Sunday, September 30, 2018

DNA analysis: 15% of convicted rapists are falsely accused

This is an interesting study that relied on DNA evidence to determine if convicted rapists were falsely accused. According to the researchers, 15% of  subjects had been falsely accused.

UPDATE: This study suggests that the percent of all men falsely accused of rape is higher than 15%. The men included in this study were convicts, so these were cases in which the criminal justice system believed the accusers. An unknown number of men were accused but their cases were dismissed, or they were found not guilty because the accusers were judged to be lying.

Saturday, September 29, 2018

Watch sociologists do back flips to avoid biological explanations of crime

Sociologists are such dumbasses. For almost a century, they have been predicting high crime rates in immigrant neighborhoods. Such a prediction comes from their view that strong institutions -- families, schools, churches, community organizations, etc. -- effectively control young people. If the institutions are weak, people are "free" to follow the shortcuts of crime.  Since immigrants are new to the country, they haven't had the time and stability to build high-functioning institutions.

But over the past couple of decades, anti-immigration sentiment motivated sociologists to find that immigration actually lowers crime, or at least doesn't affect crime levels.

But instead of admitting their views were wrong and accepting the idea that immigration (notice how they don't differentiate legal from illegal) often selects for types of individuals not especially prone to crime, and that institutions are not that important for behavior, we see studies like this new one that propose that immigrants -- people still wet from the Rio Grande -- are now instantly supposed to have stronger institutions than citizens who have been building up their American institutions for centuries.

They will do back flips on top of back flips to avoid biological or any kind of internal explanation of crime.

Friday, September 28, 2018

Honest Hollywood depiction of East Africans

I hadn't seen African Queen by the greater director John Huston since the 90's, so I starting watching it tonight (I'm a big fan of Humphrey Bogart) and was stunned at the opening scene. Watch it to see what I mean. A scene like this would be unthinkable today, but it seems like a comic scene honestly depicting ordinary East Africans. 


Social scientists are so helpful! They say somewhere between 1.5% to 90% of rape allegations are false!

This paper reviews studies that estimates the percent of rape allegations that turn out to be false. If I get time, I'll do a critical analysis of the individual studies, but for now let's say that the estimates range from 1.5% to 90%; in other words, I can guess with more precision than our social scientists.

It wouldn't be unreasonable, for starters, to focus on the median study which finds that 11% of allegations are false. If true, most women tell the truth, but there are enough liars to show that the maxim to "believe every woman" is simply evil. (Sorry about crooked columns!)

Table 1. A Selection of Findings on the Prevalence of False Rape Allegations

Source                                                       False Reporting Rate                     
                                                               Number                   %
Theilade and Thomsen (1986)             1 out of 56               1.5%
                                                             4 out of 39                10%
New York Rape Squad (1974)             N/A                            2% 
Hursch and Selkin (1974)                    10 out of 545              2% 
Kelly et al. (2005)                                67 out of 2,643           3%
                                                                                               22%
Geis (1978)                                          N/A                        3–31% 
Smith (1989)                                        17 out of 447           3.8 %
U.S. Department of Justice (1997)       N/A                             8% 
Clark and Lewis (1977)                       12 out of 116           10.3% 
Harris and Grace (1999)                       53 out of 483          10.9%
                                                            123 out of 483             25%
Lea et al. (2003)                                   42 out of 379             11% 
HMCPSI/HMIC (2002)                     164 out of 1,379       11.8% 
McCahill et al. (1979)                        218 out of 1,198       18.2% 
Philadelphia police study (1968)         74 out of 370              20% 
Chambers and Millar (1983)                44 out of 196          22.4% 
Grace et al. (1992)                                80 out of 335             24% 
Jordan (2004)                                        68 out of 164            41%
                                                              62 out of 164             38%
Kanin (1994)                                         45 out of 109            41% 
Gregory and Lees (1996)                      49 out of 109            45% 
Maclean (1979)                                     16 out of 34              47%
Stewart (1981)                                      16 out of 18               90%

Wednesday, September 26, 2018

Meta-analysis: Male-male anal sex and having HIV are major predictors of anal human papillomavirus infection

Anal human papillomavirus (HPV) infection, especially HPV16, is the main cause of anal cancer. Anal sex increases the infection, and it is worsened by HIV-related immunosuppression.

Approximately 35,000 HPV-related anal cancers are diagnosed annually worldwide, including 17,000 among males. Anal cancer rates are increasing in several high-income countries, which might be due to changes in sexual behavior.

In the U.S., most of the increase among young males is due to human immunodeficiency virus
(HIV) infection.

Researchers recently conducted a meta-analysis of 79 studies with a total of almost 24,000 patients.

Among people who did not have HIV, rates of HPV16 was higher among men who have sex with men (MSM) (14%) than among men who have sex with woman (MSW) (3%).  The same was true for HIV-positive men -- 30% for MSMs versus 11% for MSWs.

So same-sex preferences and being HIV-positive are both strong predictors having HPV16 infection. The authors conclude that to prevent anal cancer, focus should be placed on gay men with HIV.

Tuesday, September 25, 2018

Women are the New Holy Men


I think I agree with American philosopher Charles Peirce (I've been reading him a lot--an underappreciated American) that revealed truths "constitute by far the most uncertain class of truths there are." I won't get into his specific objections. Suffice it to say that there are several reasons to doubt one's testimony, even a saint's.

The Modern Mind certainly agrees with Peirce and goes beyond him to mock this kind of "believe me when I tell you." That is, of course, unless your talking about the testimony of a woman who has allegedly been sexually assaulted. Women are now the New Prophets. Truth with a capital T comes straight down from Heaven and proceeds in pure form out of the mouths of Babes. Their proclamations are Gospel Truth and to doubt them is to blaspheme. Blasphemers must be stoned.

It seems like we humans never change. We just swing.  

Our elites are freaking insane

You folks probably already know the story of how a study that attempts to explain greater variability among males versus females ended up being pulled from not one but two journals.

I wanted to see what was so horrible about the paper, so I read it word-for-word.  Holy crap, it's the most boring, technical paper you could ever read. The goal is to demonstrate mathematically why greater diversity among males makes sense in terms of evolutionary theory.

The paper does not even get into the idea that greater variability among guys causes a huge excess of men at the very high end of the distribution; that we should expect, for example, many more male than female geniuses. The paper doesn't even touch the topic. There is absolutely NO rational reason to pull this paper.

This story is just more proof that our elites are freaking insane. They are ruining this country. We have GOT to stop them.


Addiction Summit

Girls are better readers because boys think reading is for sissies? Give me a damn break

This new study of 3.9 million American children over 27 years finds that girls are better than boys and reading and writing, and that this gap emerges early.

The authors say that, following masculine norms, male peers might discourage reading and writing. Reading and writing is sissy stuff, but every he-man-womanhaters club knows that math is macho. How long will we have to endure such crap? Males and females are biologically different. What's the big deal? Why all the silly lies?

Monday, September 24, 2018

How do we explain the trends in teen suicide?

The rise in teen suicide since 2007 was recently documented at Chateau Heartiste (CH). The increase was attributed to the humiliations of social media and the alienation of a diversifying country.

CH wanted to see a longer trend broken out by race, so I used CDC data to calculate rates for white teens going back to 1968. Trends had to be broken into periods. Here's the first from 1968-1978:























The rate rose and peaked in 1977 at over 9 suicides per 100k white teens ages 15-19. The next graph covers 1979-1998:























White teen suicides continued to climb and peaked in 1988 at 12 per 100k, then returning to 9 thereafter.  From 1999-2016:






















The rate fell below 9 and bottomed out at 7 in 2007. Since then it has risen to almost 12, which matches the 1988 peak.

I doubt there are only a couple factors to explain these trends. Your ideas are appreciated. Drug use among teens was on the increase in the 70s, and it peaked around 1978. But it fell in the 80s while suicide kept climbing. Then it became to climb again around '93 and has basically plateaued  since the late 90s. Alcohol use has declined from the 70s to the present day, so drugs and alcohol don't seem to explain it.

I was working in a psychiatric unit in the late 80s, and many of the teens were Goth types. All the "rapid onset" teen transgenders were hearing about reminds us how important social contagion is for adolescents.

Gun availability doesn't explain it: While the number of guns per gun-holding household has risen over the past few decades, you don't need 10 guns to kill yourself. You just need one. The percentage of homes with any guns has drifted down.

I don't know enough about trends in treatment and prescription drugs to know if they explain the trends.

Divorce was on the rise in the 70s, but I don't know why suicide would fall during the 90s if family is so important.  Friends are obviously important to teens, and social media certainly seems important over the last decade, but I don't know what what going on to drive trends from the 70s to the 90s. Ideas?

By the way, over the entire period black teen suicide rate was much lower than for whites. Half as much. Like whites, rates rise in the 70s and 80s and peak later in 1994, then they fall but have jumped again in the last couple years, perhaps due to social media.

UPDATE: If we ignore the ups and downs, the big picture is that the white teen suicide rate in the late 60s was around 5 and by the late 70s and since it has been very roughly twice that rate. So something has happened to kids' lives over the past 45 years. HC talks about diversity. The country is certainly more diverse. Families are definitely messier than they used to be. Changes in treatment seem to have made things worse, not better. Social media facilitates humiliation.

One interesting change is sex. More teens have sex now than in the 60s, and liberationists tell us more sex means happier people. It actually seems to be making teens more miserable.  



Saturday, September 22, 2018

NEW STUDY: Immigration has hurt British wages

The details give me a headache, but this new study reports that, overall, 1999-2016 immigration in Great Britain has hurt native wages.

As an example of how this works in real life, college students should be thrilled with all these immigrant professors. You can't understand what the hell they're saying in class, and the low salaries drive native-born talent into other fields, but just think of all the additional multicultural services and administrators the cheap professors pay for!

UPDATE: Keep in mind that even among economist researchers, the ratio of progressives to non-progressives is 5:1. All research disciplines are organized to generate liberal-friendly findings. The idea of objectivity is laughable. A rational person can dismiss liberal results as due to bias, and conservative results as a case of the data screaming too loudly to be silenced.

Addiction Summit

Friday, September 21, 2018

Another weak attempt to defend "Diversity is Our Strength"

Recently, I argued that Scott Adams' defense of the view that "diversity is our strength" is as weak as could be.  Now I see that neo-conservative Max Boot has tried the same thing. Both are responses to Tucker Carlson's diversity skepticism.

Since Boot's argument is written, in contrast to Adams' videorecording, it's more carefully done, but it's ends up just as dumb and dishonest.

Of course, Boot's first move is to claim that Tucker merely parrots neo-Nazi talking points. Boot is a classy thinker.

The way these people make "diversity is our strength" seem credible is to cherry-pick their examples and to equivocate: they use various meanings of diversity when it suits them. They use it to mean diversity of opinion when they give of examples of stifling uniformity. Boot relies on this meaning when he cites North Korea as an example.

Of course, Boot is cherry-picking here. These guys never focus on the typical situation. Yes, competition of different opinions can help a country arrive at better decisions, but normal countries have more than enough diversity to generate different perspectives. A typical country does not need to import millions of aliens to achieve sufficient diversity. Plus, more to the point, what you need for good decisions is smart people. A very diverse group of dummies is not going to cut it.

Boot conveniently ignores the general tendency: across countries, ethnic heterogeneity correlates with dysfunctional conflict. As a Jew, Boot should be aware of the fact that ethnic heterogeneity predicts genocide.  I don't need to cherry-pick to make my point: Everyone knows it's a general truth.

Next, Boot cites the examples of South Korea and Japan. They are aging and need young immigrants to help pay the bills. Here, "diversity" means cheap labor. He conveniently ignores the cost side of the ledger and the long-term consequences of importing huge, alien populations. Poor immigrants are very costly to welfare states, and, again, the consequences over the long haul are likely to be dysfunctional conflict and a society that ends up worse off.

Boot's next move is to sing the praises of America's genius immigrants. He goes all the way back to Levi Strauss to make his point. Again, equivocation. Diversity here means "geniuses."  He's cherry-picking. According to a study by Jason Richwine, the average IQ of US immigrants is somewhere between 91 and 94.  A person with IQ in the low 90s is suited to do a low-skill job--not to be the next Alexander Graham Bell.

Boot does manage to cite one study that found that public companies with more ethnic and gender diversity have higher profitability. I'll give him credit here -- he's debating in a serious way, for once -- but one study can find anything, and it might be the case that strong, profitable companies can afford the luxury of promoting more diverse leadership. The causal mechanism here seems unlikely: What is it about more minorities and women that would translate into more profit? The only answers that have any credibility are that these people understand minority/female customer desires better, or if "minorities" include large numbers of high IQ individuals (e.g., East Asians, South Asians).

Finally, he argues that diversity strengthens our national security. If the NYPD is made up of Arabic, Pashto, Farsi, and Urdu speakers, we will be safer. In other words, the grave security problems caused by diversity can be addressed a little better with diversity.  Lame.

UPDATE: Boot, like Adams, finishes with the point that diversity in the US is inevitable. This is practically an admission that diversity is a weakness -- a weakness we must live with. Like others, part of this "inevitability" is the tens of millions of legal and illegal immigrants who haven't come yet. To the PC-minded, even our future policy choices are inevitabilities. We're somehow paralyzed. There is no way we can change course with respect to mass immigration. So much dishonesty by these people. 

Addiction Summit


Thursday, September 20, 2018

How the Right can keep winning

Steve Sailer writes on Twitter:
As I've been saying for going on 20 years now, if you want America to have a nonracialized political system like, say, New Hampshire's instead of a racialized one like Mississippi's, then cut down on immigration. But Democrats want to win by government electing a new people.
I'm not sure if Democrats are smart enough to have thought this through, but if they have, I suspect their reasoning goes like this: "We have so successfully demonized white solidarity [according to the World Values Survey, criminals are liked more than neo-Nazis in every country surveyed] most whites will accept subjugation over being labelled a Nazi."

And while Steve points to reduced immigration as a way to a nonracialized political system, mass immigration is likely to continue (I hope I'm wrong), so perhaps the most realistic course for whites is to pursue the "Mississippi Strategy." Advocate conservatism but pursue policies that happen to preserve white interests. Keep the whiteness implicit, incidental. Making it explicit will force many whites to choose subjugation over a Nazi label.  This is how Trump won, and it is the path to future success.

UPDATE: When I say "conservatism," I mean Pat Buchanan's populist, America First version, not the fake neo-con version.

Addiction Summit

Tuesday, September 18, 2018

My son's first stab at un-PC punditry

Indulge me in taking pride in my young boys for a second.

In the car tonight, the boys were telling some politically incorrect jokes, so I told them they were funny, but they need to be careful what they say around teachers and minority students. I told them minority kids can get very angry at that kind of kidding.

The older boy then said, "What's the big deal? I wouldn't care if they joked about me being white." So I asked him what the answer is. He thought for a second and said, "I wouldn't care because I don't see anything bad about being white. People get upset when you make fun of a weakness of theirs. Minority kids must think there is something bad about being a minority. Nobody likes to hear the truth."

Interesting answer.

Addiction Summit

New study: Why women make false accusations of rape

Here is a new study which analyzes the motives for making false allegations of rape: 
The list of motives by Kanin (1994) is the most cited list of motives to file a false allegation of rape. Kanin posited that complainants file a false allegation out of revenge, to produce an alibi or to get sympathy. A new list of motives is proposed in which gain is the predominant factor. In the proposed list, complainants file a false allegation out of material gain, emotional gain, or a disturbed mental state. The list can be subdivided into eight different categories: material gain, alibi, revenge, sympathy, attention, a disturbed mental state, relabeling, or regret. To test the validity of the list, a sample of 57 proven false allegations were studied at and provided by the National Unit of the Dutch National Police (NU). The complete files were studied to ensure correct classification by the NU and to identify the motives of the complainants. The results support the overall validity of the list. Complainants were primarily motivated by emotional gain. Most false allegations were used to cover up other behavior such as adultery or skipping school. Some complainants, however, reported more than one motive. A large proportion, 20% of complainants, said that they did not know why they filed a false allegation. The results confirm the complexity of motivations for filing false allegations and the difficulties associated with archival studies. In conclusion, the list of Kanin is, based on the current results, valid but insufficient to explain all the different motives of complainants to file a false allegation.
Addiction Summit


Monday, September 17, 2018

Liberals think patriotism is not important for national unity

The General Social Survey asked 1,182 respondents, "How much do you agree of disagree that strong patriotic feelings in America are needed for America to remain united?"  I'm not sure how a country stays united if many of its people dislike it. 

What predicts the view that patriotism is not important for unity? I conducted ordinary least squares (OLS) regression to see which predictors matter after removing the influence of other factors.   


Patriotism unimportant for national unity

Age   -.10**
Female   .03 
Nonwhite   -.04
Immigrant   .07*
Education   .03
Church Attendance   -.08*
Liberalism   .23***
City Size   -.01

Thinking patriotism is not important for national unity is significantly predicted by: youth, being an immigrant, low church attendance, and being a liberal. The effects are standardized, so the larger the number, the stronger the effect. In other words, liberalism is the factor most strongly associated with devaluing patriotism. 

This question seems to tap clear thinking as much as attitudes toward patriotism. To put it starkly, would you expect a group to be unified if half the group adores the group and half hates the group? What binds them together if not identification with the group? 

Huge meta-analysis: Women are as happy as men

Feminists instruct us that men are organized to oppress women everywhere.  Women have incredible talents and ambitions, but these are crushed by male rule.

If this were true, we should see high levels of female dissatisfaction. Gifted individuals who are blocked from success surely cannot be happy about it.

A new meta-analysis of hundred of studies and more than one million people from many countries -- some of them with low levels of gender equality -- reports that there are no significant sex differences in being satisfied with life or one's job.

How can this be?  The truth is that women have it pretty good.  Surveys are not going to detect the handful of women who fantasize about Evil Males and push the lie on others, usually in a classroom somewhere.

Saturday, September 15, 2018

BJS data: If you release a felon, he will go back to crime

This new report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics tells us a lot about criminal recidivism. Here's perhaps the best graph:























See how more than 80% of offenders released from prison are re-arrested within 9 years. Keep in mind that these are only criminals who were caught. I've read studies concluding that the typical serious criminal commits many crimes per arrest. A study found that incarcerated felons estimate that they would commit one felony per week if they were free.

The attitude of many Americans these days is that we need to lock up violent offenders, not property or drug criminals. A basic finding in criminology is that criminals are generalists: if their last crime was theft, their next crime is about as likely to be violence or drugs as another theft crime. Typically, there is no such thing as a "violent criminal." Offenders do all types of crime. A guy might be in prison for auto theft this time, but it is likely it will be rape or aggravated assault next time.

So the recidivism data tell us this: release an prison inmate, and he is going to back to crime. If you want him to stop, lock him up and keep him locked up. You have to weigh costs: the costs of prison versus to cost of crime. If you're like me -- on the side of victims and don't mind some taxes -- let's lock them up and throw away the key.

And no conjugal visits, and no voting.

UPDATE: The recidivism rates increase with the "hardcoreness" of the group. From mild to severe, the numbers look like this: women 77%, Asians 79%, whites and Hipsanics 81%, men 84%, American Indians 85%, blacks 87%, and those under age 25, 90%.

Addiction Summit

Friday, September 14, 2018

Is falling testosterone feminizing American men?

Based on 185 studies (43k men), this meta-analysis documents the 1972-2011 drop in total sperm count among men in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. The decline was almost 60%.

The authors do not speculate about causes, but a GQ writer thinks it's due to an increase in plasticizers which are known to disrupt fetal testosterone (T). Perhaps it's due to increasing obesity which lowers T. The authors controlled for increasing age, so that doesn't appear to be the reason.

Anyway, I'm interested in the consequences. Assuming that a sperm count is a proxy for prenatal and adult T, young men strike me as being less masculine than in previous generations. They are certainly not shorter or smaller, but they seem more effeminate. And I'm not talking about dress or tastes. I mean in their faces and in their mannerisms.

According to the General Social Survey, the percent of men reporting they have sex exclusively with other men rose from 2.2% in the 1980s to 3.2% in this decade. This, of course, could be due to a greater willingness to admit the behavior, but there is a theory of homosexuality that claims it is due to inadequate prenatal T.

Subtracting out the 1984-94 gang wars and crack epidemic, the US homicide has declined since the late 1970s. Declining T? I'm just thinking out loud -- I might be crazy -- but it's an interesting idea.

UPDATE: By the way, the GQ author thinks the collapse in sperm count points to the end of the human race.

Scott Adams fails to show that diversity is a strength

Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert and Trump analyzer, has attempted to answer Tucker Carlson's question, "How is diversity a strength?"

He opens by stating that US diversity is a given -- it's not going anywhere -- so we need to find ways to turn diversity into a positive. That's a weak opening if you're trying to demonstrate that diversity is inherently a strength.

Next, Adams claims that it depends: diversity can be beneficial or harmful. Again, this is a lame argument if your point is to prove that diversity is a strength.

Adams argues that minorities know minority issues better than billionaires, and so are in a better position to know how a business should operate among minorities. In other words, diversity is needed to deal with the knowledge gap caused by diversity.

Next, Adams goes back to his original point that we don't have a choice about being a diverse society; it's a given. We have to deal with it. I'm becoming repetitive, but this, as before, is lame if you're attempting to prove diversity is a strength.

Adams compares the US to an organism that benefits from more sensors:  We all see things from a different angle, so multiple inputs creates a more accurate picture. Few people, even educated people like Adams, realize there is tremendous diversity of this sort in even the smallest ethnic group. Heck, there is tremendous diversity in a single family. To illustrate, the variation in personality is almost as wide in a family as in a population. Is it your experience that families are overly agreeable? That members see all issues in the same way? I suspect your family is like mine: 6 people, 7 opinions. 

Adam then argues that the US needs to standardize our language so diverse people can understand each other. In other words, we need to reduce diversity so we can tap into the advantages diversity offers.

Last, Adams cites the example of his start-up company WhenHub. He explains that the genius who has made the business a success is an Asian Indian immigrant. In other words, his company is a success because this partner is high IQ, like Adams. High IQ people working together is an example of homogeneity, not diversity. If Adams had hired a retard to complement his intelligence, that is diversity with respect to IQ.

Lame.

Thursday, September 13, 2018

Who is a real American?

General Social Survey participants were asked the following: "When you think of social and political issues, do you think of yourself mainly as a member of a particular ethnic, racial, or nationality group or do you think of yourself mainly as just an American?" 

I consider this to be a key indicator of assimilation. If you think of yourself as something other than American when considering issues important to the country, you are not fully an American. You are at least partly something else. 

So what predicts identifying as something else?  I conducted a logistic regression analysis in order to answer this question. This technique tells you what matters after you have adjusted for the influence of other variables. Here are the coefficients for variables that might matter:

Factors predicting ethnocentricity

Age   -.02**
Male    .02
Nonwhite   2.21***
Education   .12**
Church attendance   .06
Liberalism   .07
City size   .00
Immigrant   1.38***

Some of these are expected: immigrants and non-whites are less American. These are the strongest predictors in the models. But some factors might be a bit surprising. Older people are less ethnocentric. Gender doesn't matter. Education (the 3rd strongest effect) encourages ethnocentricity. It is the opposite of an assimilator. Church attendance is unimportant. So are liberalism and the size of the place where you live. 

So the picture that emerges for the "partial American" is a young, educated, non-white immigrant. Not surprising. And the profile of a real American is a less educated, older, white native. God bless 'em.

UPDATE: I looked at region of the country, but nothing jumped out. 



Monday, September 10, 2018

CDC data: White men enjoy their privilege right up to the moment they kill themselves at 10 times the rate of black women

Observe my skills as I handle the progressive concepts of "white male privilege"  and "intersectional theory" at the same time.

On the subject of suicide, these ideas imply that whites and men should suffer lower rates, and white men especially so.  America society, with its bone crushing oppression of minority women, we should see particularly high suicide rates among black women.

I constructed a graph from 2000-2016 on all US suicides (CDC data), breaking the rates out by race and gender:


Intersectional theory insists we focus on combinations of status in order to see how oppression is multiplied. It certainly is: white men kill themselves at more than 10 times the rate of black women. More generally, white suicide is more common than in any minority group.

Seriously, how do we explain the huge black-white gap? My guess is genetically-based personality. When one experiences frustrations, whites are more likely to look inside and perceive inadequacies. Blacks are more inclined to blame others, and if one feels like pointing a gun, it gets pointed at another, not at oneself.  Liberal Americans then make the situation worse by encouraging black other-blaming.

So why the gender difference? Are men more self-blaming?  No, women are, and they actually attempt suicide more than men, but the one thing men are good at is getting the job done, by whatever means necessary.

Study: "There are no atheists in foxholes"

A new study from NBER gives empirical support to the saying that, "There are no atheists in foxholes":
Learning to cope with man’s mortality is central to the teachings of the world’s major religions. However, very little is known about the impact of life-and-death trauma on religiosity. This study exploits a natural experiment in military deployments to estimate the causal effect of traumatic shocks on religiosity. We find that combat assignment is associated with a substantial increase in the probability that a serviceman subsequently attends religious services regularly and engages in private prayer. Combat-induced increases in religiosity are largest for enlisted servicemen, those under age 25, and servicemen wounded in combat. The physical and psychological burdens of war, as well as the presence of military chaplains in combat zones, emerge as possible mechanisms.

Sunday, September 09, 2018

Meta-analysis: Higher rates of psychotic symptoms among ethnic minorities and immigrants

A new meta-analysis of 24 studies found that ethnic minorities are at higher risk than members of the majority to have psychotic experiences (odds ratio = 1.4) and symptoms (odds ratio = 1.4). The risk was highest for minorities from the Maghreb (Northwest Africa) and the Middle East (odds ratio = 3.3) living in Europe, and Hispanics (odds ratio = 2.0)  and blacks (odds ratio = 1.9) in the United States. The authors also reported a heightened risk of delusional symptoms among immigrants (odds ratio = 1.5).

Of course, the researchers suggest discrimination is the cause of these manifestations of mental illness, but whether it's due to social or biological causes (or both) why don't we have folks stay in their home countries? It's better for us, and it might be better for them.

Saturday, September 08, 2018

American Indians are Christians (or nothing), not "Native American spiritualists"

The amount of BS from liberals is so overwhelming, it's hard to take.

Whenever the topic is American Indians, "Native American spirituality" is sure to come up. The stereotype is of a people deeply devoted to the spiritual traditions of their forefathers. When I hear this, I say to myself, "I bet not even 10% of Indians say their religion is Native American." Turns out I was right. Using GSS data, here is a graph of over 300 Americans who say they are non-white American Indians (AIs). (I exclude the Elizabeth Warren types.) I split the sample in half (1970-99 and 2000-16) to see if there are any trends.











First of all, most AIs are Christian. There is a trend away from Protestantism and toward Catholicism, Native American, or no religion. But even with the shift, fewer than 10% say their religion is Native--just like I guessed. When it comes to their religious profile, Indians are pretty similar to many other American groups. 
I checked to see if liberalism predicts identifying one's religion as AI (thinking that adopting the old beliefs might be a sign of anti-Americanism) but the two are unrelated. The typical believer of this type is politically moderate. 



Thursday, September 06, 2018

Most abusive Catholic priests are same-sex hebephiles and ephebophiles

This graph was taken from a John Jay College of Criminal Justice study of 1950-2002 sexual abuse by Catholic priests in the United States. You can see that the typical victim is either a male teen or pre-teen. In family settings, victims are typically female. The media fails to mention that most of the 4% (typical of male adults in charge of kids) of priests who are accused of abuse are mostly same-sex hebephiles (likes kids 11-14) and ephebophiles (likes teens 15-19). (The y-axis is number of victims.)














UPDATE: And for all you smart asses out there, no, hebephile does not mean being a fan of Jewish people.

Wednesday, September 05, 2018

Study finds ZERO evidence of criminal justice bias against blacks

You should follow the research done by these biosocial criminologists. They are doing actual science:

One of the most consistent findings in the criminological literature is that African American males are arrested, convicted, and incarcerated at rates that far exceed those of any other racial or ethnic group. This racial disparity is frequently interpreted as evidence that the criminal justice system is racist and biased against African American males. Much of the existing literature purportedly supporting this interpretation, however, fails to estimate properly specified statistical models that control for a range of individual-level factors. The current study was designed to address this shortcoming by analyzing a sample of African American and White males drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). Analysis of these data revealed that African American males are significantly more likely to be arrested and incarcerated when compared to White males. This racial disparity, however, was completely accounted for after including covariates for self-reported lifetime violence and IQ.




Tuesday, September 04, 2018

Why are liberal women more likely to say they have been sexually harassed?

A recent analysis by Zach Goldberg addressed an issue I raised years ago: Why do liberal women report more sexual harassment?  Goldberg found support for the view that liberal women are more sexual, and this invites unwanted attention.  Research more generally finds that badly behaved females -- delinquents, drug users, prostitutes -- are targeted for sexual abuse.

Goldberg takes a bivariate approach. Let's do a multivariate analysis, so we can see if promiscuity explains the liberal-harassment link after adjusting for the influence of other factors. Using GSS data on almost 1,500 women, and employing binary logistic regression, we get a significant coefficient of .15; the more liberal you are, the greater your risk of being harassed.

Now let's see if it drops as we enter controls. Young people are more liberal and might be sexually targeted. If we add age to the model, the coefficient drops to .12. Age explains a little bit of the link.

How about education? Educated women are more liberal and might be more sensitive about unwanted attention. When we add years of education, the political orientation coefficient drops to .11. Not much change.

How about living in a large city? City dwellers are more liberal, and perhaps urban men are more aggressive. When we add size of the population, the liberalism slope increases to .12, so city size does not help explain the liberal-harassment association.

How about being single? Single women are more liberal and might draw more attention. When being single is added to the model, the politics coefficient drops back to .11, so marital status doesn't matter much.

Okay, how about number of sex partners in the past year? When added to the equation, the liberalism estimate only drops to .107.  More sexual partners definitely predicts being harassed, but it does not appear to be the reason why liberal women are harassed more.

Since none of the examined variables explain much (age does a little), the answer seems to be something very close to political orientation. My guess is that social interactions are often ambiguous, and liberal women are inclined to interpret more interactions as sexually abusive. They've been indoctrinated to do so.    

Yet another example of how elites do NOT give a shit about ordinary Americans

While I am no expert, I keep on eye on sex research. The latest study to get media attention is the controversial study by Lisa Littman that suggests that peer influence might contribute to the epidemic of troubled girls saying they're actually boys.  

I'm not interested in weighing into the issue: My point is a more general one. This episode merely illustrates what I see every day: Sex researchers are obsessed with studying oddities and simply don't give a shit about what constitutes a healthy sexuality for the 90 plus percent of the population of kids, teens and adults who are typical sexually. The academy, and elites in general, do not give a shit about you. 

Are gun owners mentally ill?

  Some anti-gun people think owning a gun is a sign of some kind of mental abnormality. According to General Social Survey data, gun owners ...