'World's greatest thinkers' run with thoroughly debunked conclusion that the US is the 10th worst country for women

Sarah D | 10:20 AM on July 25, 2019

If you’re an American who isn’t totally convinced that the U.S. is hell on earth, maybe this will change your mind.

Last night, Big Think — which calls itself an “unbiased, trusted and reliable” purveyor of “actionable lessons from the world’s greatest thinkers and doers” — re-upped the results of a 2018 Thomson Reuters Foundation survey on the most dangerous countries for women:

The worst countries in the world to be a woman? Unfortunately, the U.S. is in the top 10. https://t.co/FNrALqjxa7 pic.twitter.com/Vh7rGqUli8

— Big Think (@bigthink) July 25, 2019

Wow. Sounds bad, right? How did we get here? Oh:

The word "expert" has basically lost meaning to me at this pointhttps://t.co/hd5TmhYkFB pic.twitter.com/62laHkquCg

— David Rutz (@DavidRutz) July 25, 2019

1. It was a poll
2. Putting the US here considering the metrics they used is laughable
3. The literal reason the US was included was because it had a massively visible and effective campaign to root out public figures who were sexually improper. So it's bad because it's good? https://t.co/YIZ8EDr2FE

— neontaster (@neontaster) July 25, 2019

In other words, the Thomson Reuters Foundation survey that yielded these results was decidedly flawed. We’ve been through this already, but for the people in the back, Christina Hoff Summers thoroughly debunked the survey:

It’s a fake study. See: https://t.co/jlHQyYFteA

— Christina Sommers (@CHSommers) July 25, 2019

You’d think our media betters would know, well, better by now than to keep running with garbage like this.

I mean, anyone who looks at this map purporting to show that women have it as bad in the US as they do in DRC, Pakistan, KSA, Syria, Yemen, and Nigeria and nods is a blinkered idiot. But just for fun, I wrote 1,100 words explaining why they're blinkered idiots.

— Noah Rothman (@NoahCRothman) July 25, 2019

One of my pet peeves are these reductive clickable lists from ostensibly respectable institutions that exist only to advance an ideological point on the flimsiest of reeds. Here's one I did about the Economist's hopelessly flawed "Democracy Index." https://t.co/IoOaeZURAb

— Noah Rothman (@NoahCRothman) July 25, 2019

The thing about the Thompson Reuters study on which this is based is that they confess their sample of "experts" was likely unmoored at the time as it was taken at the height of the #MeToo moment. It's burdened with self-consciousness. https://t.co/zl0muNtVIa

— Noah Rothman (@NoahCRothman) July 25, 2019