I tend to very suspicious of this sort thing, after the McMartin fiasco
and so on. Not that there is not a great deal of child abuse, and not
that it is not horrible and worthy of being fought. But exaggerating
the extent of it seems to be a basis for a lot of destruction of Civil
liberties.
Todays NY Times gives a description of the methodology:
>The study, to be released on Monday by researchers at the University of
>Pennsylvania, relied on interviews with victims, child welfare workers and law
>enforcement officials in 28 cities in United States, Mexico and Canada from January
>1999 through last March.
So we are not talking statistical sampling here. And law enforcement
agencies have a strong incentive to overstate incidence of any type of
crime. On this particular issue my trust in child welfare workers would
not be unlimited either -- since they played a big part in the whole "if
you are charged you must be guilty" thing that put a lot of innocent
people in jail.
Mass interviews are a good way to detect a problem that was previously
not believed to exist. They are sometimes useful in getting a better
understanding of the nature of a problem. They are a lousy way to
determine frequency or quantity of a problem.
Jim Devine wrote:
>
> from SLATE, 9/10/01:
> >USA [TODAY] ... leads ... with a story nobody else fronts: A University of
> >Pennsylvania study out today estimating that about 325,000 U.S. children
> >17 or under are being sexually exploited--mostly as prostitutes or
> >pornographic subjects--far many more than the experts anticipated.
>
> Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
