One correction, IMO. Krakauer is NOT a reporter. He is a fucking journalist, in the true sense of the word.

This is the greatest fucking thing I have ever seen.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney briefly emerged from his lair to weigh in on the Senate Intelligence Committee's horrifying report on CIA torture during the Bush administration, calling it "full of crap." He then returned home and furiously masturbated over the report for several hours.

Stop it, if I laugh any harder I'll pee.

If Jackie'd allow her FERPA rights waived to give a neutral third-party access to her records- obviously, that's not going to happen, Jackie wouldn't allow it- it'd show UVA did contact CPD anyhow, and CPD has texts and a laptop computer in their possession.

That's impressively reasoned and mature. What are you doing on Gawker?

They were probably taking time to carefully vet the interviews and make sure whatever they published was accurate. You know - what journalistic publications are SUPPOSED to do.

"This story also viscerally shows the difficulties and dangers of magazine features, where one character stands in for a broader issue."

Um... well, yes they do. My dad has stories of people who tried to stage a robbery of their own property or set fire to their own house in order to collect on the insurance. So cops routinely look for signals or clues that suggest the person's story is fabricated. For example, someone saying they were robbed, but the…

If you fail to be a skeptic of people telling you what you want to hear, you make it all too easy for those who disagree with you to distract everyone from the meat of your argument by pointing out problems you failed to see.

No. UVA tried to get her to go to CPD, she wouldn't. Now we know why. UVA also knew from the get-go this was unlikely to be true, as you can see from President Sullivan's first comments on the matter. But they had to take a moral outrage tack until the truth came out. UVA, her friends, etc, went to CPD- as I…

The police routinely try to prove robberies didn't happen before they believe the shop owner? They try to investigate whether the mugging was real before taking to the streets to find the perp?

I agree. The current norm is that rape victims aren't believed to the degree they should be. But if we're going to get to a place where rape allegations are taken more seriously than they are now, the process shouldn't be to silence or ignore skepticism. You have to confront it, and neutralize it with factual and…

You have clearly learned nothing from this saga, as impossible as it seems.

Three points:

There's really not evidence of that. It's certainly a possibility, but it could be PTSD causing a distortion of what really happened that night. It could be that Jackie is sick but truly believes the events occured. Hell, the was a story about phantom pregnancy yesterday. Too often people assume one way or the…

I think a journo trying desperately to prove this true, or make it so, is what started this mess. If Erdely had stuck to the other incidents in the piece (and there are plenty, remember) we wouldn't be cringing over the latest WaPo scoops that show Jackie's experience is probably fictitious.

Part of proving any crime is fully investigating all possible scenarios, including scenarios where the crime didn't happen. Fully and rationally dealing with skepticism is what we should want if the goal is justice for rape victims. Its the same reason why we should want the best possible lawyers to provide an…

Something to keep in mind. Approximately two percent of rape allegations made to police are false, according to various studies, including those cited by the U.S. Department of Justice. It's unknown what percent of rape allegations never reported to police, such as Jackie's, are false. That figure is not the…

Reading the book would involve me providing this wretch further financial gain. No thanks.