# Are accusations of raicsm/sexism/bigotry abused? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 14, 2018, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-accusations-of-raicsm-sexism-bigotry-abused/821332 "2018-09-14T12:26:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 260
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-accusations-of-raicsm-sexism-bigotry-abused/821332/260 "2018-10-22T21:48:18Z")
> [@Buck\_Godot](#): > > OK, As I indicated I hadn’t seen the raw data. If there was more granularity than it is possible that they looked as more than just the subset indicated. Still in order to check the hypothesis of youth killed these cutoffs seem relatively natural, so it possible that they were naturally derived. Right but now you’re not so sure, now are you? Admit it, this might very well be an instance of data dredging. When you have data with these sort of relationships regurgitated like this with no analysis behind it (the way the two peer reviewed studies have), when you have a group with an agenda picking out a series of 54 data points out of over 3000 data points to achieve shocking ratios, you still don’t think something fishy might be going on? Like cherrypicking of data? > [@](#): > > OK, I hadn’t noticed that so I withdraw my comment that the numbers could have been could have been combined and just note that there seems to be consistancy with younger shootings as well. And the opposite with older shootings. On average the ratio is 3::1. to the extent that there is a higher ratio one subset, there will be a lower one in other subsets. That’s just math. > [@](#): > > Then there could theoretically been up to 3160 (80 choose 2) different hypotheses that could have been looked at. Although in this case multiplying the p-value by 3160 would have been overly conservative since many of those subsets would contain too few events to have any hope of being significant, and the other hypotheses are very dependent on each other (the 14-19 subroup will give very similar results to the 13-19 subgroup). So one would probably want to bootstrap or run a permutation test to determine the statistical significance and confidence intervals for the odds ratio. In english so the folks at home can understand that it wouldn’t take a lot to cherrypick this data. > [@](#): > > You could point that out, but then I would ask whether you could calculate a lower confidence interval on that frequency and what the p-value would be. If it was something like 2 white deaths and no black deaths I can guarantee its not statistically significant. I thought I was pretty clear. 6 black deaths with zero white deaths. > [@](#): > > If it was significant, than I would say that you have a finding that for some reason police are more likely to kill older white men than older black men and write your own paper. That still wouldn’t change the fact that we had significantly more younger blacks killed. And now that you understand the data a bit more, do you think it is possible the data was cherrypicked? > [@](#): > > why? Well, I guess I should say that after the two studies, the calculation didn’t need to be made. It was fine to throw numbers around and stab in the dark before we had any real facts. > [@](#): > > No, I am saying that it is extremely unlikely (to the point of impossibility) that if there was no difference between the shooting prevalence of blacks and whites, that there would by chance be a subset of the data that would have as strong statistical significance for any age subgroup as what was observed in this data in the 14-19 age group. Yes, there is a difference if you ignore all other variables. Hell you don’t need to cherry pick the data to see statistically significant differences. The confidence interval is even better when you look at ALL the data. Peer reviewed studies saw these differences and they say that the difference is basically illusory. When comparing like to like, there is no difference between blacks and whites. Do you dismiss those studies in favor of the pro-publica bullshit as well? Or even put the Pro-Publica factoid on the same level as those peer reviewed studies? And do you really consider what Pro-Publica did to be a “study”? --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-accusations-of-raicsm-sexism-bigotry-abused/821332)._