Interesting Links for 10-01-2013

[andrewducker]

• The Enliven Project's false rape accusations infographic: great intentions, but it isn't accurate.
  (tags: rape statistics )
• Twitter Trend Reveals Transgender Discrimination from GPs
  (tags: lgbt nhs uk )
• The Story of the PING Program
  (tags: internet technology history )
• How to survive on 1.5kW.
  (tags: energy electricity )
• Using the firefly

Comments

[gonzo21]

I despair sometimes at the size of tvs that people will cram into tiny rooms and then declare to be awesome. It's not awesome if you have to move your head left and right in order to see what's going on.

[andrewducker]

Well, it should be covering 30 degrees of vision, I think. The second graph covers that.

[naath]

Really? "should" I guess as a maximum-useful viewing wossname.

We have a small TV. And I like it that way 'cos it gives us more space in the room for other important things like books and yarn :-p

[bart_calendar]

When I was covering crime for Gannett, they got it in their head that they wanted a story about how cops figure out if a rape report was manufactured or not

[steer]

The report about false rape accusations linked from the infographic was interesting. It used a meta-review to look at various sources of evidence on how many reported rapes were false accusations.

The report cites police estimates of incidence of false reporting as around 40%. It cites more methodologically rigorous estimates of the rate as varying from 2-8%. If these figures are correct then for every 40 rape accusations the police think are false, at least 32 of them are genuine rapes -- likely more.

I've no idea if the figures in the report are correct -- if they are that's pretty worrying. It gives a lot of pause for thought about what sort of things the police think are good ways to detect a false rape.

[bart_calendar]

I think that number is skewed

[steer]

Hmm... there must be some issue with the statistics here. If you're claiming that in your experience 40% of cases were dropped because the police didn't believe the witness that's vastly at odds with the FBI's 8% unfounded (that mixes any accusation whether naming individual or not). I guess in some cases the police never even bothered to record it perhaps?

Both figures from the report cited are for accusations whether or not the victim names their attacker.

It's also worth noting that scepticism on the part of the police will often deter the accuser in such a situation but this doesn't imply a false accusation. To be honest, what you describe sounds pretty horrible to me.

[despotliz]

The sweetened drinks thing appears to be a report of a forthcoming conference abstract and I can't find a paper, so it could be good or it could be total balls. I would hope that they've controlled for all confounding effects, but it's not possible to tell. It's also a particular age cohort and may not hold for other age groups.

[steer]

I also tried and failed to find the paper. Seems a reputable conference though.

[apostle_of_eris]

The bit gives no reason to jump from correlation to causation. Maybe depressed people have more of a sweet tooth? Why would artificial sweeteners make no difference?
(And, for the Yank, what's a "can of fruit punch"?)

[steer]

There's a more important problem not listed there with the Enliven project graphic which I tried to point out on twitter but it's hard in so few words. The main problem I see is this

[andrewducker]

I was hoping you'd come over here and point that out somewhere you could use more words - thank you!

[steer]

Glad to be of service. As you can probably tell, the issue bothered me. I've no problem with people pointing out that false rape accusations are over-exaggerated and we should not worry about them so much as we do... but the whole graphic seemed dishonest to me.

[nancylebov]

The sweetened drinks article didn't look at the taste for sweetened foods in general. Are drinks doing anything special?

There may be some causality in the opposite direction-- as far as I can tell, sweet flavors cut through a depressive haze better than most sensations.

I have no opinion about artificial vs. natural sweeteners.

[andrewducker]

Yeah - I suspect that it's a lot more complicated than the original reactions I'm seeing make out.