
I Cited Their Study, So They Disavowed It - DarkContinent
https://www.wsj.com/articles/i-cited-their-study-so-they-disavowed-it-11594250254
======
neoliberal_dad
This headline is just not true. They retracted their study because its central
claims were wrong due the authors' failure to understand Bayes' theorem:

[https://www.pnas.org/content/117/3/1261](https://www.pnas.org/content/117/3/1261)

Basically, the question everybody is interested in is P(shot|attributes). The
database of shootings they used only lets them estimate P(attributes|shot).
But because they don't have data on the rate of police/attribute encounters,
they can't support any claims about P(shot|attributes).

~~~
ignoramceisblis
Your statement is just not true. They retracted their study because, in their
own words: "Although our data and statistical approach were valid to estimate
the question we actually tested (the race of civilians fatally shot by
police), given continued misuse of the article (e.g., MacDonald, 2020) we felt
the right decision was to retract the article rather than publish further
corrections." Source: [https://retractionwatch.com/wp-
content/uploads/2020/07/PNAS_...](https://retractionwatch.com/wp-
content/uploads/2020/07/PNAS_STATEMENT.pdf)

They want to retract their study because they feel its information is being
"misused," which is extremely disturbing in the context of honest academic
research. I won't go into this deeply, but valid information on such a hot
button subject is exactly what we need right now, and withdrawing valid
information only leads to more vacuum, which will be filled by whatever the
dominant political power declares.

As to your second statement, statisticians regularly use one quantity as a
proxy for another. Here, they used the violent crime (by race) rates as a
proxy for police encounters. This is in contrast to using gross population
race proportions as a proxy for police encounters. Other studies--which have
not been retracted--have used gross population race proportions as a proxy for
police encounters. Will those be retracted? Will future studies using similar
proxies be retracted? Only if they go against a powerful narrative, I wager.

------
clawedjird
Save yourself a click - the author (Heather MacDonald) appears to be trying to
create controversy by playing dumb.

To summarize - MacDonald cited, in speech and writing, a 2019 study on fatal
police shootings by two academic psychologists. Apparently, a backlash to the
study's findings then developed at one of the researchers' institutions
(Michigan State University) and the study was ultimately retracted by its
authors. You can read the statement they issued at that time here:
[https://retractionwatch.com/wp-
content/uploads/2020/07/PNAS_...](https://retractionwatch.com/wp-
content/uploads/2020/07/PNAS_STATEMENT.pdf) (MacDonald's 'misuse' of their
research is explicitly mentioned as contributing to the retraction). MacDonald
goes on to imply that the administrator responsible for approving funding for
the study was fired as a result of this, but this claim is not corroborated by
local news coverage
([https://www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/2020/06/15/mi...](https://www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/2020/06/15/michigan-
state-msu-stephen-hsu-research-removal-petition-graduate-employees-
union/5345120002/)), which pointed to a history of pro-eugenics, racist, and
sexist comments as the cause of his dismissal and didn't mention MacDonald or
the study she cited.

The supposedly controversial finding MacDonald cited in her writing
(presumably without the sort of context that would likely have accompanied it
in an academic setting, since that's how it appears in the above WSJ op-ed) is
that race didn't serve as a factor in predicting fatal police shootings within
a sample of 917 shootings from 2015 _after accounting for "race-specific rates
of violent crime"_ (emphasis mine). Downplaying the fact that black Americans
are disproportionately subject to police violence, with regard to population,
MacDonald's op-ed repeatedly makes variations of what she seems to think (or
at least insists) are identical claims, namely _" that racial disparities in
policing reflect differences in violent crime rates,"_ and _" that civilian
behavior is the greatest influence on police behavior."_

While it might seem like she's saying that _your_ behavior will influence how
police officers might treat _you_ , what she's actually saying is that the
behavior of _people who look like you_ will influence how you're treated by
police. Put another way, it's OK for police to shoot unarmed black men with no
history of violence if they seem threatening because of their superficial
resemblance to violent criminals (i.e. race). The incredulity she expresses at
the prospect that this viewpoint might provoke controversy seems to belie her
lack of perspective (or, if I'm being cynical, her willingness to engage in
rhetorical manipulation of her audience).

As if that's not disgusting enough, this op-ed's undercurrent seems to be that
black Americans are disproportionately engaged in violent crime, and that
media figures are simply too afraid of appearing politically incorrect to
acknowledge the "truth." What seems apparent from her writing is that
MacDonald is actually afraid to openly state her views, which - fairly
construed - seem to represent the basic idea that, just a couple of
generations removed from legal segregation, black America has already reached
the point where it's unburdened by any racially-derived disadvantage and,
thus, deserves what it gets. Since "what it gets," as of 2020, is a heap of
disadvantages, as portrayed by available socioeconomic data, the only logical
conclusion one can reach is that inferior performance must reflect inferior
potential. Luckily for the world, MacDonald's ridiculous perspective is the
product of a bevy of equally ridiculous assumptions - she's just not a very
astute social scientist (assuming she actually believes what she writes).

Before the odds of anyone getting to the end of this approach zero, I'll close
by briefly revisiting some of the nuances MacDonald completely glosses over
when discussing crime rates. As a result of decades of policies like broken
windows policing, whereby some neighborhoods receive disproportionate levels
of police attention and minor offenses are heavily enforced, the reliability
of crime rates, as an objective research measure, can be called into question.
In short, we now know that the efficacy of broken windows policies is
inconclusive, that there _is_ a relationship between poverty and crime that
can be strong enough to obfuscate the influence of other factors (and it can
run both ways), and that increasing the amount of police presence in a
neighborhood can produce more "criminals" (i.e. more arrests, people with
criminal records, etc.) without improving the safety of that neighborhood (in
some cases, it can actually reduce public perception of safety). We also know
that the likelihood of being arrested for committing a given offense differs
among races (ex. black and white Americans consume marijuana at similar rates,
yet black Americans are 3-4x as likely to be arrested for marijuana
possession). Together, these various conclusions (or lack thereof) paint a
muddled, complex portrait that completely contradicts the tidy (and completely
wrong) landscape that presumably hangs above the desk in MacDonald's home
office - what determines how police treat you is not your own behavior, but a
complex web of factors, some of which began to exist well before you did.

~~~
xenophonium1
"As if that's not disgusting enough, this op-ed's undercurrent seems to be
that black Americans are disproportionately engaged in violent crime, and that
media figures are simply too afraid of appearing politically incorrect to
acknowledge the "truth.""

This is literally true though.

"As a result of decades of policies like broken windows policing, whereby some
neighborhoods receive disproportionate levels of police attention and minor
offenses are heavily enforced, the reliability of crime rates, as an objective
research measure, can be called into question."

You are so dishonest, differences in crime rates are based on victim studies,
not arrests and prosecutions, to account for specifically the issue you cite.
Most of the stats about black violent crime come from reports by THEIR BLACK
VICTIMS

~~~
clawedjird
> This is literally true though.

It's true that black Americans are overrepresented among violent criminals,
but it's not true that the reason this isn't widely reported (at least without
any other context) isn't because "media figures are simply too afraid to
acknowledge it" \- that was a tongue-in-cheek characterization meant to
illuminate the baseless conspiratorial orientation frequently demonstrated by
those who consider themselves 'victimized' by political correctness (in other
words, those who might consider themselves oppressed when pressured to respect
the rights of oppressed minority groups). "You can't handle the truth" is
literally a super-popular meme.

The reason media figures aren't going around proclaiming that black Americans
are disproportionately likely to be violent criminals is, for one, because
that would be irresponsible reporting. While that simple statistic is music to
the ears of simple-minded racists everywhere, you're not likely to hear them
stating other, equally-relevant statistics such as black Americans are
disproportionately likely to be poor, unemployed, high-school dropouts,
subject to housing instability and poor nutrition, and so forth - all factors
that correlate highly with future criminal activity. They're not committing
crimes because they're black, they're committing crimes because they're in
situations that produce criminals (and they're statistically more likely to be
in those situations than other major American racial groups). Academics and
(old-fashioned) reporters are accustomed to thinking and communicating in
nuance. The average internet racist probably is not, so it's a good thing that
media figures aren't adding fuel to their fire by regularly spouting context-
free data likely to create confusion and animosity.

> You are so dishonest, differences in crime rates are based on victim
> studies, not arrests and prosecutions, to account for specifically the issue
> you cite. Most of the stats about black violent crime...

Do you actually think I'm making this up? I ask because it seems indecent
enough to boldly claim that a random human you're interacting with is lying to
your (virtual) face, but it seems even more egregious when you don't have your
own facts straight. First of all, you're not being thorough at all - what do
you mean by "differences in crime rates?" Which crime rates? According to who?
Secondly, while victimization surveys are one source of information regarding
criminal activity, _" Uniform Crime Reports represent the primary source of
data used in the calculation of official statistics regarding serious crimes
such as murder and homicide"_
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_S...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States#Crime_data_sources)).
Victimization survey data is used for generating statistics regarding lesser
crimes. UCR statistics are periodically collected from state and local law
enforcement agencies and compiled by the FBI.

Aside from the slanderous implications, none of that really matters - I wasn't
directly calling into question to veracity of our crime statistics, i.e.
claiming that the numbers are wrong, I was implying that the numbers
themselves present a muddled picture that presents few obvious conclusions for
researchers.

> ...come from reports by THEIR BLACK VICTIMS

What's the name of this rhetorical device? The one where you seemingly feign
concern for someone while apparently arguing against that persons interests?
This is another one of those statistics that racists and the generally-
uninformed frequently riff on without realizing that it's actually irrelevant.
It's not beneficial to black Americans, victims of crime included, to repeat
irrelevant claims that reinforce historically-held racist stereotypes and do
nothing to enhance their security.

The fact is that most violent crime occurs on an intraracial basis, so most
violent crime is white-on-white, black-on-black, or Hispanic-on-Hispanic. Have
you ever heard anyone talk about white-on-white crime or Hispanic-on-Hispanic
crime? No, well that might be because the American people didn't spend the
past few centuries socially-conditioning themselves to the concept that white
or Hispanic Americans are uniquely predisposed to criminal activity (or
generally inferior, for that matter).

------
rbecker
Un-paywalled: [https://archive.is/tNht3](https://archive.is/tNht3)

