Fudging Stats On The Dangers Of Getting Killed By Muslim Terrorists: Politics First; Facts, Dead Last
Truly terrific post by ev psych doctoral student Jesse Marczyk at Psychology Today digging into confirmation bias and the dishonest way stats are presented to make an argument that doesn't hold water:
The first article on the chopping block was published on the New York Times website in June of last year. The article is entitled, "Homegrown extremists tied to deadlier toll than Jihadists in U.S. since 9/11," and it attempts to persuade the reader that we, as a nation, are all too worried about the threat Islamic terrorism poses. In other words, American fears of terrorism are wildly out of proportion to the actual threat it presents. This article attempted to highlight the fact that, in terms of the number of bodies, right-wing, anti-government violence was twice as dangerous as Jihadist attacks in the US since 9/11 (48 deaths from non-Muslims; 26 by Jihadists). Since we seem to dedicate more psychological worry to Islam, something was wrong there There are three important parts of that claim to be considered: first, a very important word in that last sentence is "was," as the body count evened out by early December (link is external) in that year (currently at 48 to 45). This updated statistic yields some interesting questions: were those people who feared both types of attacks equally (if they existed) being rational or not on December 1st? Were those who feared right-wing attacks more than Muslim ones suddenly being irrational on the 2nd? The idea these questions are targeting is whether or not fears can only be viewed as proportionate (or rational) with the aid of hindsight. If that's the case, rather than saying that some fears are overblown or irrational, a more accurate statement would be that such fears "have not yet been founded." Unless those fears have a specific cut-off date (e.g., the fear of being killed in a terrorist attack during a given time period), making claims about their validity is something that one cannot do particularly well.The second important point of the article to consider is that the count begins one day after a Muslim attack that killed over 3,000 people (immediately; that doesn't count those who were injured or later died as a consequence of the events). Accordingly, if that count is set back just slightly, the fear of being killed by a Muslim terrorist attack would be much more statistically founded, at least in a very general sense. This naturally raises the question of why the count starts when it does. The first explanation that comes to mind is that the people doing the counting (and reporting about the counting) are interested in presenting a rather selective and limited view of the facts that support their case. They want to denigrate the viewpoints of their political rivals first, and so they select the information that helps them do that while subtly brushing aside the information that does not.
...Saving the largest for last, the final important point of the article to consider is that it appears to neglect the matter of base rates entirely. The attacks labeled as "right-wing" left a greater absolute number of bodies (at least at the time it was written), but that does not mean we learned right-wing attacks (or individuals) are more dangerous. To see why, we need to consider another question: how many bodies should we have expected? The answer to that question is by no means simple, but we can do a (very) rough calculation. In the US, approximately 42% of the population self-identifies as Republican (our right-wing population), while about 1% identifies as Muslim. If both groups were equally likely to kill others, then we should expect that the right-wing terrorist groups leave 42 bodies for every 1 that the Muslim group do.
He points out more dishonest arguing in a New Yorker piece by Lawrence Krauss:
Lawrence goes on to say, the average Paris resident is about as likely to have been killed in a car accident during any given year than to have been killed during the mass shooting....This point about cars is yet another fine example of an author failing to account for base rates. Looking at the raw body count is not enough, as people in Paris likely interact with hundreds (or perhaps even thousands; I don't have any real sense for that number) of cars every day for extended periods of time. By contrast, I would imagine Paris residents interact markedly less frequently with Muslim extremists. Per unit of time spent around cars, they would pose what is likely a much, much lower threat of death than Muslim extremists.
via @SteveStuWill
I object loudly to the majority of comparisons attempted between categories of risk, such as when someone points out that a bicycle injury is more likely than one from a gunshot in the USA.
In each case, the correct thing to do is examine the cost/benefit of each activity. "Relative" risk is meaningless except as a tool to alarm or sedate the layman ignorant of risk analysis / statistics.
Radwaste at January 4, 2016 1:09 AM
On a slightly different note, I also expect that I may die while on my bicycle, especially now that everybody is on cellphones, and ride accordingly, which is to say I will not ride on the streets in Los Angeles.
I'm guessing those people in Paris who died at the grocery store didn't expect that they'd be murdered picking up a carton of milk for maman and those people who went to a holiday party at their workplace didn't realize they had a chance of being gunned down by the Muslim co-worker they just threw a baby shower for.
Islam increases death rates in all sorts of places there was an extremely, extremely risk of dying before.
Amy Alkon at January 4, 2016 4:24 AM
Yea, to follow such logic: One is more likely to die from "natural causes" than any thing else - so they better start doing something about "natural causes" then!
charles at January 4, 2016 6:40 AM
Of course, a big part of the problem is that it's impossible to ever get the straight story from the mainstream media. I became convinced in college, after interacting with some of the journalism students, that journalists in general are the scum of the earth, and I've never come across anything in my adult life that challenged that view. Part of the left-wing media's conceit is to present attacks by leftists and Muslims as anomalous, but attacks by people with right-wing views as representative.
A problem with these sort of statistical analysis is that the data set is poor, in terms of distribution; it's full of outliers and follows no discernible pattern. To wit, the number of people who died on 9/11 probably exceeds the total number of deaths in the U.S. that can be traced to any other terrorist incident over the past half century. But, as 9/11 itself showed, it only takes one event to knock all statistical analysis into a bucket. The analysis cannot tell you anything about the future with any degree of confidence, when you have black-swan events like 9/11 or the Madrid train bombings lurking around.
It's more important to look at means and motivations. Who has the will and the capability to do the most damage in a black-swan type event? Do terrorists, or either left- or right-wing persuasion, intend to do harm to the nation? Yes. Do they have the kind of support that would enable them to actually be able to carry out their desires? Let's look at that. Right-wing attackers first: They have little access to funding. Neither government-funded or public-funded groups in the U.S, or any foreign governments, are likely to fund them. Do they have public support? No. Practically everyone, anywhere in the world, regards their views as extreme or fringe. They have little support even from the groups that they claim to represent.
Now let's look at the left-wing and Muslim groups. They have access to considerable support, both from public- and government-funded groups in the U.S. (e.g., the Holy Land Foundation), and from foreign governments and agents (Russia/Soviet Union and Saudi Arabia mainly, although others such as China, Iran, and Libya have contributed at various times). Do they have public support? The leftist media in the U.S. at least refuses to condemn them, and often excuses their actions with at most a harrumph of "of course we don't approve of their methods, but...". And as we know, Muslim jihadists enjoy widespread public support for their views among the world's Muslims. There are millions around the world who do not regard the beliefs of leftist or Muslim attackers as extreme or fringe.
So who is more dangerous? The rather pathetic right-wing militia marching around in the woods? Or the Marxist/jihadist team, with considerable access to resources and fifth columns willing to give them cover?
Cousin Dave at January 4, 2016 7:27 AM
The Tuskegee Institute compiled a record of 3445 lynchings of blacks between 1882 and 1968, an average of 40 per year:
http://faculty.berea.edu/browners/chesnutt/classroom/lynching_table_year.html
I'm waiting for some progressive pundit to wonder what all the fuss was about and point out that black men had a higher risk of slipping and drowning in their bathtubs than getting lynched by the Klan.
Martin at January 4, 2016 9:35 AM
There are problems with trying to get statistics. Except for Oklahoma City bombing way back when, most of the mass shootings by non-jihadists have been simply nut cases. Take the Denver movie theatre case--no ideology at all. On the other hand, the Fort Hood shooting took years before it would be admitted that it was terrorism.
Craig Loehle at January 4, 2016 9:48 AM
I also wonder who the NYT was counting as "right-wing" terrorists? Since the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, abortion clinic attacks are the only thing that fits that description that I can remember, but Wikipedia only counts 11 deaths since 1990. Did they count such things as the Gabriele Gifford mass shooting, by a nut I won't name, whose insane ravings were sort of left-wing? Are they counting alleged hate crimes when they're whites killing blacks, but ignoring all the black-on-white murders?
markm at January 6, 2016 6:39 AM
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