On 1/8/2014 8:33 PM, Tim Cook wrote:
> On 2014-01-06 23:26, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> I posted that site because its the one I could remember how to find an
>> article on. Its not the **only** place I have read the same things from.
>> And.. you are seriously suggesting that only a certain "sort" of women
>> post there, or in the comment threads, and that somehow their experience
>> is therefore atypical of what goes on? Based on what exactly?
>
> Well, it's a site that caters specifically to people that are skeptics,
> and shows preference for female-identifying individuals.  That, I'm
> afraid, is in fact a certain 'sort', not representative of the overall
> population.
>
Well... The problems I have with that as an argument for questioning 
their views on the subject is.. 1) While it does certainly cater to 
such, not everyone on it started out as a skeptic, or had their 
experiences "while" skeptics, 2) Skeptics would, one would think, be 
better people to ask about biases based on the sort of false positives 
and presumptions of causality that, frankly, even people doing studies 
fall into (which is one major reason why you want replication of 
results, not jumping on a study, or even more than one, from the same 
environment), as a basis of reaching a conclusion, 3) it presumes, 
without good reason, that their experience in this matter "is" different 
somehow, and finally, not everyone that posts there "are" women.

Well, that and, one of the major points I am trying to get across is 
that the "male centric" view that sits over top of our culture already 
biases *everything*, including, historically, the interpretations of 
data, and/or even the collection of it, in such studies. That view as 
what kept bird experts from even seeing the evidence that most birds are 
non-monogamous, instead of just asserting they where. Its the same bias 
that caused Masters and Johnson so many headaches when the real data 
about human sexuality kept failing to match their expectations of what 
constituted "normal". Its the same bias that has called into question, 
recently, conclusions about behavior, especially involving sex, 
relationships, and even violence, among primitive tribes. Its a bias 
that is so pervasive that the *automatic* reaction of nearly everyone, 
male and female, when an assault happens, is to either joke about what 
"she" might have done, or question it, but not what the guy did. There 
is a built in bias, where you are almost not even taken seriously at 
all, if you report something, regardless of whether you are, presumably, 
some sort of science geek, which seems to be the assumption about people 
on that network, or the stereotypical blond bimbo. In fact, they might 
even take the later "less" seriously, because they are all body, and not 
so much brains, and the "script" says that such woman are easier, less 
likely to say no, and thus, more likely to be lying, just out of spite.

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