April 5, 2015

Just published: "Rolling Stone and UVA: The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Report."

"An anatomy of a journalistic failure," by Sheila Coronel, Steve Coll, Derek Kravitz.
[The Rolling Stone writer Sabrina Rubin] Erdely believed firmly that Jackie's account was reliable. So did her editors and the story's fact-checker, who spent more than four hours on the telephone with Jackie, reviewing every detail of her experience. "She wasn't just answering, 'Yes, yes, yes,' she was correcting me," the checker said. "She was describing the scene for me in a very vivid way. … I did not have doubt." (Rolling Stone requested that the checker not be named because she did not have decision-making authority.)...

The problem of confirmation bias – the tendency of people to be trapped by pre-existing assumptions and to select facts that support their own views while overlooking contradictory ones – is a well-established finding of social science. It seems to have been a factor here. Erdely believed the university was obstructing justice. She felt she had been blocked. Like many other universities, UVA had a flawed record of managing sexual assault cases. Jackie's experience seemed to confirm this larger pattern. Her story seemed well established on campus, repeated and accepted.

80 comments:

Bob R said...

Like many other Media organizations, Rolling Stone had a flawed record of reporting facts. Jackie's experience seemed to confirm a pattern they wished to believe. Her story seemed well established on campus, repeated and accepted. Fuck the facts.

Anonymous said...

This happens in politics all the time.

John Edwards cheat on his wife? Never!

Any Republican with an allegation against them? Of course it's true, let's dedicate as much time and resources as we need to make sure it's the topic at dinner in every house.

Hillary Clinton deleted her Emails? Let's give her the benefit of the doubt.

George Bush memo from when he was in the national guard? It must be true! We always knew that bastard was evil!

Quayle said...

"As we asked ourselves how we could have gotten the story wrong...."

Oh, I don't believe that for a second. You didn't get the story wrong. You got the story exactly right - exactly as it was already written in your heads - in your world view.

What you got wrong was your shoddy attempt to fit that story over a set of facts that turned out to be less promising than you so very dearly hoped they would be - facts less promising than you deluded yourself into thinking they surely would be.

You threw spaghetti on the wall, and it didn't stick. Not to worry, you've got tons more spaghetti. Eventually something will stick and you'll get your prizes and awards.

(The fact that such a process is not journalism is certainly completely lost on you. But, hey, its a living.)

The Bergall said...

"Where does one go to get one's reputation back"?

Michael said...

You have to be a very gullible person to believe gang rape a precondition to a pledge becoming a member of a fraternity. To believe that down through the decades hundreds of men had engaged in this most horrible of crimes and dozens of women had been their victims and that it was left to Rolling Stone magazine to uncover this dark but widespread secret is absurd on its face. There were many many other "tells" in this story not least the presence of a glass topped table upon which some of the crime occured. No fraternity, ever, has had a glass topped table for reasons any
fraternity member could explain.

Gulls are gulled. Especially when they think rape is rampant on campuses, when they believe it more dangerous to women to be on a college campus than to be in Mogadishu.
Gullible and lazy. Very lazy.

From Inwood said...

Well, you know, it's not like they were asked to consider a story on Obama's birthplace.

Or his College/Law school record.

From Inwood said...

They felt sure she was telling the truth when she told them she had screamed to the rapists "panties up, don't rape"

RecChief said...

what makes you think the Columbia journalism school is any authority regarding actual journalism?

Patrick Henry was right! said...

The cover up continues. Nobody has been fired for this outrage. Relying on the "squirrel" instinct of the media.

How can this story have been a mere error when the perpetrator was made up and does not exist????

Where is the catfishing angle discussed?

From Inwood said...

In the end, we were not wrong even tho it seems that now it's not clear that this wymym was, you know, actually a rape/rape victim. You see, we Very Smart people are smarter than you hoi barbaroi.

Seems that we, unlike mere mortals like you can somehow always interpret what seemed to be happening before our very eyes, in order to find the underlying truth; what was really the issue. So, while this story seems to have turned out not have been entirely factually true min an evidentiary sense, as we are all aware, a lot of campus rape doesn’t get reported or covered in Rolling Stone and we should really stay focused on that basic truth, not on her seeming exaggerations (Click, Click, go the steel balls).

traditionalguy said...

A big hoax reported to "have really happened" always makes up false events/facts where needed.

But it relies on weak minded believers in assertions the dogma is agreed to by the authority figures so it must be true. That is what the writers did. After they started with a belief the College and Police were corrupt men, they forgot to check whether the accusers were corrupt women.

The public speakers of truth are the weakness to the organized Lie.
The must be silenced...burned at the stake perhaps.

Gahrie said...

One of the main reasons for objectivity in reporters is precisely so they won't be fooled by confirmation bias.

YoungHegelian said...

Like many other universities, UVA had a flawed record of managing sexual assault cases.

Erderly knew this how? Was this information she had received from the local police department or from an officer of the university? Had there been an unusual number of civil lawsuits against the university alleging that it failed to co-operate with the police in rape investigations?

Think about for a minute how the statement quoted above could possibly be verified versus how its conclusion was actually arrived at. Everything you need to know about the profound bias in Erderly's investigation is contained in that one statement.

clint said...

If only our professional journalists had some sort of educational preparation in which someone could teach them that it's helpful, in covering any conflicting story, to ask both sides to comment.

JCCamp said...

I think that's quite correct, in that Rolling Stone had the story written, and simply needed a victim and some details. They shopped around for the best narrative, and found an activist at UVa with a good story, already rehearsed in front of Congress. When some troublesome issues arose, we were told to remember that true sexual assault victims often get the details wrong, a tip-off the story was true. Or conversely, the story had so many details, a tip-off the story was true. (Or the victim repeatedly contacted the suspect after the crime, requesting dates and dalliances, a tip-off the story was true...etc. Apparently, there is no tip-off that the story is untrue.) And, of course, everyone involved, friends and staff, were pusillanimous swine who recommended nothing be done, no one be told, peer pressure and all.
Drama and more drama.
I think any reasonabe observer would have recognized the lies built on more lies fairly quickly, even if one did not have a professional obligation to actually, you know, verify. I mean, crap, this isn't a $1 sweater. It's slightly more important.

holdfast said...

So who is going to pay for the damage to the Fraternity house done by the "outraged" vandals?

Big Mike said...

Did Erdley and her editors not go to college? For them to have "confirmation bias" that fraternities use gang rapes as part of their initiation rituals, how could that not set off every alarm bell in the building? Fraternity men might be drunken louts on occasion, but something like that is simply not going to happen. Ordinary men are not on the side of the rapist. That's the basic point that Erdley and her editors did not get, probably still don't get.

And I write that as a person who not only did not rush any fraternities back in my day (the 60's), but who would not want to join any fraternity who would have me as a member.

ken in tx said...

No one is more lie-able than someone with what they think is a good cause, and not enough facts to back it up.

sean said...

Much more troubling to me than unreliable journalism in popular magazines is the kangaroo justice meted out by universities in response to the false stories. But I don't expect a university professor to have much interest in the planks in her own eyes, when the motes in others' eyes are so much more important.

Simon said...

"[T]he editors and Erdely have concluded that their main fault was to be too accommodating of Jackie because she described herself as the survivor of a terrible sexual assault. Social scientists, psychologists and trauma specialists who support rape survivors have impressed upon journalists the need to respect the autonomy of victims, to avoid re-traumatizing them and to understand that rape survivors are as reliable in their testimony as other crime victims. These insights clearly influenced Erdely, Woods and Dana. 'Ultimately, we were too deferential to our rape victim; we honored too many of her requests in our reporting,' Woods said." There you go. You wanted to believe, you didn't care doubt, and in the last analysis you have done a profound disservice to the very cause you wanted to help. The depth of your failure is not easily-quantified.

RonF said...

So did her editors and the story's fact-checker, who spent more than four hours on the telephone with Jackie, reviewing every detail of her experience. "She wasn't just answering, 'Yes, yes, yes,' she was correcting me," the checker said. "She was describing the scene for me in a very vivid way. … I did not have doubt."

You don't check someone's facts by asking them to confirm them. You check someone's facts by asking someone else to confirm them. These people do not understand what the phrase "fact checking" means.

The problem of confirmation bias – the tendency of people to be trapped by pre-existing assumptions and to select facts that support their own views while overlooking contradictory ones – is a well-established finding of social science.

Here's a question to get you all laughing: will Rolling Stone apologize for having a bias to confirm in the first place?

Big Mike said...

The movie "Absence of Malice" was on one of antenna TV old movie channels today. At the end it seems clear to me (if not to Wikipedia) that the character played by Sally Field loses her job, and certainly the bamboozled DA loses his. Who is going to lose their job over this fiasco?

Birches said...

Columbia School of Journalism is pulling a lot of punches in this "hard hitting" report.

I'm not even half way through and I'm becoming infuriated.

rcocean said...

So RS fact checked the allegations by re-interviewing the person making the allegations.

Cool.

Anonymous said...

I don't see why leftists think fraternities are their enemy.

My fraternity was a self-directed, self-financed living community which decided all policies, even the most trivial, by voting. We also did all the work ourselves except cooking. Even the pots-and-pans work was done by a fraternity member. And we lived by a code of conduct that stressed honor and loyalty.

Isn't this kind of like the community structure of the "Occupy" camps? Are they jealous that fraternities have been able to pull this off for decades at a time?

By the way, fraternity chapters can and do go bankrupt. There is no government bailout. My fraternity went bankrupt and closed for about 10 years. It took some dedicated alumni to find another building and re-establish the chapter. They had deep pockets and a sense that they had benefitted from the experience and wanted to leave a legacy that others, me included, could do the same.

rcocean said...

I guess no one thought it odd that someone could be raped on floor with broken glass for hours and not have a little bleeding problem.

Or that the Rapists would be bothered by broken glass.

Cool.

Michael K said...

"No fraternity, ever, has had a glass topped table for reasons any
fraternity member could explain. "

These people have no idea how any fraternity member lived and are certain they know all about it.

one of the bobs said...

NYT:
In an interview discussing Columbia’s findings, Jann S. Wenner, the publisher of Rolling Stone, acknowledged the piece’s flaws but said that it represented an isolated and unusual episode and that Ms. Erdely would continue to write for the magazine.

Such accountability. What a joke. Rolling Stone is not fit to wipe a dog's ass with.

rcocean said...

Ms. Erdely will probably win a journalism award next year for her R&S reporting.

Guildofcannonballs said...

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094608/

The victim watched The Accused (1988) and transferred the movie into her own narrative somehow, perhaps without conscious guidance but instead illness of some sort. The "glass table" was really a pinball machine with popcorn both popped and unpopped.

The answer is to tort sue the producers and creators and actors, anyone who owns stock in any venue or residence the film was displayed in etc.

I watched the film as a child and am a victim myself, and need my payoff by six o'clock tomorrow MST.

Simon said...

All this, by the way, reinforces my conviction that co-ed is a fad—one that will and should go the way of the "war on butter" and similar "new learning" fads of the late twentieth century.

RonF said...

Back when journalism existed, there was an organization in Chicago called the Chicago News Bureau. Think of it as an AP for Chicago - reporters working for the bureau would develop stories and then sell them to the local papers. The Front Page was a dramatization of the place.

One thing that was not fictionalized about the place was that the central maxim of journalism was posted on the wall for all to read. It was not some high-flying gobbledegook, it was not some "Journalism School" nonsense. It was simply and pithly put so that anyone could understand it:

"If your mother says she loves you, check it out."

Fen said...

"The problem of confirmation bias – the tendency of people to be trapped by pre-existing assumptions and to select facts that support their own views while overlooking contradictory ones – is a well-established finding of social science."

Blah blah. They were corrupt reporters looking to set up a narrative.

Same as they did for Iraq
Same as they did for Katrina
Same as they did for Trayvon Martin
Same as they did for Micheal Brown
Same as they did for Memories Pizza
etc

Bob Boyd said...

In a sincere attempt to serve the broader narrative we may in fact have damaged the broader narrative. That what makes this experience so painful for us both professionally and personally. And it is for that we humbly offer our heart felt apologies to our readers and to women everywhere who must still live in fear and for whose sake we vow to continue our journalistic mission with renewed purpose.

Katrina said...

RonF: yes, and in those days, reporters weren't "journalists" who strove to "change the world." Well, the crew at The Nation and other left wing publications did, but the average reporter working at a daily was concerned with who, what, where when and why. Many, if not most, were not college educated, did not enjoy any particular status and were famously (if stereotypically) hard drinking cynics.

Perhaps the rot started to set in when J-schools were created. The actual chore of having to crank out an accurate story under the pressure of a strict daily deadline cannot be recreated in a classroom. It's not that hard to learn how to write a news story using the inverted pyramid model. So you have to fill up that classroom time somehow to create a respectable major. It's no wonder they got away from "just the facts, ma'm" to pushing their pet liberal causes.

Gusty Winds said...

James O'Keefe couldn't have set up Ms. Erderly or Rolling Stone any better than Jackie.

Sebastian said...

As long as heads don't roll and no settlement gets paid, this is just Progs circling the wagons.

Confirmation bias is one thing, ideological desire is another. It's not just that they happen to miss facts that might derail a story, they actively look to make stuff up to serve their cause.

They can't even get their bias straight. In excusing errors as mere evidence of confirmation bias, Progs suffer from metabias. Not that they view it as a fault. It is a deliberate tool, preparing battle space in an ongoing campaign.

khesanh0802 said...

Have to give the WaPo credit for being skeptical about the article and doing some actual research that proved their skepticism to be far more correct than even they imagined!

The Godfather said...

Where the f*ck are the hungry lawyers? Somebody's got to sue somebody. I don't care if it's the fraternity suing, or some individual, and I don't care if they sue Rolling Stone or the reporter or the "fact checker" or the University or the President of the U or all the TV networks. Or ALL of them. Sue them all.

Abuse is not always as clear as it is in this case, so you have to make it really REALLY hurt in this case, so that the next time some reporter or U is faced with "confirmation bias" they'll say, Hold on a minute there, Sparky!

Gusty Winds said...

"In retrospect, I wish somebody had pushed me harder" about reaching out to the three for their versions, Erdely said. "I guess maybe I was surprised that nobody said, 'Why haven't you called them?' But nobody did, and I wasn't going to press that issue."

Wow. Blame deflection. Can't find full accountability in her recollect. No Brains. No Ethics if left unchecked. Just...wow.

And Twitter is lit up with the purposeful absence of Phi Kappa Psi in tonight pseudo apology. The targets of her false witness.

Gabriel said...

Two things:

Thing one: everything in the story came from Jackie-even the things said by other people. The assistant dean, the rape activists, everything they said came from Jackie.

Even the anonymous two women, one of whom filed online anonymously--that came from Jackie. Jackie says she was present when one of the women hit the "send" button, which was no doubt true, since that "anonymous" woman was probably named Jackie,

Thing two: anyone dealing with university matters needs to understand FERPA. One of the first things I learned teaching at a university is that students can and do tell their parents outrageous lies about your class, and if those lies involve their performance than FERPA forbids you to tell your side.

UVA was not "stonewalling", they were following FERPA, and Ederly should have informed herself about FERPA.

FullMoon said...

khesanh0802 said... [hush]​[hide comment]

Have to give the WaPo credit for being skeptical about the article and doing some actual research that proved their skepticism to be far more correct than even they imagined!

It was exposed on the internet before Post looked into it. Blogger
"Shots in the Dark" did in depth destruction of story

Paul Ciotti said...

It always surprises me how Jackie (the accuser) is generally described in these stories as a "troubled" young woman, but never duplicitous or malicious. Given what she put a lot of people though I am surprised she isn't facing criminal charges or at the very least a lawsuit. Don't the police press charges when someone leads them on a wild goose chase?

Gusty Winds said...

Birches said...Columbia School of Journalism is pulling a lot of punches in this "hard hitting" report.

I'm not even half way through and I'm becoming infuriated


Right. It's like Rolling Stone was allowed to edit the report. No mention of poitical bias based on historical activity of the reporter, editor, or Rolling Stone. Of course Columbia can't document or blame media liberal bias. They supply the thread for the cloth.

We all knew this was going to be a joke.

David said...

When is the administration of University of Virginia, and especially President Theresa Sullivan, going to apologize? Within 12 hours of the publication of the article, I got an email from the Dean of the Law School which essentially assumed the truth of the allegations.I have assumed that this was part of an orchestrated effort. Sullivan imposed sanctions on fraternities as a result of the article, and was generally timorous and unchallenging in defending her students and institution.

fivewheels said...

They have to say Jackie is troubled, even though we have no actual evidence of mental illness, to give her an excuse. Otherwise a woman might be held accountable for her actions, and That Cannot Happen.

Also, stop calling her "our rape victim," and start calling her by her name. Enough of that B.S. A recent Washington Post story noted how they don't name sexual assault victims. They're still following that policy.

So here's a lesson. If the Post ever has the goods on you, and you need to dodge the bad publicity, make up a wild rape claim and they won't name you. Apparently this privilege lasts forever, even after your story is completely debunked. Handy, huh? Nixon should have tried it.

Browndog said...

When I was in high school, I saved some of my paycheck for Taco bell, and Rolling Stone--the rest went to tuition.

Fyoder Dostoevsky by day, Hunter S. Thompson by night.

Stopped buying the it when it went to $2.50/copy.

Dick Stanley said...

The incredible part is that they never sought a comment/response/excuse from the accused. Didn't even call the fraternity.

That's basic journalism that any two-week wonder of a reporter would learn from an editor with any sense of fair play, or ass-covering in case of a lawsuit.

It doesn't (or shouldn't) take the Columbia journalism department to tell them.

Bay Area Guy said...

The modern day Leftists ( distinct from classical liberals) do not hesitate to lie to support their agenda. So, what is that agenda? Generally, it is to take power from those who are perceived to have it. So, who is perceived to have the power? White, straight males.

Fraternities are the breeding ground for these future, powerful, white,straight males. It's remarkable that leftist universities haven't chased these Frat Boys off campus. Perhaps, Ms. Sullivan is trying to do so.

Nonetheless, The Rolling Stone hit piece was consonant and consistent with the Left's general aims, and those aims haven't slow a bit, despite this temporary misfire. Expect more.

gadfly said...

Quayle said...

"You threw spaghetti on the wall, and it didn't stick."

But it made that famous sound . . .

William said...

The authors of the review share some of the confirmation biases of the Rolling Stone people......I believe that young adults frequently have bad sex experiences and that getting drunk is rather more likely than not to increase the likelihood of a bad experience. It gives you some plausible deniability the morning after. I don't think, however, that this translates into an epidemic of campus rapes.......The authors of the review share the opinion of the Rolling Stone staff that rapes on campus are as prevalent as dolphin tattoos. Facts not in evidence. The review authors also state that only 2 to 8% of reported rapes are fraudulent. Again, facts not in evidence. Tawana Brawley, the Duke case, the mattress lugging girl at Columbia, and now this. If false rape accusations are so rare, the media has had uncommon bad luck in encountering so many of these rare birds.

Fen said...

Columbia School of Journalism is pulling a lot of punches in this "hard hitting" report

Yup. And telling that, in reporting on how Rolling Stone discredited itself, the Columbia School of Journalism discredits itself as well.

They could have just been concise: "Reporters are hacks because we teach them to be hacks"

Laslo Spatula said...

Conversation with My Imaginary Rape Advisor:

I am Laslo.

bleh said...

Steve Coll's book Ghost Wars is excellent.

bleh said...

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/04/06/business/media/rolling-stone-retracts-article-on-rape-at-university-of-virginia.html?_r=0&referrer=

One of the people quoted is a former UVA dean who is now at a rape prevention charity called One in Four.

Wait, I thought the bullshit statistic was one in five?

damikesc said...

The cover up continues. Nobody has been fired for this outrage.

That is key.

Massive story utterly blows up in a publication's faces and even the "fact checkers" survive unscathed?

Katrina said...

In the Age of Obama, progs are absolved of all sins. There is no accountability.

Katrina said...

khesanh0802 said...
Have to give the WaPo credit for being skeptical about the article and doing some actual research that proved their skepticism to be far more correct than even they imagined!

4/5/15, 10:22 PM

Many UVA grads live and work inside the Beltway. I doubt the WaPo would have challenged the story if it involved, say, the University of Tennessee.

Tank said...

This report, at best, is a cover up for what really happened, ie. a total and complete fraud from the beginning. No one is suffering any consequences, and the proper people have not received an apology.

If they wanted a real investigation and review, they would have commissioned Richard Bradley or Steve Sailer, and published their report unedited. Then the world would know the truth, or close to it. As of now, nothing like the truth is well known and likely never will be.

Tank said...

Opps, accidentally italicized my own comment LOL.

Brando said...

Maybe we do live in a "rape culture" but that term doesn't mean what we think it means. Claim you're a rape victim, and that's your trump card.

Imagine a person starting almost any other type of hoax, fooling reporters who bend over backward not to check the story, getting universities and local police to investigate, and having half the country deciding it is OFFENSIVE to question the truth of the story. Then, the hoax unravels when some other journalists actually do their job, and after the story has no credibility the hoaxer's identity is still being protected and NO ONE is seriously considering punishment for the hoaxer, and in fact most of the media still allows that the hoax "could be true" (much like it "could be true" that I just flew to the moon and back last weekend--can't prove it's false!).

This only happens when the magic word is "rape." As a society, we've created a strange aura around rape that causes such a leave of our normal senses. None of this is helpful in preventing or prosecuting rape, or in alleviating the suffering of actual victims.

Scott M said...

Nobody has been fired for this outrage.

My first reaction as well. I did realize afterwards that Erderly is a freelance, so she can't be fired per say. If they choose never to use her again, that's another issue, but it's unlikely we would ever hear about that decision publically.

More problematic, though, is the fact that neither of the editors responsible will be fired. Dana seems like the logical one to lose his job.

He, at least, mentioned the fraternity in his apology, unlike Erderly.

CatherineM said...

I read the whole thing. There is nothing in the report we didn't know already and everyone involved deflects and so carefully words their admitted mistakes let's you know that they are not taking responsibility for their actions. This is especially true of Erdely just yesterday was prickly on Twitter when someone referred to her as a woman and not a journalist.

MayBee said...

CNN's Carol Costello this morning is going with the "Authorities still think something terrible happened to Jackie" lie/line.

Alexander said...

Now hang on a minute fellas.

Should people get fired for a victim-less crime?

I mean yeah, if it could be proven that somewhere, this had a negative impact on a woman, then absolutely, fire the bastards*. But at most all you've got here is the privileged getting falsely accused for once, you know that that happens to women and minorities every single day.

In fact, I bet you that somewhere in one out of ever four women will have their lives ruined by male journalists. You might be asking me where I got those figures from, and all I can say is it's a shame that the vast majority of women and PoC's are so terrified of retribution that these go unreported.


* By bastards** I mean the men, whoever they are, the forced/coerced/tricked the lady journalist to write the article in the first place. Did you know that one-in-five lady journalists are unwilling participants in libelous journalism?

** Not that there's anything wrong with bastardy. Except for the men involved, the scum.

Anonymous said...

Big Mike said...
The movie "Absence of Malice" was on one of antenna TV old movie channels today. At the end it seems clear to me (if not to Wikipedia) that the character played by Sally Field loses her job, and certainly the bamboozled DA loses his. Who is going to lose their job over this fiasco?


Love that movie

particularly the Brimley: "Gonna have sumbody's ass in muh briefcase scene."

Anonymous said...

On the topic of CSJ's biases here: I understand that CSJ has some guidelines in covering sexual assault that are pure SJW. when writing about sexual assault, nothing is alleged. All is true...

Dan Hossley said...

"Erdely believed Jackie's account was reliable". The problem is she had no reason to believe it which leads us to the conclusion that she wanted to believe it. That's the problem with advocacy journalism. It's not journalism, it is propaganda.

Big Mike said...

John Hinderaker's analysis seems spot on.

MikeR said...

"The problem of confirmation bias – the tendency of people to be trapped by pre-existing assumptions and to select facts that support their own views while overlooking contradictory ones – is a well-established finding of social science." Very nice, but there should be a corollary: If you get something badly wrong due to your confirmation bias, and if you are a person who cares about the truth - you should have an obligation to admit that your premise was badly wrong. You should have an obligation to admit that the people who were knew that the story was false right off the bat have a better picture of reality than you do, at least on some relevant aspect.

Scott M said...

"CNN's Carol Costello this morning is going with the "Authorities still think something terrible happened to Jackie" lie/line."

Something terrible DID happen to Jackie. Her parents failed to instill in her both an aversion to lying and an ability to deal with reality.

Saying that they can't rule out that a sexual assault didn't happen could actually be said about every single person everywhere. It's a non-statement.

MayBee said...

Scott M - I agree.

n.n said...

Something about bearing false witness. Another setback for the social complex.

Anonymous said...

n.n said...
Something about bearing false witness. Another setback for the social complex


which has been written in stone for thousands of years :)

Birches said...

"The problem of confirmation bias – the tendency of people to be trapped by pre-existing assumptions and to select facts that support their own views while overlooking contradictory ones – is a well-established finding of social science." Very nice, but there should be a corollary: If you get something badly wrong due to your confirmation bias, and if you are a person who cares about the truth - you should have an obligation to admit that your premise was badly wrong. You should have an obligation to admit that the people who were knew that the story was false right off the bat have a better picture of reality than you do, at least on some relevant aspect.


Yes, like maybe that whole one in five statistic or the whole only 2% of rape accusers are lying is keeping reporters from doing their job properly. Perhaps we should stop saying these statistics as if they were true.

I finally finished the report. What a joke. There is no accountability anymore.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

"CNN's Carol Costello this morning is going with the "Authorities still think something terrible happened to Jackie" lie/line."

But-but-but you can't prove that something didn't!

My theory: alien abudction.

Scott M said...

There is no accountability anymore.

Maybe there will be. The fraternity is apparently going to sue. My question, having been in one myself while in college, would be how any damages get awarded. If you're suing for things like damage to reputation and such, wouldn't each member of the active fraternity, specifically those living in the house, get a piece?

Scott M said...

In a fraternity, I mean...not a lawsuit :)

Ignorance is Bliss said...

Scott M said...

...wouldn't each member of the active fraternity... get a piece?

I thought getting a piece was part of their initiation...

Paul Ciotti said...

I suspect ann Wenner didn't fire anyone in the wake of this fiasco in order not to give any ammo to the opposition in what may be multiple lawsuits against his magazine. I hope the verdicts will bankrupt Rolling Stone. It would only be just given how much they deceive the public, which I suspect, at least till now, always thought they more or less practiced journalism.