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Comment by kstrauser | Hacker News Reader

I really want to like Snopes, but I'm not convinced that they weigh evidence correctly. For example, they debunked the myth that Marilyn Monroe had 6 toes. First, I don't believe that she did. Or even care, for that matter. But at the time, one of their "facts" was that if she'd had a toe removed, she'd basically have to learn to walk all over again because it would throw her balance completely off. (Note: the article no longer includes this fact. It did at one time, though.)

However, my wife's a podiatrist. Part of her job is amputating parts of feet when they're damaged or infected beyond repair. I asked her what it's like for an otherwise healthy adult to recover from a pinky toe amputation, and she said it's basically a matter of waiting for the wound site to heal and then they continue with life as normal. Contrary to popular belief, even a big toe amputation isn't that disruptive. A vestigial 6th toe hanging off to the side? You'd never notice it was gone.

I emailed Snopes and said hey, while I agree with your conclusion, this particular supporting fact is invalid according to an expert in the field. They replied basically that I was an idiot for believing she had 6 toes, and they left the article as-is.

That's not at all what I thought, and I actually agreed with their conclusion. I just didn't like that they were using incorrect facts to support it, and especially didn't like that they reacted poorly to a well-meant correction.

Since then, I've been skeptical of Snopes. Although I think they're probably right most of the time, that left a bad taste in my mouth. Are other people sending them corrections about their own fields of expertise and having them rejected? I have no way of knowing.

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This reminds me of one I saw shortly after 9/11. The rumor was that bin Laden hated the US because an American woman had made fun of his penis. I believe this even less than the Marilyn Monroe toe story, but the Snopes "debunking" was that bin Laden had never been to America so it couldn't possibly be true - ignoring the fact that Americans leave the country sometimes. I was pretty unimpressed by the slapdash effort.

I don't see how hearsay evidence could ever be debunked. And even if a recording could be found of him saying that, he could always just say he was joking.

> I don't see how hearsay evidence could ever be debunked.

Well, that's the thing, isn't it? Hearsay doesn't reach the necessary standard to be considered evidence in the first place in sensible forums, including most courts.

Yes. But the other thing is debunking rumors is the task they set for themselves. And in these cases, they went for the dopamine hit of writing "FALSE" over the eternally annoying "Unconfirmed".

If the claim is true, the claimant should be able to produce evidence of it, such as someone who would have reason to know stating that it happened.

My wife just told me she was going to bed.

It’s true. There’s no feasible way for me to prove it. Even if she were to record a statement saying that, indeed, she said that…she could be lying for some reason.

Most of what we experience in life every day isn’t provable. That doesn’t make it any less true. It’s just exposes a weakness in what a person is willing to consider as truth, which is that it depends entirely on your willingness to trust the source and very little to do with actual truth.

I mean, if you video of Osama bin Laden telling me the story, or one of his associates were on the record with it, I'd find it plausible. In this case we have absolutely nothing.

This is rather elementary stuff. If you accept your "more expansive" version of the truth then I have to entertain pretty much any fantastical claim because it is impossible to disprove anything definitively.

Doesn’t mean you have to accept it, it just means that there’s very little you can assert as false.

Snopes does that every day with very little to prove it other than the desires of its readers to agree with them.

"False" is clearly shorthand for "there is no evidence that this is true."

If I wrote "brightball beats his wife" and then said you couldn't really say it was false because you couldn't prove it had never happened definitively it would be outrageous, right? Nobody would accept that as a reasonable argument.

Exactly. And it would be the same if you included the word “doesn’t” in that statement. It just means that it’s all hearsay and only the people involved know the real truth.

This is why gossip and rumors are such a powerful thing. We all want to think that what we know or what we heard is true, but very few people are willing to accept that what they heard might not be accurate. Especially once they have repeated it to someone else.

No. It’s not even hearsay. That’s the point.

And come on, “Unconfirmed” clearly means there is no evidence to confirm this.

“False” means not true.

I don’t expect anyone reading to interpret that differently.

So the existence of fairies and unicorns is merely "unconfirmed"? I would consider that term to mean that there is one reasonably credible report that has not been corroborated.

Do you have any reports claiming to have seen them? Do you trust the source?

You could find a guy saying "yeah I totally made that up". Or at least trace the origin of the rumor, and note that it doesn't plausibly connect with Osama's life. Or interview a bunch of people close to him who say they've never heard anything like that, and note that it's therefore implausible that a bunch of Americans somehow know. Or find the real reasons that he hated America, and note they're vastly more plausible and documented. Etc, etc.

This is a classic "Russell's teapot". We should not give any epistemological weight to unfalsifiable things. To debunk them, it suffices to demonstrate that there was never any evidence to begin with.

Well, I think it'd be sufficient to say there is no proof it happened, the same standard we use to say that there aren't little gnomes who collect up all the water and turn it into water vapor, causing it to rain.

At one time, Snopes was part of the fact-checking team at Facebook. This comment goes to show that having an arbiter of truth is a bad idea considering it's hard to accurately know everything. Imagine Doctors trying to debunk the official fact-checker statements and being labeled as misinformation simply due to the fact that they disagree with the fact-checker!

Fact-checking is a dead end, a poor substitute for development of critical thinking skills in the broader population. It may be more challenging, but that's what we need to start working towards.

But, even critical thinking ability relies on good inputs. There must be some baseline of facts to work with.

I do agree however that fact-checking is extremely challenging, but for different reasons. That is, in a society that is being programmed to choose the reality/truth they prefer, you'll end up with cult-like belief systems that no amount of fact-checking will break through.

For a critical thinker, the baseline facts come from the person's own direct experience. They have to.

For example, I probably wouldn't 100% believe that hundreds of people can cross the sky in a metal tube (i.e., modern jet airplane) if I had only been told about it. But I've seen it myself.

Another example: I've learned enough about technology to think the moon landings were feasible, and I've learned enough about society to think that a successful conspiracy around the moon landings is implausible. So I believe the moon landings happened.

Won't relying on direct experience as a basis for critical thinking lead to all kinds of problems due to faulty perception and cognitive biases that we all share? Additionally, how are we to evaluate situations were are not likely to have any experience with? None of us have any experience with, say, the big bang or anything close to what the universe was like then, but can't we still come to many likely conclusions about it without any even indirect experience?

So doesn't critical thinking in fact have to have a baseline in something other than one's own direct experience? Rationality, possibly?

Rationality is a process, but it has to have data to work with. That data comes from perception of the world (sight, hearing, etc.). There is no such thing as "pure" rationality without sense data to work with.

Evidence for the big bang ultimately comes from sense data. You have to integrate a lot of sense data into scientific theories, which then are integrated with other scientific theories, and so on. Science has gotten so far - but it all started out with simple experiments, eventually microscopes and weak telescopes, etc. and built from there.

Critical thinking allows you to overcome cognitive biases. Faulty perception is pretty easy to detect. A stick in a glass of water will look bent, but it's easy to figure out that it actually isn't bent.

You should have multiple independent types of observation. If you only know about the metal tube idea from flying in one yourself, it might have been a simulation. You should have other facts that also support the same conclusion (eg. knowledge of aerodynamics, people quickly moving around the world, etc.) so that it would be hard for them all to be wrong in the same way. You don't have to witness it with your own eyes because, again, it would be hard for them all to create the same consistent lie from multiple perspectives even if they were conspiring.

I agree with that, yes.

> For example, I probably wouldn't 100% believe that hundreds of people can cross the sky in a metal tube (i.e., modern jet airplane) if I had only been told about it. But I've seen it myself.

By that reasoning, all the people who deny the moon landings happened are completely logical, no? And there should be a lot more of them, right? Hell, I've never even seen a rocket take off (outside of video broadcasts), let alone seen spacecraft in flight, so I shouldn't believe in the moon landings either, right?

My explanation was incomplete, to make for a good and clear example.

If I hadn't seen airplanes and flown in them, I'd still be open to believing they exist. My belief would depend on what other evidence there is (broadly speaking), as in my example of the moon landings.

It's easier to make a strong judgment about the existence of airplanes, than about the moon landings. I'd argue that most things in life are more like airplanes in that regard.

You can do a lot with thought experiments that show logical inconsistencies in ideas without any actual knowledge of the facts.

Physics is a fairly clear example. It's hard to make all those equations work without creating paradoxes unless they actually model the real world correctly. If it was all fake but internally consistent, then even a small amount of observation could destroy the whole thing.

>You can do a lot with thought experiments that show logical inconsistencies in ideas without any actual knowledge of the facts

Yes, what you're getting at there is "a priori" knowledge in epistemological-speak and I agree that it forms the basis for much of what we consider true.

But, even the ability to accurately conduct and assess the results of those experiments relies on some set of facts. Your physics example speaks to exactly that: i.e. there's a foundation of "rules" that underpins the field, much of which have been developed through rigorous observation, experimentation, mathematical proof, etc. These rules form the "accepted truths" through which we are able to think critically about new ideas.

So, while we can debate degree, it should be clear that there has to be some accepted base reality to make sense of anything. And, of course, in this thread analogies to science are a bit of a digression. That is, the topic is fact-checking sites, which are largely about dispelling disinformation/misinformation of the social/political variety. So, for instance, whether x politician did or did not do something can be important to know when trying to critically assess their fitness.

I'm not talking about commonly accepted physics knowledge but people contradicting themselves - essentially saying "A and not A are both true" without realizing it. Well, unless the a priori knowledge you're talking about is logic, but then we're in over my head.

Has there ever been a time in history when those in power desired critical thinking skills in the broader population? Those in power want a compliant population, not a questioning one.

I’m curious what you mean by this. Assuming you are American, do you think that Obama or Trump or Biden wish that the population was more compliant, and had weaker critical thinking? Why would that benefit them?

Most leaders think they are right, and I would think they would want enhanced critical thinking in the population so that the people would better appreciate the leaders rightness.

That's so far from the truth it is comical - populism is literally appealing to the base and stupid indistinct and creating an environment hostile to intellectual thinking... and it's been kind of a big thing the last 100 years...

Sure, the President of the United States holds an office with a lot of executive power, but there are plenty of other people with other forms of power that would have an interest in a compliant population.

I hate to beat the "evil-zillionaire" drum, but if you made your fortunes selling people juice-boxes they don't really need, you'd prefer it if they complicitly buy all the junk your ads tell them to buy instead of critically thinking "maybe I DON'T need another one"

Take also cult-leaders for example (or other con-men in power/leadership positions). If their followers possessed the critical thinking skills to see through their manipulations, they wouldn't have any followers. Complacency in this case is fundamental

Okay, sure, cult leaders and juice box company executives don’t want critical thinking in the populace. I guess those aren’t who I think of when I think of the powerful.

Yes the President of The United States of America is the ONLY person with ANY power. Not the companies who spend billions of dollars lobbying to pass laws only in their own interest. Not the media moguls or tv personalities who can manipulate public perception on any issue. Not the lawmakers, the community leaders, people who directly affect other people's lives.

No, I can't imagine anybody would like it if folks were dim and complacent and just generally easy to fuck over

Every politician wants voters to see through the other guy's propaganda.

And if voters pick up critical thinking skills as a side-effect of education that will get them high-paying jobs, what's not to like?

Nope, Every politician wants you to believe their propaganda more than the next politician.

> Fact-checking is a dead end, a poor substitute for development of critical thinking skills in the broader population. It may be more challenging, but that's what we need to start working towards.

Pretty sure that work was started thousands of years ago.

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. IMHO, insisting the only solution is to increase "critical thinking" to unheard of levels is wishful thinking that mainly serves to shoot down necessary mitigations for the psychological and social failings of individuals and communities. Fact checking isn't a perfect institution, but nothing is.

Good points. It would absolutely be helpful if more people thought more critically. However, even if we achieved that goal, we still can't allow bad actors to unleash a constant firehose of disinformation on society.

The truth can't be so hard to discover in a functioning society/democracy, and it shouldn't require an entire population to be expert critical thinkers who devote significant time undergoing epistemological exercises to discover base reality.

I have a lot of quibbles with "fact checking" as practiced as a distinct vertical in news sites, but in principle I don't find anything wrong with examining claims to determine whether they are true. To make it unnecessary you'd need not just critical thinking but also everyone constantly doing their own research, which would rather limit the number of things anyone could have an opinion about.

You can't critically think your way in to deciding what really happened at the Gulf of Tonkin[1], or whether the CIA organised fake vaccination drive to get Osama bin Laden's family DNA[2]

It's claims like these and dozens of others that are made every day that fact checkers need to verify, as few if any of us have the time or expertise to check all these claims ourselves.

[1] - https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2008/f...

[2] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vacci...

> Imagine Doctors trying to debunk the official fact-checker statements and being labeled as misinformation simply due to the fact that they disagree with the fact-checker!

Though it's worth noting that MDs (and all other kinds of doctors) can be incompetent and/or batshit insane.

For instance, I had the pleasure of viewing a video where a psychiatrist leaned on his MD credential to "debunk" COVID and the efficacy and safety of the vaccine. Even ignoring his personal competency, I wouldn't be surprised if his specialty has the least qualification to speak on the topic of infectious disease of all medical specialties. Here's the video for anyone interested: https://off-guardian.org/2020/12/09/watch-ask-the-experts-co..., the guy I'm talking about is the first speaker (didn't bother with any of the others).

Edit: watching a bit more of that video, many of the other speakers emphasize being "medical doctors" and several use the odd phrase "medical pandemic." I wonder if they're reading from a script?

The whole COVID "skeptic" circus is full of quacks with irrelevant credentials, like urologists and orthodontists. As a prominent example, I give you Rand Paul. If you take advice on infectious diseases from an ophthalmologist, you're going to have a bad time.

My ophthalmologist requires masks and social distancing in his office. He also recommended against wearing contacts for the duration of the pandemic (he says glasses offer more protection.)

Why am I going to have a bad time for following his rules and advice?

>> If you take advice on infectious diseases from an ophthalmologist, you're going to have a bad time.

> Why am I going to have a bad time for following his rules and advice?

You're not, you're just being over-literal. Most ophthalmologists are sensible people who will give guidance outside their fields that comports with the guidance from medical professionals in that field. That sounds like your ophthalmologist. However, if you find an ophthalmologist who blatantly contradicts the guidance from areas far outside his field, then that's when "you're going to have a bad time." The reason for that is you've likely found someone who doesn't respect the limits of his own knowledge and experience.

If your podiatrist says the earth is round, and you agree, you are not taking advice in cosmology from a podiatrist. But if your podiatrist tells you the earth is flat, and you believe that, then you are. See the difference?

No, I don't see the difference. That just sounds like an example of confirmation bias.

On the other hand, anyone who's taken a college anatomy class is more "expert" than a large majority of others, including some loud voices. Unfortunately, expert doesn't always mean well informed. That's why we look for the collective expert opinion rather than an expert's opinion.

> "debunk" COVID and the efficacy and safety of the vaccine

What evidence is there of the efficacy of the vaccine that isn’t provided directly from Pfizer/Moderna?

What evidence is there that it is safe, when there are 0 mid-to-long term studies on the effects of it? If it safe why are the pharma company’s immune from all liability?

Why is anyone that question the narrative on how safe and effective the vaccines immediately labeled a “quack”, “alt right”, or “anti-vax” (there are plenty of pro-vax people that are skeptical of THIS vax, not all vax).

> What evidence is there of the efficacy of the vaccine that isn’t provided directly from Pfizer/Moderna?

There are multiple observational studies looking at real-world effectiveness. If necessary I'll find some links, but have you looked?

I haven’t look for studies specifically, if you could link some that would be great.

I just hear anecdotal evidence like “hospitalizations have gone down”. Which may be 100% true, but is hardly evidence that the vaccines are effective. The placebo effect is well known. It’s not shocking that hospitalization has gone down when the media has been beating the fear drum on how terribly dangerous the virus is 24/7, causing people to panic (pre vaccine days) and go to the hospital out of caution. Along comes a vaccine that is touted as effective and the media pounds that drum 24/7 and hospitalization goes down. The vaccine could have been saline solution and you would have seen a drop in hospitalization.

I've mostly been interested in effectiveness against the Delta strain, so the links in my history are recent preprints that have something to say about that: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.06.21261707v... , https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2108891 , and a UK Government analysis that you'll probably find less convincing so I won't bother linking it.

http://www.healthdata.org/covid/covid-19-vaccine-efficacy-su...

There's a PDF in this article that links to dozens of independent studies. Or, just google "covid vaccine efficacy" and it pulls up a bunch of links for you.

It really only takes a minimum of effort to answer these hard-hitting questions you've posed. As another example, I googled "why are pharmaceutical companies immune from liability over covid vaccine" and found https://www.hsdl.org/?abstract&did=848329 .

It seems silly to worry about completely hypothetical and unknown long-term risks of vaccination when getting COVID-19 has very serious, well known short-term risks.

Doesn't seem silly at all to me : the known risks of covid are pretty tolerable. Death rate is extremely low for my demographic.

So lets say I have a 30% chance of getting covid without a vax and a .1% chance of serious long term illness or death from covid.

Now If I get the vaccine, I have a 1% chance of getting covid, and.01% chance of serioues injury or death + an unkown chance of unkown serious health complications from a vaccine.

Id take bet 1 any day, personally, since the odds and stakes of the vaccine are unkown.

Admittedly though, I think the chance of serious injury from vaccine is probably quite low or nonexistant but Im just trying to make the point that that perspective involves some reasonable value judgements.

Note : all oercentages listed are majorly hand wavy. This comment is in no way intended to be statistically accurate

Cheers.

>> It seems silly to worry about completely hypothetical and unknown long-term risks of vaccination when getting COVID-19 has very serious, well known short-term risks.

> Doesn't seem silly at all to me : the known risks of covid are pretty tolerable. Death rate is extremely low for my demographic [emphasis mine].

That perspective is why we can't have nice things.

Not really dude. If I was around other people even remotely often it would be a different story but I work from home, dont really hang out with people, and wear an n95 when I have to go to the store.

It doesn't make me a bad person to be unvaccinated. It would if I was cavalier about potentially getting others sick...

> Not really dude. If I was around other people even remotely often it would be a different story but I work from home, dont really hang out with people, and wear an n95 when I have to go to the store.

> It doesn't make me a bad person to be unvaccinated. It would if I was cavalier about potentially getting others sick...

Then you truly are a rare bird.

You imply that the long term risks of covid-19 are known, so conflating the unknown/imaginary risks of both, that leaves getting the vaccine a better deal, because 'you have less change of getting sick'.

Yeah you make a good point. No idea what long term risks of covid are.

I guess I just feel more comfortable rolling the dice with a natural (maybe? Lmao) disease than a product made by the same companies that were public enemy #1 just months before they became our "saviours"

I don't know about psychiatry in America, but psychiatry is a specialty within general medicine, so he is qualified to speak on the efficacy and safety of the vaccine.

The authority based medicine surrounding Covid is completely out of hand

Snopes' fact checking is a meme at this point.

They fact-check opinions they have re-framed in their own language as opposed to fact-checking the facts the opinion is based on. (Claim: the economy is way better: Truth: no, it's only 5%)

They often reframe the claims to add a detail the author never said. (Did John ate ice cream on Sunday? No, he ate it at Saturday 23:35).

The worst is when they rely on cherry-picked experts or anonymous sources: (we asked an ex-CIA analyst if the leaks are true, he said it's most likely not, trust us as we trust him)

Had you checked the article after this encounter? I guess they eventually realized you were right and made the change, but I wonder when that happened. Other comments here discuss how it's odd that they don't allow their site to be archived, and it's interesting to see a real example that illustrates why they may not want that.

Silent edits seem like a huge red flag that your platform isn't trustworthy.

Silent edits and excluding themselves from the Internet Archive Wayback Machine so that you can't look in to the silent edits.

I have no idea when or why they changed it. Every few years I'd get a bee in my bonnet to check, and this is the first time I remember not seeing the incorrect fact being there.

Perhaps others like yourself emailed them once in a while over the years, each getting ignored, but eventually they got that comment enough to check it with an actual authority on the matter, sheepishly realized they were the ones being idiots, and silently edited it without admitting their mistake.

A coworker of mine had his big toe amputated after it was crushed while moving a refrigerator. Afterwards he had no problems and remained very athletic.

This comment makes me queasy.

My mother chopped off the toe next to her big toe with our lawnmower (accidentally.)

To this day none of us can figure out how it hit that toe and not the big toe.

Yep. I mean, obviously you don't want that to happen, but it's something you can make a complete recovery from.

I think Snopes has pretty clear political biases that detract from their ability to fact check. An example is their article on "Sweden is the rape Capitol of Europe"[1] which they rate false. Their article talks about Trump and immigration and Farrage and doesn't really get to what they are supposed to be debunking, which is the rape Capitol thing.

Sweden does have the highest rate of rape per capita in Europe. This is possibly due to how Sweden and other European countries collate rape statistics but also possibly due to Sweden having more rapists or some combination of the two things.

I think an article that tried to investigate how to compare rape rates between European countries and where we should fairly consider to Sweden to be in that ranking would be both challenging to write and interesting to read. Instead, Snopes just says Trump is a dumb racist and therefore the claim is false.

Rapes actually dropped. They debunked it in the article. Sweden doesn't have the highest rape rate. If you look at the graph that they mention from the article. https://www.snopes.com/tachyon/2017/03/sd-graph.jpg

"– The question posed on sexual crimes in NTU includes a wide range of crimes. It can range from minor events [like] flashing and groping, to very serious incidents of rape. Those who say they suffered must therefore answer questions about the severity of the crime. The responses show that in 29 percent of cases [have been] a more serious form of sexual crimes, says Emelie Hambrook, investigator at the National Council."

"While Brå noted that the broad category of “sexual crimes” had increased since 2012, the same was not true for rape. Another Brå graph shows that reported cases of rape (represented by the purple line below) did not spike suddenly after the influx of refugees in 2015 – instead, they dropped from 6,697 in 2014 to 5,918 in 2015 (about the same amount as in 2009). "

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/crime-sweden-rape-capital-...

Nothing you wrote contradicts the claim of it being the rape capital. The rate can drop and still be the highest. Are you aware that you're not logically countering the parent comment but just saying something tangential to it?

That is basically how a fact check works if the claim is true but you want to debunk it anyway. Talk about something related that is directionally opposite to the claim, then give the ˋmisleadingˋ verdict.

True but the actual snopes article does directly make an argument that the rate of rape in sweden is not materially higher than in other european countries

Then read some more on the subject and please don't continue to propagate myths like this.

https://www.bra.se/bra-in-english/home/news-from-bra/archive...

Here is a quote from the Foreword of that report -

"According to the statistics presented by the EU, Sweden has long had the highest number of reported rapes per capita in Europe"

Now, it's perfectly reasonable to say that rape is defined and reported differently in different countries and that's why rape appears more frequent in Sweden than in many other countries. In fact, I referenced that in my previous comment. It's not reasonable to say "Theoretically, if Sweden followed Germany's laws and reporting then Sweden would have an average number of rapes and therefore the true claim that Sweden has the highest rape rate in Europe is false."

It is actually true, and is repeatedly acknowledged in this report, that Sweden has, and has had, the highest rape rate in Europe. Maybe there is an argument for calling the "Rape Capitol" claim misleading or complicated, but it's clearly not just outright false.

I think it's pretty cut and dry, the question is pertaining to actual events not the rate of report for each event. Think of it this way: if Sweden counted population differently than other countries and came up with a population of 2 billion it'd still false that Sweden is the most populous country in the world, they would simply be the country which _reports_ the highest population in the world. While interesting in itself it wouldn't make the statement "Sweden is the most populous country in the world" any less false.

The report rates are probably worth mentioning in the explanation of why it's false but it doesn't change the falseyness of the claim. Unless the question is specifically geared towards the rate of report of course but few go looking for that, most want to know the actual rates.

You assume Sweden's high rape rate is based on their counting and reporting practices. Have you looked through the counting and reporting methods for all other countries in Europe and standardized them to reach this conclusion? To me, as someone who hasn't looked at the crime reporting and counting methods of all the countries of Europe, this sounds like a possible explanation, maybe even a likely one, but possible explanations aren't necessarily correct and nor should we assume they are.

Sweden really does report more rapes than the other countries of Europe. Maybe this is function of how they count and report rapes, maybe that's part or all of the excess rapes, but "Maybe" doesn't mean you can conclude the original true, even if complicated or misleading, fact is false.

If we see some odd phenomenon in the metrics for a country, and you can come up with a plausible sounding explanation for the phenomenon, that doesn't mean that your explanation is accurate and it doesn't mean that it is false to assert that the odd phenomenon does exist.

It's not my idea, it's the central conclusion of the study you were replying about which sought to investigate this exact line of questions https://www.bra.se/bra-in-english/home/news-from-bra/archive...

I didn't mean "You" in my previous comment to make it seem like this was your idea or interpretation. I'm aware it is a popular explanation of Sweden's rape rate and the one endorsed by their own National Council for Crime Prevention. I was just trying to refer to "You" in the sense of the argument you are putting forward.

The summary of the report makes the case that, if Sweden used Germany's system for counting and reporting rapes then Sweden would only have 1.5x Germany's rape rate as opposed to their current 6.3x Germany's rape rate. Further, the summary claims, Sweden would fall from "Rape Capitol" to "Somewhere in the middle" by which they apparently mean "Somewhere in the upper quartile."

Okay, so - obvious question here - Do all the other countries use Germany's methods for counting and reporting rapes? Maybe if you applied German methods to every country in Europe then Sweden would still be at the top of the list? Am I missing where in the report they cover this?

Intuitively, I'm pretty skeptical when an organization that has a big problem does some figuring and says "Actually - not that big a problem." Maybe the analysis is right and Sweden's high rate of rape is entirely/mainly a statistical consequence of expansive definitions and aggressive counting. But, from what I know of bureaucracies, I'd be pretty surprised if the Crime Prevention Council called in a guy to do a report on their high crime numbers and he came up with an answer of the form "Yeah, this is terrible."

Sweden surveys every single citizen, every single year, and asks them (amongst other things) whether or not they have been a victim of a sex crime.

They also have a very broad definition of what "rape" is, compared to other Western countries.

Calling them the "Rape Capitol" because they have the most progressive rape detection and classification system on Earth is stupid - that's why Snopes and other fact checkers debunk it as false.

Do they? Can you link to where they survey every citizen and ask this? The closest thing I can think of is the annual Swedish crime survey, but that goes to a representative sample of Swedes, not every single citizen. I also don't know what the point of surveying every citizen would be or how it is relevant to Sweden detecting more rapes than most people.

Calling Sweden the Rape Capitol of Europe may be misleading or naive, but it isn't simply false. An objective fact checking of this claim should consider it as too hard to evaluate for the reasons discussed or come up with a good way to evaluate the claim and do that. Instead, Snopes obfuscates the claim and rambles a bit about Trump and immigration then says the claim is false because they have a theory that might explain why Sweden has an elevated rape rate.

> Sweden surveys every single citizen, every single year, and asks them (amongst other things) whether or not they have been a victim of a sex crime.

Do you have a source for that claim?

No, I made a mistake in saying that. As the sibling post stated, it's just a representative sample.

More notable than how they use tangential evidence to debunk a claim (e.g. citing a drop in rape as evidence it's not the rape capital, and comparing the rate of rape in absolute terms, not per-capita), is which part of a claim they choose to debunk.

According to the Swedish state TV, 58% of all convicted rapists were foreign-born [1], despite being only 19% of the population [2]. They could cite that as supporting "accepting refugees from war-torn regions like Syria would make the United States less safe", and rate the whole statement as a mixture. Instead they meticulously dance around the core of the statement [3], using all sorts of indirect statistics.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45269764

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Sweden

[3] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/crime-sweden-rape-capital-...

You're obviously using HN primarily for ideological battle, and that's against the site guidelines (regardless of whatever it is that you're battling for), so I've banned this account.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

snopes is basically just a few skeptical people using google. they arent some world class expert geniuses in all topics like they claim to be.

Kudos for the fact that you bothered to email them for clarification. I never engage with the "fact checking sources"

I'm reminded of a paragraph in the Buzzfeed News investigation that brought this to light, indicating that Mikkelson in early days of Usenet was particularly known for trolling. That response to your inquiry seems particularly trollish.

They also did a faux-debunking of the Trudeau-Castro theory, that didn't even check Justin Trudeau's mother's Wikipedia page to find out her location on the date they calculated for the conception date.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Trudeau

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/justin-trudeau-is-fidel-ca...

Also, vestigial toes are usually removed in infancy, or sooner rather than later. If you wait too long, they have a harder times getting shoes to fit.

Always take skeptics with a grain of salt.

Snopes is run by the Poster's Poster.

Of course they aggressively missed your point and accused you of being the idiot.

Who replied at snopes and who did you speak to?

It was like 20 years ago and I just tried to find the email but wasn’t able to. I think it was Barbara, but honestly don’t remember.

> I really want to like Snopes

Herein lies the archetypical problem with the vanilla HN (or should I say "mainstream") crowd conformist mentality. As a human herd animal, we want to belong, but it's not okay to forgo our critical thinking to do so. Downvote away.

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