CDC Misinformation on Girls and Violence: Why it Matters
Before I posted my critique of the recent misinformation by CDC about girls being engulfed by a growing wave of violence, I revised it several times in order to remove any trace of indignation over the conduct of CDC officials. I also restricted my focus to statistical matters.
I will now briefly share some of my concerns about the implications of the CDC misinformation issue.
Personal Agendas Distort CDC Science
The misuse and misrepresentation of statistics, along with the omission of crucial data and information, was not arbitrary -- it all served to convince the press and therefore the public that girls are being engulfed by a growing wave of violence that reached record-high levels. CDC officials must have known perfectly well that this will generate sensational headlines in the news media.
At best, CDC officials were severely blinded by their own agenda.
To ignore this is a road to hell, no matter how good were the intentions of these officials. The important issue here is not a reprimand but correction and prevention of such misinformation in the future. Those of us who care about the scientific integrity of CDC need to speak up.
CDC Ignores The Censorship Problem
When national surveys such as YRBS are affected by state or school district censorship of questionnaires, the validity of the sample can be severely compromised, especially so when up to a quarter of the sample students are prevented from answering certain questions.
When the 2021 YRBS produced surprising results precisely on the most heavily censored questions (sexual violence), CDC officials could have properly reacted by pointing out that censorship severely impedes interpretation of such alarming results.
Instead, CDC officials decided to completely omit any mention of the problematic censorship and presented the surprising results as unquestionable reflection of reality.
Those of us concerned about the integrity of indispensable national surveys like the YRBS need to speak up and demand that the CDC admits censorship is a serious issue and that it reveals all the relevant information about this problem (such as what portion of missing answers on each YRBS question is due to censorship).
CDC Distorts Reality
While conflating the rise of suicide and depression among girls with a supposed rise of violence against girls, CDC officials implied and outright endorsed the view that rising violence is a plausible explanation for much of the rise in suicide and mental health problems.
This is a severe distortion of reality. The alleged, possibly imaginary rise in sexual violence would have occurred too late to have played a major role in the rise of suicide and depression. Suicide rates for girls age 15-19, for example, peaked already in 2017 -- the problem is not that they continued to rise, the problem is that they failed to decline substantially.
These CDC distortions could easily result in research funds being diverted toward a wild goose chase while more plausible and urgent research into the possible causes of the mental health crisis will be neglected.
Those of us concerned with understanding the causes of the troubling rise in adolescent suicide and depression should speak up and point out the implausibility of violence being a major explanatory factor of this rise.
CDC Doubly Distorts Reality
By conflating sexual violence with all violence, the CDC distorted reality even further and ensured that news media would link suicide to physical violence between girls, especially given that the media was already preoccupied with the tragic case of Adriana Kuch, who killed herself after she was beaten in her high school, the events leading to the arrest of four juvenile girls.
Unsurprisingly, news outlets illustrated CDC assertions about violence by referring to the Adriana Kuch case:
Indeed, a dramatic rise in violent behavior, targeting girls in particular, was a stark finding in the CDC report. One such assault received national attention this month when Adriana Kuch, 14, was attacked as she walked down a high school hallway in New Jersey. [NBC News]
The news coverage may induce politicians and policy makers to believe that scientific evidence points to school violence being a major cause of the adolescent mental health crisis. This is again nonsense, given that key indicators of violence in schools have been declining just as suicides of girls were increasing rapidly.
Those of us who care about educational policies and related matters should speak up and point out that schools are likely considerably less violent now than they were a decade or two ago (not to mention the 1990s).
Did CDC Cease to Care About Boys?
The CDC press release mentions girls repeatedly in relation to higher risks while boys are mentioned twice in relation to their lower risks. The conference was led in similar spirit, no doubt leaving many journalists with the notion that all key mental health risks are far higher for girls.
It is then no surprise that journalists told the public nonsense such as the following:
That CDC report is painting a grim picture for teen girls in America, not only finding they're facing record levels of sadness, but also they're twice as likely as boys to take their own lives. [CBS News]
In reality, it is teenage boys who are three times as likely as girls to kill themselves.
So far I did not find a single news report that contained the crucial fact that boys are far more likely to kill themselves. Instead, the public was told over and over that the mental health crisis is primarily an issue affecting girls rather than boys.
Those of us who care about improving the mental health of all adolescents should speak up and point out that, contrary to the emphasis of CDC officials and the resulting news coverage, the neglect of boys in this crisis is not unjustified.
Conclusion
The recent misrepresentations of the 2021 YRBS results by CDC officials have profound implications and should not be ignored.
Unless those who have influence and authority speak up and unless journalists listen to them, scientific misinformation by public institutions will only become more common. We may increasingly get to hear what most of us want to hear but it will not be the truth.
Notes:
CDC and Journalism
It is understandable that journalists had no reason to suspect that CDC omitted information about declining trends in violence as well as any indication of questionnaire censorship and its implications. It is also understandable that journalists did not realize that the easily accessible ABES results present a challenge to the validity of YRBS sexual violence results.
It is troubling, however, that more than a dozen mainstream journalists faithfully amplified the CDC message that suicide risks are much higher for girls without ever bothering to check suicide statistics -- or, worse, that they knew that boys kill themselves three times as often as girls but decided not to mention it.
We live in extremely divisive times but few public intellectuals seem to realize that the misinformation most likely to slip by unnoticed in periods of civil conflict is not partisan but bipartisan. CDC gave the entire political spectrum a welcome message: the Right loves to rile against violence (and blame liberal policies) and the Left loves to rile against victimization of women (and blame conservative policies) while the public appreciates simple solutions to distressing problems such as the rapid rise in adolescent suicides.
It is always safer for public officials to tell those in power what they wish to hear instead of the truth; and it is easier for public officials to manipulate the public if it is told what it wants to hear.
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