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Comment by ALittleLight | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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

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

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