Sex Trafficking Report Likely Bunk

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

You may have recalled some numbers that may have disturbed you last fall:

"An independent tracking study released today by the Women's Funding Network shows that over the past six months, the number of underage girls trafficked online has risen exponentially in three diverse states," Richardson claimed. "Michigan: a 39.2 percent increase; New York: a 20.7 percent increase; and Minnesota: a staggering 64.7 percent increase."

In the wake of this bombshell revelation, Richardson's disturbing figures found their way into some of the biggest newspapers in the country. USA Today, the Houston Chronicle, the Miami Herald, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and the Detroit Free Press all repeated the dire statistics as gospel.

The Village Voice, surprisingly, did some investigating and found out that the numbers are almost definitely false:

The consultants came up with a novel, if not very scientific, method for tabulating juvenile prostitutes: They counted pictures of young-looking women on online classified sites.

"That's one of the first problems right there," Grodsky says. "These advertisers are in the business of making sales, and there's a market for young-looking women. Why would you trust that the photographs are accurate?"

...

Before conducting its full study, the Schapiro Group tested the accuracy of its method in a sample of 100 observers. At one point, the 100 observers are described as a "random sample." Elsewhere, they are described as "balanced by race and gender."

These 100 adults were shown pictures of teenagers and young adults whose ages were known, and were asked to guess whether they were younger than 18.

"The study showed that any given 'young' looking girl who is selling sex has a 38 percent likelihood of being under age 18," reads a crucial passage in the explanation of methodology. "Put another way, for every 100 'young' looking girls selling sex, 38 are under 18 years of age. We would compute this by assigning a value of .38 to each of the 100 'young' girls we encounter, then summing the values together to achieve a reliable count."

...

That total count was then multiplied by .38 to come up with a guesstimate of how many children were being trafficked.

This is a claim that got Craigslist to pull their adult services ads (which didn't work anyway), and this argument in particular is one of the chief reasons for many to oppose legal prostitution.

I'm personally not surprised to see that - the numbers seemed too unreal to start with, and it wouldn't be the first time that prohibitionists massaged data for their own purposes, but I'm wondering how that impacts other people's beliefs on the issue here, or on the issue of this sort of data corruption in general.

Comments

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

I generally don't read any study done by any group that is affiliated with anything other than a university, research group, or government office. I even stopped taking commercial research seriously when I learned just how business does its medicinal research. I'm highly highly conservative when it comes to science in general.

With that said, I never heard of this report in the first place, probably because I reflexively ignore anything in newspapers that mention "science", "new", "study" or "revolutionary" or "disturbing" or anything like that.

[blue-mangos.livejournal.com]

This is a good policy. I should try to adopt it.

[blue-mangos.livejournal.com]

I am both skeptical and cynical about your intent behind this comment. *side-eyes you*

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Spot on!

[tridus.livejournal.com]

That's a rather damning account of how basically nobody involved in this whole thing has any idea of how what the numbers mean when using them. They had an agenda, saw numbers that worked for them, and ran without bothering to do minor details like checking the details.

Using a similar methadology I can only conclude that Viagra sales are up 2700000% over the last 3 years (based entirely on my spam folder).

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

To me a big problem with tracking modern-day slavery is that because it's illegal people really *don't* have hard and fast date and the existence of the institution is a more secretive thing. So that this is the case is not a surprise.

[spaz-own-joo.livejournal.com]

That is the worst kind of lazy science and it's discouraging, but maybe not surprising, to know that the papers picked it up unquestioned. Thanks for the expose.

As for my beliefs on the topic, I have long been for legalisation and safety regulation of the sex trade. The more disinformation like that there is floating around, I fear, the longer it'll take to achieve these goals - which is weird, because if there were a real explosion in child trafficking going on, that could only be a reason to bring sex work into an area of commerce that regulators can actually reach.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Every prohibition creates a black-market.

[il-mio-gufo.livejournal.com]

exactly. and, how to quantify a black-market?

[mylaptopisevil.livejournal.com]

Most news orgs gladly pick up junk articles without vetting them.

See everything O'Keefe related, ClimateGate, etc.

[mylaptopisevil.livejournal.com]

The important thing is that you're trying to stir up something yourself!

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

I'm kind of surprised it's not getting more play period.

[mylaptopisevil.livejournal.com]

Unless I was completely out of the loop (which is possible), I don't remember the first study getting that much play, anyway.

I also thought the craigslist thing was more because they just didn't want craigslist endorsing and promoting prostitution, not that they were using this study as the lynchpin as to why craigslist had to shut down that section.

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

You must be hinting something about your intentions while writing the post, then. ;)

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

In the past year, I've heard several stories about sex trafficking, but mostly from international perspectives and pretty well documented with actual victims.

This one? Never heard it. Did other news outlets pick it up from USA today? I never saw it in the Times or The Economist but I never have time to read cover to cover and I'm giving the kids a bath during the nightly news most days...

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

The study was not really reported on, just the numbers were reported and I remember hearing them widely touted when the brouhahah went down over craigslist's erotic services section. The numbers were just reported as fact with no information behind where they came from.

illogical logic

[oportet.livejournal.com]

If you aren't into prostitutes and/or underage girls, then this study isn't going to change your mind.

If you're in the market for an underage girl, this study will give you hope.

So whatever they were hoping to achieve by fixing the numbers, it seems it would work against them either way.

(if that doesn't make sense to you, there's a good chance when I read it tomorrow it won't make sense to me either)

[farchivist.livejournal.com]

Didn't hear of it. I go by meus_ovatio's standards anyway.