Men’s Rights elder Warren Farrell is fond of mentioning his academic past — he has taught at a number of colleges — and is not exactly shy about mentioning his Ph.D. (Check the covers of his books if you don’t believe me.) But the books he’s written are for the most part polemical “pop psychology” and “pop sociology” rather than academic works, and most don’t meet academic standards by a long shot.
How far they fall short of academic standards I didn’t fully realize until I started investigating a suspicious footnote in The Myth of Male Power.
While reading through the book I found myself having a little trouble believing one of Farrell’s factual claims. To be specific, the claim made on p. 283 that there is a “20:1 ratio at which schoolboys hit schoolgirls.”
That’s right. He’s claiming that schoolgirls hit schoolboys twenty times as often as schoolboys hit schoolgirls.
Farrell doesn’t identify the source of this astounding claim in the text, but he does footnote it. So I turned to the back of the book (p. 414) to find this listed as the source of Farrell’s “data”:
Based on a three-year observation (1989-92) of high school students by Elizabeth Brookins, chair of the Department of Mathematics, El Camino High School, Oceanside, California.
I was as bewildered by this as you no doubt are. He’s not citing a published and/or peer-reviewed study by a social scientist here. He’s citing a “three-year observation” of a high school math teacher? What on earth is a “three-year observation?”
From his footnote, any scholar trying to check his work would have no way to know whether this “data” came from personal observation or from a study, and if it came from a study, what the methodology of this study was, or even why a math teacher would be doing a social scientific study about interpersonal violence using her own students as research subjects.
On a hunch, I looked at the book’s acknowledgements and discovered that Elizabeth Brookins wasn’t simply some random high school math teacher: she was, and perhaps still is, a close friend of Farrell’s, credited as one of the three people who “helped me past the political cowardice that is PC.”
In other words, Farrell pulled these highly unlikely numbers — which suggested high school girls were many, many times more violent towards boys than vice versa, and which conveniently illustrated his point — from a high school math teacher who happened to be a close friend of his. How she got these numbers is not made clear, at least not in The Myth of Male Power.
Happily for all of us, Farrell provided a few more details about Brookins’ “research” in his 1999 book Women Can’t Hear What Men Don’t Say. (Conveniently, this portion of the book has been excerpted online here.) Here’s Farrell’s account of the whole thing:
I asked [Brookins] if she would keep track of the frequency with which the boys and girls hit each other the first time. She agreed, but not one to miss a potential math lesson, she asked one of her classes to “do a survey,” to keep track of all the times the boys and girls initiated a slap or punch of a member of the other sex on the playground or in their classes.
When Liz reported the results, she was a tad embarrassed, “Well, it was almost 20 to 1 when I first started keeping track – mostly girls hitting guys on the arm, occasionally slapping them. But I’m afraid I screwed up the survey. I got so furious at the girls for ‘beginning the cycle of violence,’ as you put it, that I began to do mini-lectures in class, and the girls and guys doing the survey started lecturing the people they were observing, and soon there weren’t nearly as many girls hitting guys…. I contaminated the results!”
This answers one question: The “observation” Farrell referred to wasn’t Brookins’ personal observation but a sort of class project.
But it was hardly a scientific survey, given that it was 1) conducted by an unknown number of high school students completely untrained in social science research, using an unknown protocol and 2) contaminated by the head researcher, also apparently untrained in social science research.
This would all be very amusing, except for two things. First, the fact that Farrell quoted the alleged results of this “research” in The Myth of Male Power without reservation, as if the numbers were from a serious social science survey, not from the class project of a friend of his.
And second, his account in Women Can’t Hear contradicts the information about the “research” given in The Myth of Male Power.
In the earlier book, you may recall, he claims that the ratio of girls hitting boys was 20:1, and that this data came from three years of observation.
In the later book, Brookins says the ratio was 20:1 only at the start, but that she quickly “contaminated” the results and the ratio dropped.
In other words, only if the “contaminated” results were dropped could the ratio could be 20:1. But this would mean that Farrell’s claim in The Myth of Male Power that the study continued for three years would be incorrect.
The study could have continued on for three years only if the “contaminated” data wasn’t dropped — but then the ratio would have been less than the 20:1 ratio that Farrell also claimed in The Myth of Male Power.
So either Farrell was lying about, or sloppily misreporting, the results of his friend’s “study” in The Myth of Male Power — or the account he’s given of the research in Women Can’t Hear is itself untrue.
I guess the real question here is whether or not Farrell’s handing of his friend’s “study” reflects incompetence on his part or deliberate deception. It’s hard to believe that someone who spent as much time in academia as Farrell did in the early years of his career would have so completely forgotten the basic rules of scholarship that he thought he could cite a class project by a high school teacher friend of his as if it were serious research. It’s also rather amazing that he could publish two completely contradictory descriptions of the “findings” of this research in books written only six years apart.
I’d love to hear Farrell’s explanation of all this, but somehow — based on his less-than-forthcoming response to critics in the past — I doubt we’ll ever get a straight answer from him.
It may seem silly to make such a big deal of a footnote. But to serious academics footnotes are sacred; if you can’t trust someone’s citations, you can’t trust anything they write. I followed this particular footnote on a hunch, because the claim Farrell made in the text seemed so utterly unbelievable — only to find that the story got ever more unbelievable with each new twist I discovered. I can only wonder if there are other similarly strange tales to be found elsewhere in Farrell’s footnotes.
“You agree to denounce terrorism, and turn around and continually cite AVFM.”
No, I’m just noting that Farrell is not universally regarded as some kind of godfather of the MRM. As I’ve said many times, I have real issues with AVFM.
Frankly, I can’t imagine any discussion in which Pecunium would be out of his depth.
Yeah, so I took a look at Angry Harry’s website and found this.
This is pretty poor reasoning, or at least a very strange equality straw-man. Draw a line between any two groups of voters that are different sizes. Ta-da! Equality is impossible between them!
There’s more on the same page, rambling about how feminists want women to have equal pay for less work, and all the other usual MRM nonsense… Whatever. This part I found kinda jaw-dropping, and it is his leading argument.
This pretty much sums up my thoughts on Farrell: he’s either suffering from a severe case of confirmation bias or he’s a liar, and anyone who takes his Thoughts On Gender seriously is, similarly, either willing to believe anything that confirms their views, or willing to pretend to in order to have “research” to back up their misogyny.
@PEMRA
That’s the best thing I’ve seen all day.
My issue with Pecunium is that many of his comments (at least to me, I don’t read the others) are mostly nonsense, a non-sequitur, or rely on obvious misreadings of previous posts. He seems to have trouble expressing what he means to say in written form, and it’s frustrating. Which is why I would like him to consider, before he gets into another discussion with me, whether he’s a bit out of his depth.
HAHAHA, OK. Whatever, PEMRA. Keep fucking that chicken.
Seriously, where is this thread? Now I’m desperately curious as to what PEMRA thinks is “mostly nonsense, a non-sequitur, or rely[ing] on obvious misreadings of previous posts.” If there’s anything you can say about Pecunium, it isn’t that he has trouble with the written word.
PEMRA:
@Pecunium: I’ve answered that question multiple times. You might want to consider going back and reading my previous posts more carefully.
You said you renounced it, but you continue to cite AVfM as a reasonable source.
Let me help you.
Pecunium, I want you to consider whether you’re a little out of your depth in this discussion.
But you come back with this:
No, I’m just noting that Farrell is not universally regarded as some kind of godfather of the MRM. As I’ve said many times, I have real issues with AVFM.
You “have issues”. Not strong enough to sever ties with a group that advocates the terrorism you say you renounce. Not enough to imply they are a good source for the shape, form, history and practice of the MRM.
So, you don’t renounce terrorism. You pretend to renounce it, in the hopes we will forget that you are a disingenuous… no, I shouldn’t mince words, you aren’t disingenuous, you are liar.
You don’t renounce it, you paper it over with the weasel words, “I have issues” (which anyone can see).
Own your shit.
PEMRA: My issue with Pecunium is that many of his comments (at least to me, I don’t read the others) are mostly nonsense, a non-sequitur, or rely on obvious misreadings of previous posts. He seems to have trouble expressing what he means to say in written form, and it’s frustrating. Which is why I would like him to consider, before he gets into another discussion with me, whether he’s a bit out of his depth.
I have, I’m not.
Your problem is that I show how you are a weaselly little sham.
But go ahead, break down how I “rely on obvious misreadings of previous posts”.
Also, so the places in which I, “have trouble expressing what I mean to say in written form”.
Please. Educate me. Demonstrate the reading comprehension you feel I lack.
Amused: Frankly, I can’t imagine any discussion in which Pecunium would be out of his depth.
I don’t know much about analytic and algebraic topology of locally Euclidean parameterization of infinitely differentiable Riemannian manifolds (Боже мои!) [for all the whimsy in that, math and I are not well acquainted].
Angry Harry is a tremendous hypocrite and this is coming from someone who used to read him. Having issues with AVFM, would you agree that being a self-proclaimed libertarian he often goes back on the beliefs he claims to have? Despite waving his flag of individuality he is really fond of gender roles and is a bit collectivist in my view.
@Pecunium- If you’ll read more carefully, you’ll notice that I didn’t “renounce” AVfM, I just said I had serious issues with the their methods. I’ll leave it to you to figure the difference there.
Even if I had renounced AVfM, this wouldn’t bar me from ever referencing them again. The fact is that love them or hate them, they’re a major voice in the MRA-osphere. And I was just noting- as a matter of fact- that AVfM seems to regard Angry Harry as the “father of the MRM”. Which was just to make the point that Farrell is not universally regarded as the “father of the MRM”… though of course I admit he is very influential.
I do have to say my tab-bar is sort of scary/confusing. Three of them look alike, and they all say, Warren Farr…
THEY INCITE TERRORISM.
This is not hyperbole. This is literally true.
You can’t claim to renounce or denounce terrorism and still cite them. You can’t claim there are moderates in the movement and cite people whose site has a call to terrorism on their activism page.
To do so is to put the lie to ‘I renounce terrorism,’ again and again and again and again.
If you’ll read more carefully, you’ll notice that I didn’t “renounce” AVfM, I just said I had serious issues with the their methods. I’ll leave it to you to figure the difference there. -PEMRA
Soo… who has the reading comprehension issues again?
blockquotes, nooo! Why have you forsaken me?!?
So you don’t renounce terrorism. Got it.
Even if I had renounced AVfM, this wouldn’t bar me from ever referencing them again.
But, if a group is advocating terrorism, in pursuit of their final aims, then the precis on which they base their overall agenda is suspect.
Futher, when you advocate people turn to them for advice; without qualifying them as a group which advocates for terrorism, you are doing those who are unaware the combined disservice of sending them to a group which advocates terrorism, and letting them think you are, at the least, unconcerned with their advocacy (unless you detail all of your “issues” with AVfM when you recommend them; which I find hard to credit, since you won’t tell us what those issues are; and it is to be presumed you think taking issue with them should serve you in some creditable way with us, or you wouldn’t bother to mention it).
. Which was just to make the point that Farrell is not universally regarded as the “father of the MRM”… though of course I admit he is very influential.
Who here has said he is the “universally regarded father of the MRM?”
Who is misrepresenting peoples words now?
I also wonder about the circumstances in which girls “initiated violence” against boys. I hit two boys when I was in high school; neither had hit me. However, both punches were in response to the boys groping me first. From reading that explanation of the “observations” of this teacher, it seems that my experiences might count as me initiating the violence (especially if I was self-reporting as a teenager full of shame and guilt who had not yet discovered feminism), as groping is not seen as violent by many people. But it’s not like I just struck them out of the blue. Both boys committed a physical assault that I just probably wouldn’t have realized was an assault at the time.
Seriously, there are so many problems with that “research” that I have to believe an even remotely educated person would realize that, which makes Farrell an outright liar in addition to all his other character flaws.
[Content Note: abuse apologia, rape apologia]
Oh, wow.
I have learned that AVfM is cool with Warren Farrell, GirlWritesWhat, Erin Prizzey, and now Angry Harry.
Warren Farrell: He is known for erasing the experiences of victims of child sexual abuse, trivializing and condoning date rape, and being intellectually dishonest misogynistic asshole.
Erin Prizzey: She is an extremely intellectually dishonest, misogynistic MRA who engages in some of the most egregious abuse apologia ever, such as claiming that most abused women are addicted to abuse and that abused people are obligated to forgive their abusers if they want to heal.
GirlWritesWhat: She is known for being completely okay with Matt Forney’s article about domestic abuse against women being “necessary.”
Angry Harry: Like Prizzey, he is known for accusing abused women of enjoying and being addicted to their abuse. He is also known for his severe lack of reasoning skills as evidenced by his articles and being apologetic about a man firebombing his ex-wife’s house because the attack was an “expected” reaction to the injustice committed against men and boys.
Human rights movement Yay!
The fact that this is what Farrell regards as a reliable methodology is just…wow. =S
Warren Farrell is a classic pseudo scientist. I can’t say I’m surprised.
@kirbywarp: Sorry about the blockquotes, probably my fault. I mentioned how to make them, out loud even. The monster is out for blood now.
Howard: I might be to blame. I teased it with some really complicated tricks, and forced it to obey (the scribing the wards and sigils was arduous, but it worked, and I contained it). The least weakness in one’s practice, at this point, is probably going to be exploited to the fullest.
As I’ve said many times, I have real issues with AVFM.
“Yeah, but at least they aren’t like SRS. That’s a HATE GROUP, man.”
Aah! Blackqoute monster! Why have you forsaken me!?