Looking through that paper, it’s not something to be held up as a particularly good source. I don’t disagree with the conclusion, but it feels like it was written not necessarily with the intent to create this conclusion in particular, but definitely to create a conclusion that makes a good headline.
I just gave it a skim. It’s a terrible paper. It’s badly written - that intro is far too long and is out of place - and the methodology is terrible.
I’m not even sure that the question they’re answering (“Given N misogynists, how many are incels?”) is what they should be asking (“Given N incels, how many are misogynists?”).
No one has said that being a misogynist means you’re an incel. The hypothesis is that inceldom and misogyny are correlated. I mean, how many papers have been written about the pickup artist culture and its relation to misogyny? The incels are the ones with their noses pressed against the metaphorical window reading about how there’s a male subculture that is openly misogynistic and still has sex, with an inferred causal relationship there (“If you treat women like crap, they will have sex with you”).
I’d give it a closer read if I had to review it, but even their selection criteria (Amazon Turk volunteers) is bad. If anyone made it further than I did I’d be happy to hear that the analysis is okay or something, but I’d reject this paper.
