only rational conclusion one can make from the given data, and that other variables aren't affecting the outcome.
We can point to statistics saying women are less likely to be arrested than men. The only thing this means is women are less likely to be arrested than men, whether it is due to women committing less crimes, women not getting caught for their crimes, officers being more willing to dismiss said crimes, or the crimes not being of significance to make an arrest over... the statistic fails to provide enough information to draw a meaningful conclusion.
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I am quite tired of these type publications being given credibility. Everyone seems to be using them now-a-days and claiming victim to something or another. I remember Al Gore used the argument that because no one was brave enough to speak up against climate change (within the academic community), climate change is real. Recognizing that science is slow moving and few people are willing to stake their credibility without being certain the claims are false (and sometimes, even then) especially now that we're pushing politics here, why would academia risk telling the truth?
