# Research driving claims about campus rape may be a fraud. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 2, 2015, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/research-driving-claims-about-campus-rape-may-be-a-fraud/729679 "2015-09-02T04:22:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2015, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/research-driving-claims-about-campus-rape-may-be-a-fraud/729679/1 "2015-09-02T04:22:36Z")
So the topic of rape on campus has been getting some attention of late. There have been high-profile reports of cases on several major universities, [some](http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/12/everything-we-know-uva-rape-case.html) of [which](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/doublex/2015/06/the_hunting_ground_a_closer_look_at_the_influential_documentary_reveals.html) didn’t [turn out](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/02/03/columbia-student-i-didn-t-rape-her.html) to be [so reliable](http://spectator.org/blog/61356/lena-dunhams-republican-rapist-probably-not-republican-rapist). There was the oft-cited statistic that one fifth (or one fourth, or one third) of all women who go to college are raped there–[a highly dubious claim](https://www.themarshallproject.org/2014/12/11/the-dueling-data-on-campus-rape). There’s [a bundle of new policies at universities all over the country](http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/12/college_rape_campus_sexual_assault_is_a_serious_problem_but_the_efforts.html), all supposedly introduced to combat the epidemic of campus rape, policies that[violate the civil rights of the accused](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/02/19/open-letter-from-16-penn-law-school-professors-about-title-ix-and-sexual-assault-complaints/). And then there’s David Lisak, a psychology professor formerly the University of Massachusetts Boston. He wrote [this paper](http://www.davidlisak.com/wp-content/uploads/pdf/RepeatRapeinUndetectedRapists.pdf), purportedly proving that the great majority of male students who commit rape are serial rapists and violent predators. These facts have been cited by the [Obama Administration](https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/sexual_assault_report_1-21-14.pdf) and [used to justify](http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/12/college_rape_campus_sexual_assault_is_a_serious_problem_but_the_efforts.html) the aggressive policies employed against men accused of rape on campus. Lisak himself has spoken out on the topic, telling universities that “Every report should be viewed and treated as an opportunity to identify a serial rapist.” Now a slight problem has come to light. Lisak’s research may be very highly flawed, and he may have been outright misleading. Problems with the survey data that his statistics are based off of are apparent. First, Lisak has often implied that he conducted the surveys himself, yet now it seems that he didn’t. When asked directly who conducted the surveys, [he gets quite vague](http://reason.com/archives/2015/07/28/campus-rape-statistics-lisak-problem). Second, the surveys were don’t by handing out anonymous forms on campus of the University of Massachusetts Boston. No attempt was made to verify that the men completing the survey were, in fact, students. Yet in Lisak’s paper, he says that all the surveys were given to students. Third, Lisak conflates rape and attempted rape. The survey asked the men whether they had committed or attempted rape, yet Lisak sometimes reported the results with no mention of attempted rape. Fourth, Lisak took results from a small sample of men on one campus, and has acted since then as if he’s proven something about the general population of men on all campuses everywhere. That sort of generalization is a statistical no-no; everyone who’s taken Stats 101 should know that. And then there’s the kicker, [reported by Linda Lefauve](http://reason.com/archives/2015/07/28/campus-rape-statistics-lisak-problem): There were 1,882 subjects in the pooled data, men ranging in age from 18 to 71… Among these men, 120 had engaged in actions that meet the legal definition of rape or attempted rape, based on responses to an anonymous survey they completed…Of those 120 men, 76 met Lisak’s definition of multiple offenders. Lisak told me that he subsequently interviewed most of them. That was a surprising claim, given the conditions of the survey and the fact that he was looking at the data produced long after his students had completed those dissertations; nor were there plausible circumstances under which a faculty member supervising a dissertation would interact directly with subjects. When I asked how he was able to speak with men participating in an anonymous survey for research he was not conducting, he ended the phone call. It seems like a good question, and abruptly ending a conversation without answering a question about your research doesn’t look very professional. Add it all up, and it seems like there are strong reasons to doubt Lisak’s credibility and be skeptical of his conclusions. Or maybe not. The Atlantic just published [a big article](http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/08/what-makes-a-campus-rape-prone/402065/) of sexual assault on campus, treating Lisak’s claims as proven fact and making no mention of the facts that Lefauve dug up. A good policy for dealing with sexual assault on campus needs to be based on good science. Let’s hope that the truth about Lisak’s paper gets out to more people. ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2015, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/research-driving-claims-about-campus-rape-may-be-a-fraud/729679/2 "2015-09-02T05:33:11Z")
Rape is a very serious crime which should be dealt with via prison time–not with administrative sanctions from colleges. So I don’t really see the need for colleges to involve themselves with this other than to follow the lead of the criminal justice system. ---
**Author:** ![Construct](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/50afbb/32.png) [@Construct](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Construct)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2015, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/research-driving-claims-about-campus-rape-may-be-a-fraud/729679/3 "2015-09-02T13:20:44Z")
If someone is more likely to be raped at an American college than a lawless sub-Saharan war zone that has lacked functioning government for decades, why would anyone attend college? (which is what the 1/4 statistic implies) Women aren’t exactly fleeing Harvard for Somalia and the Congo because “it’s safer”. The revealed preference of college students, as indicated by the majority female enrollment across the US and skyrocketing tuition rates, strongly indicates that absolutely no one actually believes the 1/4 rape statistic. If they did, they wouldn’t attend. ---
**Author:** ![Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f475e1/32.png) [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jimmy_Chitwood)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2015, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/research-driving-claims-about-campus-rape-may-be-a-fraud/729679/4 "2015-09-02T13:52:25Z")
> [@Construct](#): > > If someone is more likely to be raped at an American college than a lawless sub-Saharan war zone that has lacked functioning government for decades, why would anyone attend college? (which is what the 1/4 statistic implies) Women aren’t exactly fleeing Harvard for Somalia and the Congo because “it’s safer”. And after all, the sexual assault data-gathering institutions in lawless sub-Saharan war zones are renowned for their scrupulous attention to detail. And existence. So this is probably a reasonable thing to say. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2015, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/research-driving-claims-about-campus-rape-may-be-a-fraud/729679/5 "2015-09-02T14:01:42Z")
> [@Construct](#): > > The revealed preference of college students, as indicated by the majority female enrollment across the US and skyrocketing tuition rates, strongly indicates that absolutely no one actually believes the 1/4 rape statistic. If they did, they wouldn’t attend. That’s why [nobody smokes](http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/adult_data/cig_smoking/), you know. ETA: you should probably apologize to **ITR Champion** for poisoning what (for once) could have been a productive well. ---
**Author:** ![davida03801](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5e925/32.png) [@davida03801](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davida03801)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2015, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/research-driving-claims-about-campus-rape-may-be-a-fraud/729679/6 "2015-09-02T14:16:24Z")
My assumption \*\*\*always \*\*\*is that all advocates for a cause will lie and scheme to support their cause. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2015, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/research-driving-claims-about-campus-rape-may-be-a-fraud/729679/7 "2015-09-02T14:52:03Z")
Lisak seems like an unlikely candidate, though, since his principal conclusion was that most college men are decent guys and that campus rapes are largely perpetrated by a tiny minority. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2015, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/research-driving-claims-about-campus-rape-may-be-a-fraud/729679/8 "2015-09-02T15:47:21Z")
The impression I get when I look at the studies is that Lisak is not the only one that points at what the numbers are. > **[Sexual Assault Statistics Are Not The Point](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/sexual-assault-statistics_n_6316802)** > > Sexual Assault Statistics Are Not The Point > [@](#): > > The stat that 1 in 5 college women will experience sexual violence in college is perhaps the most oft-repeated note about campus rape. Pundits have been trying to disprove the statistic for 20 years, with little success outside of right-wing media. (There are mainstream critics of that data point, too, just not very many of them.) > > Data in campus sexual assault surveys continues to hover around 1 in 5. Campus-based surveys at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Princeton University both pegged the sexual assault rate at 1 in 6. A University of Oregon survey this year concluded 10 percent of women had been raped, and 35 percent had at least one forcible sexual encounter. > > A separate 2000 study apart from the NCVS, but also from the Justice Department, found 5 percent of college women are victims of rape or attempted rape in a year, and suggested that between one-fourth and one-fifth of female students experience sexual assault during their collegiate career. > > Foubert noted there are several studies backing up the 1 in 4 to 1 in 5 rates. The first, in 1987, polled 6,000 students on 32 college campuses and found 1 in 4 women had experienced attempted or completed rape by the time they graduated, though the assaults didn’t necessarily happen in college. Since then, there were several replications of the finding, including both the 2000 and 2006 versions of the “Sexual Victimization of College Women” studies, which arrived at 1 in 4 female students experiencing attempted or completed sexual assault. > > One In Four’s name, according to Foubert, is not about one study: It’s about a body of research. Now one item to take into account IMHO is that the writer here mentions that outside of right-wing media the “debunking” has not made much of a splash, because one has to notice that other studies are giving similar results. So I’m leaning for the idea that this is mostly biased to the general right wing point that the studies are just part of the “war against men” issue that was exaggerated. Another first impression I’m getting from that article mentioned by the OP is that it has a strong [“James O’keefe”](http://www.salon.com/2015/07/16/what_the_planned_parenthood_hoax_really_proves_right_wing_extremists_have_no_qualms_about_destroying_peoples_lives/) style of gotcha and cherry picking journalism that is made to get misleading information to the readers or viewers. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2015, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/research-driving-claims-about-campus-rape-may-be-a-fraud/729679/9 "2015-09-02T15:58:03Z")
ITR, I’m disappointed–you didn’t manage to get a dig in on Obama until your second paragraph. Surely you can do better than this! As for your skepticism, it appears to be based entirely on the writing of a single reporter in an extreme libertarian magazine. The fact that he ended a phone call may just suggest she was being an extreme libertarian at him and was annoying; it doesn’t really call his research into question. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2015, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/research-driving-claims-about-campus-rape-may-be-a-fraud/729679/10 "2015-09-02T16:11:13Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Lisak seems like an unlikely candidate, though, since his principal conclusion was that most college men are decent guys and that campus rapes are largely perpetrated by a tiny minority. Didn’t he also claim that around 7% of all male college students were sexually assaulted and in about 40% of such cases the perpetrator was female? Unless I’m misremembering that hardly strikes me as the claims of some man-hater. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2015, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/research-driving-claims-about-campus-rape-may-be-a-fraud/729679/11 "2015-09-02T16:23:10Z")
> [@davida03801](#): > > My assumption \*\*\*always \*\*\*is that all advocates for a cause will lie and scheme to support their cause. No doubt that was said of the Abolitionists . . . ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2015, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/research-driving-claims-about-campus-rape-may-be-a-fraud/729679/12 "2015-09-02T16:40:52Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > The impression I get when I look at the studies is that Lisak is not the only one that points at what the numbers are. I don’t see anything in the Huff Post article you linked to which would confirm Lisak’s claim that a large majority of men who commit rape are serial rapists, or anything which addresses the topic at all. There are [other studies](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-if-most-campus-rapes-arent-committed-by-serial-rapists/) which have found that the percentage who are serial rapists are much lower than Lisak’s number, but authorities continue to cite Lisak’s results uncritically when setting policies. (Regarding the prevalence of the studies arguing for the 1-in-4 or 1-in-5 statistic, I don’t want to get into that too deeply, but those studies are [highly flawed](http://chronicle.com/article/In-Making-Campuses-Safe-for/127766/%20%20http:/www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/economic-intelligence/2013/10/24/statistics-dont-back-up-claims-about-rape-culture).) ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2015, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/research-driving-claims-about-campus-rape-may-be-a-fraud/729679/13 "2015-09-02T17:19:18Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > I don’t see anything in the Huff Post article you linked to which would confirm Lisak’s claim that a large majority of men who commit rape are serial rapists, or anything which addresses the topic at all. There are [other studies](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-if-most-campus-rapes-arent-committed-by-serial-rapists/) which have found that the percentage who are serial rapists are much lower than Lisak’s number, but authorities continue to cite Lisak’s results uncritically when setting policies. 538 even points that it is a What if? Again a lot of the surveys have to rely on the opinion of the subjects, the point remains that it is by taking most studies into account that the situation is more worrisome in the sence that it is a concern that focusing on just a few serial rapists may tell many that the solution is to concentrate in just a few men, when in reality the solutions will have to be applied to many men on campus. As for the “other studies” yo linked that was an American Enterprise Institute fellow quoting another from the American Enterprise Institute, pointing mostly to just 2 studies, that were also referred by the article I quote and the criticism is really very superficial. In fact the point they made about “not being 1 in 5” was already deal with by the article from the Huffington Post. (Regarding the prevalence of the studies arguing for the 1-in-4 or 1-in-5 statistic, I don’t want to get into that too deeply, but those studies are [highly flawed](http://chronicle.com/article/In-Making-Campuses-Safe-for/127766/%20%20http:/www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/economic-intelligence/2013/10/24/statistics-dont-back-up-claims-about-rape-culture).) [/QUOTE] The study 538 talked about reports that: > [@](#): > > Using the FBI’s definition of rape, the researchers found a higher proportion of men — 10.8 percent of the total sample, nearly twice as high as the Lisak/Miller study — who would be considered rapists. This suggests that the problem is far more widespread than the older study indicated. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2015, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/research-driving-claims-about-campus-rape-may-be-a-fraud/729679/14 "2015-09-02T17:54:14Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > 538 even points that it is a What if? Again a lot of the surveys have to rely on the opinion of the subjects, the point remains that it is by taking most studies into account that the situation is more worrisome in the sence that it is a concern that focusing on just a few serial rapists may tell many that the solution is to concentrate in just a few men, when in reality the solutions will have to be applied to many men on campus. Ok, it sounds like we’re in agreement that Lisak’s data and conclusions are flawed, and that those campus administrators, journalists, and politicians demanding that we take action based on his results should not actually be using those results. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2015, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/research-driving-claims-about-campus-rape-may-be-a-fraud/729679/15 "2015-09-02T18:14:25Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Ok, it sounds like we’re in agreement that Lisak’s data and conclusions are flawed, and that those campus administrators, journalists, and politicians demanding that we take action based on his results should not actually be using those results. Nope, the situation could also be worse than it is assumed, again what this showed was that it is possible that then the focus should go to almost all males and not just a few, indeed this only makes it less convenient for the ones that think that this is a “war against men” because then more men are going to be inconvenienced by the changes that are needed. The point here is than then more research should be done, and so far I have not seen a good reason to dismiss what Lisak found, only that it should be investigated further. But not investigated in the way the right wing echo chamber does. (Really, I could even see the wall of that echo chamber on one of your links) ---
**Author:** ![LinusK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/258eb7/32.png) [@LinusK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LinusK)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2015, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/research-driving-claims-about-campus-rape-may-be-a-fraud/729679/16 "2015-09-02T20:47:15Z")
ITR: The link to the Marshall Project says: > [@](#): > > A federal report released today seems, at first glance, to back Yoffe. It estimates that fewer than one percent of women aged 18 to 24, and even fewer female college students — .6 percent — have been raped or sexually assaulted. It also said: > [@](#): > > The one-in-five estimate, on the other hand, comes from the federally funded Campus Sexual Assault Study (CSA), a 2006 web survey of more than 5,000 women and 1,000 men attending two unnamed, large public universities. As Yoffe points out, two campuses is an awfully small sample. Christopher Krebs, a senior researcher at a non-profit research group, RTI International, who led the Campus Sexual Assault Study, acknowledges that. “The one-in-five statistic is not anything we trotted out as a national statistic,” he says. “But it has certainly been used in that way” It seems like a web survey would be inherently problematic, because of self-selection bias, but the article doesn’t mention it. I would have thought that doing survey research that way would automatically invalidate the results, but I’m not a survey researcher. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2015, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/research-driving-claims-about-campus-rape-may-be-a-fraud/729679/17 "2015-09-02T21:12:22Z")
I, for one, have never understood why people are expecting colleges to be the ones responsible for identifying and punishing rapists. Isn’t that sort of the police’s job? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2015, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/research-driving-claims-about-campus-rape-may-be-a-fraud/729679/18 "2015-09-02T21:35:06Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > I, for one, have never understood why people are expecting colleges to be the ones responsible for identifying and punishing rapists. > > Isn’t that sort of the police’s job? But a college also has a duty to provide a safe and orderly campus environment and community. Considering how high is the standard of proof for a criminal conviction, I think it not unreasonable that in some cases a college should expel a student for rape even if the student is acquitted, or is never arrested or charged. ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2015, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/research-driving-claims-about-campus-rape-may-be-a-fraud/729679/19 "2015-09-03T04:47:14Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > But a college also has a duty to provide a safe and orderly campus environment and community. Considering how high is the standard of proof for a criminal conviction, I think it not unreasonable that in some cases a college should expel a student for rape even if the student is acquitted, or is never arrested or charged. Ouch. So if someone accused me of rape and I wasn’t even charged you think it’s fair I get expelled? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2015, 5:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/research-driving-claims-about-campus-rape-may-be-a-fraud/729679/20 "2015-09-03T05:34:48Z")
> [@Sitnam](#): > > Ouch. So if someone accused me of rape and I wasn’t even charged you think it’s fair I get expelled? Depending on the evidence, considerably less than what would be needed to put you in prison, yes, absolutely. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/research-driving-claims-about-campus-rape-may-be-a-fraud/729679.md?page=2)