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Old 04-21-2006, 12:27 PM
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Clutch Munny Clutch Munny is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Canada
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Default Re: Only in Oklahoma...

Quote:
Originally Posted by Legs
According to the stats you posted the trend for murdered children is on the decrease (true) however, this stat is based on the number of bodies found and the assumption that the thousands suspected runaways are indeed runaways.
There are two issues. The first is whether child murders are particularly common, and the second is whether there has been some "epidemic" increase in their frequency. The latter is complete non-starter in light of the statistics; setting aside the paranoid notion that child killers are near-omnipotent, guaranteeing that human remains are not discovered, an increase in murders will predictably be reflected in at least some increase in known murders.

The first claim too is unwarranted. It is without positive evidence, as you admit. No doubt there are more murders than are officially known, but the only reasonable way of estimating how many more is to extrapolate from known to unknown cases, with a margin of error. The belief that child murders are much more common than the stats show (and have been for decades) requires the assumption that the unknown cases are radically different from the known cases.

Quote:
what if they are actually murder victims? or living as a sex slave somewhere, or living with someone who has abducted them? (some kids are so young when abducted, they don't remember their real families)
As with the unknown more generally, it's easy to project one's fears onto it. But that doesn't make the "epidemic" claim warranted.
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