I don't know if the knockout game is really on the rise or whether the issue is even important, but I would caution against the general pattern of seeing a blog post which seems to confirm your assumptions and then crowing triumphantly without really engaging the issue.
The blog post you're relying on to describe this as a bogus trend is extremely weak. It offers no new research or evidence and uses faulty logic in at least some parts. I won't write a full takedown but this part seems like a pretty glaring logical error. The blogger points out that an anonymous "Dutchtown woman" says her white son participated in a knockout game and that it isn't a "black thing." The blogger then asks:
How could Torres read this article and yet still come to the conclusion that the assaults are on the rise and that “most” of them involve black assailants and white or asian victims?
Probably because Torres didn't just rely on the opinion of "one Dutchtown woman," looked at the other available articles where racial descriptions were available, and made conclusions based on that.
I was watching a "Caught on Camera" show this weekend about the worst courtroom incidents -- shootouts, stabbings, etc. Really horrible stuff. And I thought, "Wow, the world is pretty bad and crazy and humans can be really awful."
Then, on my way to work, I was driving through the suburbs, listening to some goofy morning show and thinking, "Hm. The world is pretty good and mundane and human beings are mostly really cool. That show made me believe something worse than reality."
The truth, of course, exists, where the world is exactly x% good and human beings behave at exactly x% coolness, regardless of how I feel about it after being exposed to some crazy badness on TV, or some normalcy during my commute.
In your examples, you seem to have something simlar: Sensational account of violence vs. a blog saying that the media picks stories they think are sensational.
I think it is probably a good heuristic to think to yourself "Calm down. They get paid to show interesting and scary stuff even if, and maybe expressly because, it is super rare" while watching the news. But I don't see any data here to conclude anything about the "knockout game".
When I was 7th grade (around 1992) a random group of teens came up to me and punched me in the face. I'm not sure this game is all that new.
Sorry for you, but that's sort of a relief for me, since just a few months ago I got punched in the face in exactly the same way, and I was starting to think it must be part of this "trend" the media are reporting in the past couple weeks (of which I'd never heard before). So perhaps this was just a temporal coincidence. Or perhaps there are periods when it increases in popularity and others when it declines. The media stories I've heard didn't suggest a racial angle, by the way.
Sure, this bias exists in journalism (including blogging). A report that confirms existing social biases will sell well and be widely reprinted or linked. It gets people talking about the topic. People double-count evidence when they see multiple discussions of the same topic without realizing that those discussions are not at all independent. Further reports will re-analyze borderline cases as belonging to the "troubling new trend". And to most audiences, fear sells better than debunking.
The bit about one writer digging for examples of "black mob violence" seems to be something different, though. It's portrayed more as a deliberate one-sided evidence search than as double-counting. Perhaps worse, there's the self-defending theory angle: "I know this trend exists, so when someone disagrees with me that a particular incident is evidence for this trend, that demonstrates that they are trying to cover up the trend."
What really bugs me, though, is that debunkings can play into the availability heuristic. I'd never heard of the "knockout game" story before reading this post. And people are better at remembering stories than at remembering which stories are fact and which are fiction.
and it's especially significant that the article is from two years ago; this is not the first time the media has tried to get people scared about this "trend."
Conversely, it could mean that the media did indeed notice a trend two years ago and now the trend is picking up.
No they didn't. 23andme is still up and running and the FDA complaint that you linked to simply prevents them from advertising certain benefits of genome testing. It's worth pointing out that, also according to the letter you linked, 23and me still had not provided proof of those claims 5 years after filing for permission to make them.
23andMe don't seem to've noticed. Clicking through to their website, the first thing I see is a picture of their DNA Spit Kit, with a $99 price tag next to an "order now" button.
It's worse than not good; if you read the news about this, it looks like the whole thing got kicked off by UnitedHealth complaining about 23andMe's affordability to the FDA. Who, being the dutiful little stooges they are, immediately went and started making unreasonable demands to 23andMe leading up to today's nonsense.
My guess on the reasoning; since insurers aren't legally permitted to use DNA tests to determine rates or eligibility, letting consumers figure out their own disease risk cheaply would give us an advantage in selecting plans and thus drive down their bottom line. That's just speculation, but it seems to fit pretty well.
it looks like the whole thing got kicked off by UnitedHealth complaining about 23andMe's affordability to the FDA
Might be, but it also crossed my mind that under Obamacare the government has incentives to NOT let people make informed guesses about their future health.
"The government" isn't an agent and doesn't respond to incentives. It is a whole bunch of different people with different careers and roles. I wouldn't expect an FDA researcher, a naval officer, a State Department staffer, and a senator to have the same incentives regarding policy, for instance.
Which people do you think have an incentive like that?
Which people do you think have an incentive like that?
The Administration, aka the White House.
When I started seeing stories about the "knockout game" (supposedly, teenagers playing a game where they try to knockout random strangers) a few days ago, I immediately resolved to avoid paying attention to them, because it sounded like a classic case of people taking a few isolated incidents and blowing them up into a big scary trend.
And then this morning, I see this blog post, which links back to an article from two years ago titled: "Knockout King: Kids call it a game. Academics call it a bogus trend. Cops call it murder." Turns out my knowledge of human biases has served me well... and it's especially significant that the article is from two years ago; this is not the first time the media has tried to get people scared about this "trend." From the article (emphasis added):
Mike Males, a research fellow at the nonprofit Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice and who runs the website YouthFacts.org, says the media have made habit of cherry-picking isolated instances of "knockout games" in order to gin up sensational stories that demonize youth. "This knockout-game legend is a fake trend," Males contends.
Given that 4.3 million violent attacks were reported by U.S. citizens in 2009, according to the National Crime Victimization Survey, Males says reporters should know better than to highlight a handful of random attacks by kids and call it journalism. It's the same thing as plucking a few instances of attackers with Jewish surnames who beat up non-Jews and declaring it a "troubling new trend," he argues.
Still, over the years a handful of reports of "knockout" have emerged from cities in Missouri, Illinois, Massachusetts and New Jersey. And most criminologists and youth experts agree that unprovoked attacks by teenagers on strangers are a real, if extremely rare, phenomenon.