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A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves

quillette.com

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Re: A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves

#171

Post by pyuser583 »

stefan_ wrote: post #133
pyuser583 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry I had the age wrong. There should be a presumption of innocence in the sense that the public should assume the accused is innocent until evidence is publicly shared that suggests their guilt. So far the only evidence shared with the public is a confession. Confessions are notoriously unreliability. There will be more evidence. DNA tests are being done as we speak.

When the suspect is acquitted, does that mean the girl is no longer pregnant? This is an even more absurd point.

If the suspect is acquitted in both the legal system and court of public opinion, than there had been an additional injustice: an innocent man had his name drawn through the mud.

Right now the only evidence being presented is his confession: confessions suck as evidence. And it seems he is not a native English speaker. Non native English speakers are especially prone to false confessions (in America), because they don’t understand everything being said and signed.

“Sign this paper please, it’s a receipt for your goods. Now sign this paper, it’s consent to medical treatment by prison staff. Now sign this paper, it summarizes everything you told us so you won’t have to be questioned again.”

There are DNA tests being done as we speak. If raped her, the only way he’s getting away is if someone else raped her too and that other person impregnated her too (DNA is from fetus).

Re: A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves

#172

Post by pyuser583 »

jollybean wrote: post #136
cm2187 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, the article is silent on the cause of death. Are you saying these deaths were just the result of some disease? Everything in the media treatment of these deaths implies mistreatment of the kids. If it was just a virus, particularly in the early days of medicine, this would be a scandal created out of thin air.

That's exactly the 'lie' being presented. In the late 19th century up to about 1910, there were much higher rates of Aboriginal kids dying than normal, and it was mostly due to tuberculosis. It would 'set loose' at a residential school and mortality rates were high. There were investigations and it was a 'big social issue' even 100 years ago. Since about WW2, the rates of death at res schools have been fairly consist…

At best, you prove that the real issue here isn’t ethnic identity but social class. You might be right.

What was the fatality rate at Eton during this time?

Re: A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves

#173

Post by AlotOfReading »

defen wrote: post #144
munk-a wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The deaths at residential schools were higher than similar institutions - I don't understand what's hard to comprehend here when we're comparing a basket of 8 apples to a basket of 10 apples - 10 apples is more apples.

I'm not an epidemiologist, so file this under "baseless speculation by an armchair non-expert", but influenza is an Old World disease - is it possible that First Nations people are more vulnerable to it? Ten seconds of Googling provided this link https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22032099/

There's a lot of literature trying to disentangle genetic and cultural background in epidemiology, especially with regard to indigenous peoples in the Americas. However, the general idea that the immune systems of indigenous Americans are somehow uniquely susceptible to disease was a popular idea in the 80s that is now regarded as unsupported by evidence. Most of the prominent advocates (like black) have walked back on it.

Re: A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves

#174

Post by dmarchand90 »

hprotagonist wrote: post #3

Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one's first feeling, 'Thank God, even they aren't quite so bad as that,' or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as po…

It's extremely unlikely these graves are fake. Why? Because the large number of deaths is not something newly-discovered. It has been known for a hundred years that large number of children were dying from disease (mainly turburculosis) due to overcrowding. For example Dr. Bryce wrote of the appaling conditions he saw in the 1920s https://archive.org/details/storyofnationalc00brycuoft

One clarification I suppose is that it is unlikely the graves were always unmarked. Most likely they, like many poor people, were buried with wooden crosses which later disintegrated.

Re: A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves

#175

Post by ZeroGravitas »

int_19h wrote: post #154
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you skeptical of graves existing? We know for a fact that graves existed. We just don't know where some of them are, because they were abandoned. So, what is being added to the story by saying "this particular discovery of a potential grave location hasn't yet dug up a dead child"? There's other grave sites where actual bodies were discovered after floods or roadworks, where they've identified what they think…

> Why are you skeptical of graves existing? Because the evidence so far can have many explanations, graves being only one among them. The place apparently has a history of agricultural use, too, with several rounds of irrigation works. It doesn't disprove that those are graves, of course. It's quite plausible that at least some of them are. But I don't feel like, on the balance of probability, it makes sense to make…

You're repeating the totally fallacious argument in the article that this was a "crime" in some Agatha Christie sense and therefore they have to dig up the children's bodies or they're liars and there are neither bodies nor crimes.

The original claim made by the people who did the survey was that they think they've found graves of children who went to the school.

You're talking about people overreacting and making things up in foreign newspapers, then making an argument based on stuff that you've just claimed isn't true.

And it appears intended to distract from the fact that we know for a fact there are graves and we know for a fact there were crimes. But by laser focussing and saying, this particular potential grave has not been proved to be a grave to my satisfaction, you get to cast doubt on all the known graves and known crimes.

Re: A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves

#176

Post by ZeroGravitas »

AinderS wrote: post #40
bloaf wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quillette is cynically using the exact same "social-panic" tactics they're criticizing to create exactly your conclusion. The Q article has exactly two complaints about the facts reported by the media: 1. The media claimed bodies were unearthed, when in fact only scans were taken. 2. The media claimed there were mass graves, when in fact scans only detected masses of individual graves. However, in "social-panic" styl…

> scans only detected masses of individual graves. Possible graves. How many were unambiguously confirmed? And how many would we expect from normal high-at-the-time child mortality?

So the graves need to be confirmed, because you are skeptical they exist?

But if/when they are confirmed, then its not a big deal because it's just some of the graves that you know exist?

Do you see the contradiction here?

Re: A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves

#177

Post by [deleted] »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #173
defen wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an epidemiologist, so file this under "baseless speculation by an armchair non-expert", but influenza is an Old World disease - is it possible that First Nations people are more vulnerable to it? Ten seconds of Googling provided this link https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22032099/

There's a lot of literature trying to disentangle genetic and cultural background in epidemiology, especially with regard to indigenous peoples in the Americas. However, the general idea that the immune systems of indigenous Americans are somehow uniquely susceptible to disease was a popular idea in the 80s that is now regarded as unsupported by evidence. Most of the prominent advocates (like black) have walked back…

[deleted]

Re: A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves

#178

Post by int_19h »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #175
int_19h wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why are you skeptical of graves existing? Because the evidence so far can have many explanations, graves being only one among them. The place apparently has a history of agricultural use, too, with several rounds of irrigation works. It doesn't disprove that those are graves, of course. It's quite plausible that at least some of them are. But I don't feel like, on the balance of probability, it makes sense to make…

You're repeating the totally fallacious argument in the article that this was a "crime" in some Agatha Christie sense and therefore they have to dig up the children's bodies or they're liars and there are neither bodies nor crimes. The original claim made by the people who did the survey was that they think they've found graves of children who went to the school. You're talking about people overreacting and making th…

> you're repeating the totally fallacious argument

I'm not repeating the argument that the bodies must be dug out because there was a crime (although I also don't see how it is invalid, because this discovery is combined with oral sources which do claim some very serious crimes).

What I'm saying is that if this is all true, then there are people responsible for it, who would be rightly held to account - if not legally, then in court of public opinion. So when newspapers publish articles that strongly imply that it's all definitive when it actually isn't, someone's reputation is ruined.

> you get to cast doubt on all the known graves and known crimes.

Here's the thing, though. Every denialist article I've looked at trying to figure out what exactly they claim - and there were like 5 - clearly spelled out that, yes, there was plenty of abuse in those schools in general, and that said abuse did result in dead children. On the other hand, almost every article criticizing them makes the same claim you do - that them casting doubt on the claims made in this particular case casts doubt on the whole thing, somehow. All disclaimers are ignored.

This looks like a classic strawman to me, not a good-faith attempt at fair discourse.

Re: A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves

#179

Post by ZeroGravitas »

YourFriend87 wrote: post #167
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can menstruate with one ovary, and get pregnant with none, so at the very least the other two are sloppily worded. That's if you count them as three separate claims, to my count they're all combined into one statement, which means the whole thing is logically false if any part is false, which is the case here.

Quoted post unavailable.

By your simplistic definitions, yes there are.

But real life is very complicated and so people who actually care about this because it directly affects them aren't so quick to draw absolute lines:

https://interactadvocates.org/faq/

> Nature doesn’t decide where the category of “male” ends and the category of “intersex” begins, or where the category of “intersex” ends and the category of “female” begins. Humans decide.

Re: A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves

#180

Post by ZeroGravitas »

int_19h wrote: post #178
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're repeating the totally fallacious argument in the article that this was a "crime" in some Agatha Christie sense and therefore they have to dig up the children's bodies or they're liars and there are neither bodies nor crimes. The original claim made by the people who did the survey was that they think they've found graves of children who went to the school. You're talking about people overreacting and making th…

> you're repeating the totally fallacious argument I'm not repeating the argument that the bodies must be dug out because there was a crime (although I also don't see how it is invalid, because this discovery is combined with oral sources which do claim some very serious crimes). What I'm saying is that if this is all true, then there are people responsible for it, who would be rightly held to account - if not legall…

Yeah, and climate denialists don't actually deny that climate change isn't happening, they just think it wasn't human caused, and if it was it's not a bad thing, and if it is it's not fixable anyway, and if it is then it's not worth it and wind turbines cause noise cancer and on and on and on...

Except of course they did deny it was happening and very slowly retreated further and further as more and more proof mounted, only giving up when their lies are totally destroyed in the court of public opinion while still being shrilly outraged at every new "lie" or "exagerration" from the people who were right all along. Things that in future they'll deny believing when its convenient and then bring up again later.

So the climate or Holocaust victims are never allowed to make a single mistake, or its a media fueled panic, while the deniers get to construct their own reality as they please, again and again, and it's rude to point that out to them, because they're just being skeptical about children's graves for purely scientific reasons.

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