But see, people are only willing to listen to statisticians when the statistics support their conclusions.

Greg Piper at the College Fix has the story:

Sexual-assault study authors disavow how their work is portrayed by activists

One of the more noteworthy parts of Emily Yoffe’s thorough analysis in Slate of the campus response to sexual-assault allegations is her interviews with the authors of studies frequently cited by administrators, elected officials and victim advocates.

Susan Kruth of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, whose role in fighting for the due process rights of accused students is mentioned in the Slate article, highlights the relevant passages:

There are approximately 12 million female college students in the U.S. (There are about 9 million males.) I asked the lead author of the study, Christopher Krebs, whether the [College Sexual Assault Study] represents the experience of those millions of female students. His answer was unequivocal: “We don’t think one in five is a nationally representative statistic.” It couldn’t be, he said, because his team sampled only two schools. “In no way does that make our results nationally representative,” Krebs said. And yet President Obama used this number to make the case for his sweeping changes in national policy.