Statistics Prove You Wrong

Let's dispel some wishful thinking masquerading as logic.

The 'Epidemic' of Sexual Harassment: Victimhood wanting women have concluded that because sexual harassment in Hollywood is so much in the news now that they have proven that there is an epidemic/culture of this nationwide. Forget that they've lodged almost no allegations against men who aren't in the entertainment industry or leftist media, so the idea of a nationwide issue is an evasion. But lets look at Hollywood only. Is there even an epidemic in Hollywood? Hardly.

By my count, a grand total of around 20 men have been accused of harassment against women, with about half being in Hollywood. Yet, according to the Bureau of Labor, there are roughly 65,000 working actors and there 135,000 working producers and directors. No doubt there are many more unemployed. Still, just going with those means there are 200,000 actors, producers and directors. A grand total of 20ish have been accused of harassment. That works out to 0.01%. That's not an epidemic. To the contrary, that's evidence that things are going quite well.

If we were being honest, the real story here would be:

(1) How little harassment there is in Hollywood.
(2) How all these men are liberals who have attacked conservatives for hating women and who often disguise themselves as feminists.
(3) How many actresses sold their silence for economic gain.
(4) How many women were raped because the "strong" women under (2) kept their silence.
(5) How many women continue to play the game of claiming to be harassed but refusing to provide details even in an environment where disclose will be without punishment and the damage from failing to disclose is obvious. That's a definite sign of deceit.
(6) How these liberals are now asserting defenses they denied to conservatives.

Essentially, feminists are hoping to create a "movement" to fight this "epidemic" even though it is nothing more than a handful of idiosyncratic predators who were aided by the very feminists who now want to smear innocent people. Shameful.

BTW, this is why this is becoming about gays.


Football and CTE: From the Chicago Tribune:

"At this point, a heavy burden of proof lies on those defending the game. A study of the brains of 202 deceased football players by neurologists at Boston University found markers of chronic traumatic encephalopathy in 99 percent of NFL veterans and 91 percent of those who played only through college.

Skeptics scoff that the brains are unrepresentative because they were donated by those who suspected something was wrong. But the number of documented victims is too large to be dismissed."

The skeptics are right. This is called Adverse Selection, when people with a particular issue all flock to something creating a false impression of what the general population looks like. Each year, there are 1,696 players are on NFL teams (not counting extras). Around 2,880 are on teams in the off-season. So if all of these 202 people came from one year, then yes, that would be big. But we're talking about people who played from over 70 years of football. Conservatively, that means the population is over 60,000 players. 200 divided by 60,000 makes them 0.3% of the population of players. That's statistically insignificant and it's made even less trustworthy because of the adverse selection issue. These 202 players are people who thought they had problems.

If 202 of these 60,000 went to see the doctor because they had butt pain, and each turned out to have rectal cancer, would you conclude that football causes rectal cancer? If you would, then you'd be an idiot. But the number is too large to dismiss... right? Wrong. Again, these people selected themselves out of the population. You cannot draw conclusions about the larger group from this sample.