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Maine Senate Candidate Graham Platner Outed as an Actual Rapist.
Platner officially denies the allegations, but you can tell from his statement that deep down he knows it's true. He can't admit to it because he would go to actual jail, but everyone knows his campaign is over.
The haters said he would crash and burn, and they were correct. Honestly great call by the haters.
The Maine Democratic Party has one week until the ballot deadline to pick a candidate while stepping on as few toes as possible. Let the games begin.
Just because Ms. Racicot said that Platner had non-consensual sex with him doesn’t mean that he did, of course. Right now, it’s a “he said—she said” situation, and there’s no way a prosecutor could charge Platner with no more evidence than her testimony, [1] but since there is a leftist “believe all women” streak in the Democratic party, since she has made the claim, Platner’s career is ruined. If he were a Republican, there’s a good chance he would still be standing (Kavanaugh, Trump, etc.) since conservatives are more inclined to believe in due process and presumption of innocence w.r.t. rape accusations.
About that “believe all women” streak, it’s an open question what percent of rape accusations are false rape accusations. I will list two sources with different conclusions:
Both sources show their homework, so people can look at them and see which source is more reasonable in its methodology.
[1] If she made a complaint right away after the 2021 alleged rape, they could had used a rape kit to prove beyond a reasonable doubt they had sex. It would then be a discussion about whether the sex was consensual, but police could had looked for signs of force being applied in the crime scene when it was still fresh. Five years after the fact, proving it happened is nay to impossible.
I have no dog in this particular fight, as I neither live in Maine nor have any plans to do so in the next six years. I am also going to leave aside the object-level concerns, as I don't think estimating general population false accusation rates clarifies much due to the numerous selection effects and atypical—at least in scale—incentives involved here. However, I do strongly object to the blithe implication of equivalent credibility you make:
Source 1 shows their homework for an infographic they made (and which doesn't render for me on the archived page—possibly a skill issue), not for any of the surveys or studies providing the numbers which are used in said homework. They arrive at a 0.2% rate by multiplying a 10% reporting rate by a 2% false accusation rate. Yes, it really is just "0.1*0.02 = 0.002 = 0.2%". Where did they get those two factors?
This is certainly one of the methodologies of all time.
Source 2 shows their homework by skewering the very survey which Source 1 used for its 2% false accusation rate, in much the same way that Scott Alexander did in 2013. Both (correctly, as we claim to grant the presumption of innocence in the relevant jurisdictions) bother accounting for inconclusive claims in the numerator and denominator, but I recommend Scott's analysis since it also grapples with selection effects regarding the non-reporting factor.
Regardless of how believable you find the analyses (Source 2 or Scott's; I wouldn't dignify Source 1 with such a characterization), they are at least operating on the level of evidence relevant to assessing accusations, whereas Source 1 is not.
If I am being overwhelmingly charitable, I would say that taking claims made by activist organizations (of any stripe) at face value is unwise, and that if you want to use them in your reasoning, the fine people at Morton have a variety of products suited to this purpose.
If I am being less- but still far from un-charitable, I would say that I suspect you read neither of those sources (particularly Source 1) and just wanted to slap up a couple numbers to make a "but who could say, really" sort of point. One of the reasons I might suspect this is that multiple others still bother to read things as well. I can't imagine that throwing out links without reading them would improve one's credibility, and while I'm just some rando who broke a decade-long streak of lurking during a coffee break, more established members like @phosphorus2 and @FCfromSSC expressing parallel sentiments should motivate exercising more care and deliberation when posting—it certainly would in me.
Most of your post made some excellent points but I feel the final paragraph was not necessary, kind, nor true.
Yes, the infographic was removed from that page over the years. Here’s a picture of the infographic. As an aside, when Amanda Marcotte (a radical left-wing feminist, if you ask me) says the infographic is wrong, there probably are methodological issues with it.
Yes, I linked to that study, but since I linked to a contradicting study, I think it’s more fair and reasonable to conclude I don’t have an opinion either way than me making an “implication of equivalent credibility”. My general view is that I am not qualified to have a strong opinion on the issue, [1] although like you I think concluding only 0.2% of rape accusations are false is probably an emotional appeal which doesn’t survive cold logic (and even Amanda Marcotte feels that way, for the record). But I credit the Enliven project for at least showing their homework; most social media graphs like this are completely made up.
The only opinion I have is that there are enough false rape accusations out there that people accused of rape deserve due process and presumption of innocence, not this “believe all women” nonsense.
Something about that study, however, elicited a very intense emotional reaction from you, as evidenced by the bad faith accusations such as “throwing out links without reading them”.
When I read the entire PBS article, as I did when it first came out, my impression was that it discredited Reade’s accusation because, logistically, it just wasn’t possible for Biden to assault her that way in the place she claimed to have been assaulted.
The sense I get from other posters is a negative emotional reaction to PBS, since PBS is a “blue tribe” source of information, and some people here have a negative emotional reaction to any and all “blue tribe” sources. In the particular case of the Reade accusations, PBS had to present a strong case that Reade was full of it, but they had to, since their audience when they wrote that article had a large number of “believe all women” readers, do so in a way without directly contradicting the “believe all women” mantra, which is why the article presents a lot of evidence without making stronger conclusions.
Indeed, one thing I notice is that when I support the red tribe here, I get upvoted, but when I support the blue tribe, I get downvoted. I don’t think it’s helpful to be an echo chamber for either side, but since most places default to left-of-center opinions (where I often get downvoted and/or buried when I question blue tribe talking points), I also come here to try and get a balanced world view, ideally without excessive emotion.
[1] I do have strong opinions on other issues, such as the claim that 80% of the women sleep with 20% of the men, but that’s an issue I have researched deeply enough to have a strong opinion about.
My final paragraph was being kind. It was a description of my own (conditional) internal state, so I can verify it was true. Its necessity is left to the judgment of the reader—though I note that none of what anyone posts here is strictly necessary in the barest sense (and yet...). I do appreciate you linking the infographic, but I cannot help but point out that if it was taken down from its original source and you had to instead link the graphic as part of an article written by a radical feminist saying that it tripped her BS detector in the direction opposite her biases and is probably crap, then it's probably not worth including it at all.
Casually linking to two studies and inviting people (in this case, me) to look at them and see which source is more reasonable in its methodology doesn't engender any particular conclusion other than that you didn't seem to have read them particularly carefully. That I had to click through to find that one of the (as-described) studies isn't a study, but instead yet another innumerate, made-up social media graph which added negative value to the discussion was, in a nutshell, the point of my post. I know the graph was made up, because Enliven did show their homework. I award them no points, and may God have mercy on their souls.
Touching briefly on the object level: I think we are in agreement on due process and presumption of innocence.
I'm not sure what the back half of your response (PBS? Upvotes? Your GitHub?) has to do with anything I said, but after reading through, I think you might be misinterpreting others' disagreement and skepticism as emotional reactions. While I can't speak to others' feelings or lack thereof, you did impute an intense emotional response to me, and I invite you to not do that again.
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