Raphael Franck claims that he actually won our ten-year bet. With his permission, I reprint our email exchange on the topic.
Franck
Dear Bryan,
I attach to this email an excel file which lists the number of people who were killed in terrorist acts and riots in the past 10 years. I undertook a thorough research job (not limited to wikipedia of course) and won our bet because my count, there were more than 500 people who died in terrorist acts and riots.
Clearly, this is a lower bound estimate: the French politicians and media have tried to minize the occurrence of terrorist acts and prefer arguing that some crimes are not undertaken by terrorists. This is possible because many terrorists are “lone wolves” who are just armed with knives or ram crowds with their car. As such, the media can attribute the growing number of attacks to mental problems. For instance, politicians and journalists have been denying that the driver who rammed his car through a crowd in December 2014 while shouting “Allahu Akhbar” and who killed at least one person (https://www.tendanceouest.com/actualite-88705-nantes-une-victime-succombe-la-justice-enquete-pour-assassinats.html) was a terrorist. He was, as the French say, “déséquilibré” (i.e, unhinged).
It was difficult to find data on victims for the many small-scale riots that often occur in France. For simplicity I used the lacunary data on people who were killed by the police (it is only this year that the France started tracking the number of individuals killed by the police – otherwise the job is done by leftist activitists). Usually these people are not killed at random by the French police, they are killed in small-scale riots that occur in the suburbs of the major French towns. I left a few links that document the deaths of people killed in those riots (in French, but there is nothing that google translate cannot do).
The other thing is that I counted the Islamic militants killed by the police in the final bodycount (listed under the column “Shaheed”) alongside with their victims (listed under the column
“Kuffar”). Like the French citizens killed by the police in small scale riots, I am sure you will agree that the French police used excessive force and should have negotiated more with these militants who were for the most part French citizens who were often born and bred in France. It is a bit irrelevant for our bet (although completely in line with what I had predicted) that those individuals were domestic terrorists who were motivated by an ideology that is alien to French culture and history.
For the record, to win this bet, I did not even have to include in the final count the French soldiers who were killed by jihadists in the former French colonies in sub-Saharan Africa (which are only former colonies by name, given that the French army still seeks to control those areas to protect French financial and industrial interests). But I could. And then I would also count the jihadists that they killed.
I am not interested in the money. I suggest you donate it to a charity that takes care of children with special needs.
Best regards,
Raphael Franck
Caplan
As you might suspect, I find your methodology biased. Who besides you counts the German plane crash as “terrorism”? And you want to count 100% of people killed by the French police as deaths from “riots”?
And of course deaths outside of the borders of France are explicitly ruled out by the wording of the bet, though I’m willing, given the wording to count the deaths of the perpetrators.
I’m open to resolution by a neutral arbiter.
Franck
Dear Bryan,
My methodology may be biased. But I have one and it is very reasonable.
The crash of the German flight was cheered upon by radical Islamists. So I guess they viewed it as a success for their cause.
As for the riots, the first link in the excel file documents that about 10 to 15 people are killed every year in France by the police; the deaths that I counted in the dataset were therefore a subset of all the deaths caused by the police and they occurred in the suburbs of French towns where small level riots are a common occurrence. Hence the numbers in the excel file are not 100% of the deaths caused by the police. As I wrote before, quite a few crimes in France motivated by radical Islam may be reported as a-ideological violent crimes because the
motivations of the attacker are hard to tell. If anything, I did not include in my count the March 2017 murders committed by a 31 year old Frenchman who slit the throat of his brother and then of his father (http://www.lepoint.fr/societe/paris-l-egorgeur-du-11e-etait-fiche-s-17-03-2017-2112697_23.php). I chose to do so, even though this murderer had a “fiche S”
(i.e., “S file” where S stands for security and designates people whom the French police view as potential terrorists). In fact, I was wondering whether you would try to deny that the car ramming in Nice in July 2016 was a terror attack because the attacker had a history of mental illness (as if everyone who has issues decides to kill people at random, like him or like the German pilot).
I thus stand by my earlier statement that the estimates on terror victims that I gave are a lower bound. It is totally fine with me if you do not want to acknowledge that my estimates are reasonable.
I do not see much point in asking for a neutral arbitrer. At the end of the day, the neutral arbitrer will have to decide whether terrorism motivated by radical Islam has become a common occurrence in France. For some reason, I have yet to meet someone who is neutral when it comes to the relationship between radical Islam and terrorism.
I am fine with your posting this conversation online. And for the record, I oppose terrorism by radical Islamists and take very little satisfaction in my correct predictions. After all, if more people had listened to me, more lives could have been saved.
Best regards,
Raphael
READER COMMENTS
Matthew Moore
May 30 2018 at 10:35am
Bryan – what’s your count and how did you come to it?
OA
May 30 2018 at 10:40am
Predictably, he doubles down on the claim when presented with evidence to the contrary – academics may be smart, but I think they are as susceptible as any to biases. The problem is that they are endowed with authority and a bullhorn.
It seems like Franck is a victim of the ‘backfire effect’ (http://www.dartmouth.edu/~nyhan/nyhan-reifler.pdf). Thus I would guess his subsequent predictions regarding this issue will be much less accurate – this is a good time to engage in another bet.
AB
May 30 2018 at 10:43am
“they occurred in the suburbs of French towns where small level riots are a common occurrence”
What is this guy talking about ? Riots are not a common occurence in any sense, there is clearly more violence in the zones of French towns where immigrants tend to congregate, but the level of violence is actually quite low, probably around the average of other Western European countries and certainly way lower than in the US.
“Riots” can mean anything. Terrorism is political violence, it needs a political aim and a political organization (like the Islamic State), a group of bored, prospectless youth who burn a car is not a group of terrorists.
Michael Sandifer
May 30 2018 at 10:58am
Bryan,
You won this bet, period.
OA
May 30 2018 at 11:00am
He is quite dishonestly representing the data to fit his narrative. He is counting an airline crash (140 victims) as terrorism simply because the Islamists cheered it on? In that case, why not include EVERY death that occurred in France in that time frame? Surely those same Islamists would be just as happy about those?
Its hard not to be disgusted by the level of intellectual dishonesty, especially from someone who should be smarter than that.
robc
May 30 2018 at 11:14am
OA,
According to a link Bryan posted yesterday, this was the first article I get:
https://www.justsecurity.org/21649/crash-germanwings-flight-9525-act-terrorism/
Sounds like that counts as terrorism.
dlr
May 30 2018 at 11:16am
Very generous of Professor Franck to exclude all the heart attack victims who might have been saved by defibrillator bearing terrorists but were not. The lesson might be that bets should include a backward stipulation defining what their measure would have equaled in some prior period. But maybe there is more to learn this way, with just enough trivial ambiguity to tempt a seemingly laughable escape attempt from dissonance.
OA
May 30 2018 at 11:36am
robc –
Thanks for the link. That article argues for including the airplane crash primarily on legal technicalities (i.e. motive of the act can be ignored for specific offenses). That is not the reasoning that Franck provided in his email. I don’t find the legalistic argument to be convincing; but the argument more mass murders should be counted as terror, regardless of motive, is more convincing.
If we include any act of mass murder as an act of terror, then perhaps the Franck does win the bet, at the cost of severely diluting his narrative.
Mark Z
May 30 2018 at 12:20pm
robc,
The 1999 Terrorism Financing Convention’s definition of terrorism is one definition; it seems to differ with the ones used by most organizations, national or international, even in a legal context. I see no reason why that particular convention’s definition should reign supreme.
Also, I’d dispute the claim made in the link that the Germanwings pilot intended to provoke a state of fear or intimidate a population. The author tries to draw this conclusion from the pilot saying he would be remembered and everyone would know his name, but wanting everyone to know your name doesn’t equal desire to coerce or intimidate.
Peter Gordon
May 30 2018 at 1:51pm
We have some experience and knowledge involving most of the perils in daily life. I maintain subjective probabilities of a serious car accident for various journeys (conditions) at the back of my head and act accordingly. I doubt that anyone has similar knowledge or similar probabilities for the various sorts of terrorist attacks we read about. This puts them in a separate class and challenges the various relative frequency comparisons people like to make.
robc
May 30 2018 at 1:59pm
Mark Z,
I don’t think it should “reign supreme” either, I just found it odd that Caplan has a link in which he says “nearly no one” considers it terrorism and literally the first link off the search he linked to is to someone who considers it terrorism.
RPLong
May 30 2018 at 4:08pm
robc, this may be “the exception that proves the rule,” but in any case I don’t think Caplan’s winning the bet hinges on how many people consider this one event a terrorist attack. Caplan offered to submit the bet to arbitration, which is how such disputes ought to be settled. I am sure there are many academic terrorism experts in Prof. Caplan’s circle who could arbitrate the disagreement fairly. In fact, I think Caplan should do this even despite Franck’s apparent ambivalence toward the outcome, if only to preserve the integrity of his betting record. Of course, we the spectating public would also benefit from having the matter settled.
Fabio Rojas
May 30 2018 at 4:41pm
According to Robert Pape’s APSR article, this is a standard definition of terrorism:
“Terrorism involves the use of violence by an organization other than a national government to cause intimidation or fear among a target audience (Department of State 1983-2001; Reich 1990; Schmid and Jongman 1988).” (Page 345)
Source: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/strategic-logic-of-suicide-terrorism/A6F51C77E3DE644EBD20ADE176973547
Then the issue is that 1. it needs to be done by a non-state organization and 2. it needs to be done to intimidate others.
By this definition, the pilot who killed his crew and passengers is not terrorism unless it is shown that a non-state organization put together the attack (like al-Qaeda did).
Also, by the same definition, individuals who kill in the name of a religion are not “terrorists’ unless it was part of a larger organized run by a non-state organization.
You would only include rioters killed by police if you could show that the rioting was staged by a non-state organization and that the riot’s goal was intimidation, rather than disruptive expression of a belief (e.g., burning an American flag doesn’t always mean intimidation, it means they really hate the US).
I think the issue here is that Franck means “terrorism == politically motivated violence of any type” while most security experts mean “terrorism == violence originated by a non-state organization.”
Since Franck is an academic, I’d side with the normal definition used by experts, not the guy in the street. But maybe the polite response is to say that the wager used vague terms and let it rest.
JL
May 30 2018 at 5:01pm
OA,
You might be interested to know that the backfire effect did not replicate (http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2053168017716547, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2819073, https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/backfire-effect-not-significant/). As such I would be careful claiming it as the mechanism behind other people’s behaviour.
ColoComment
May 30 2018 at 5:47pm
A bet is a mutual agreement, a contract, to do or pay “x” should “y” happen.
To define and delimit “y” is why important* contracts are typically drawn by expensive lawyers and signed by all parties to acknowledge their understanding and acceptance of the definitions and conditions [that should have been] included therein.
* importance may include the level of payment, or reputational effect, or some other category
And those oh-so-carefully-written & acknowledged contracts are still litigated to death.
I am not familiar with the history of this bet. Did the bettors not agree on the terms & definitions at the outset? If not, I’d suggest a mutually agreed & respectful withdrawal of the bet, due to unresolvable ambiguity(ies) in the terms.
Nathan
May 30 2018 at 9:04pm
>At the end of the day, the neutral arbitrer will have to decide whether terrorism motivated by radical Islam has become a common occurrence in France.
This seems quite the odd complaint on Professor Franck’s part. Regardless of whether one considers the GermanWings plane crash to be an act of terrorism, it most certainly was not “terrorism motivated by radical Islam.” Thus the arbiter would not need to decide this issue at all. I agree with Professor Caplan that he won the bet and that Franck is doubling down rather than admitting error.
Vasilis Kostelidis
May 31 2018 at 6:32am
I think the problem is what Dr. Caplan wrote in the previous post: that they didn’t set the exact rules: “Would I take the same bet again? Yes, though only with a pre-specified data source and arbiter”.
One can argue for years about what we could include as terrorism.
If the bet was something like: ” … according to the whateverdatawebsite.com website, and if for any reason we cannot acquire the data from this website then anotherdatawebsite.com website and then yetanotherdatawebsite.com website”, then Dr. Franck and Dr. Caplan would have nothing to disagree.
Perhaps Dr. Franck intended to count the body count this way, from before the bet – and thought that the other party would share the same opinion. The same applies for Dr. Caplan.
If this conversation had been brought up before the bet, then perhaps both parties would have different claims.
I am not saying that an arbiter is not useful, but this is a basic thing one must take into account when setting a bet: where do we get the data.
So, my opinion is that the bet is not valid. But this is just my opinion :).
V L Elliott
May 31 2018 at 6:29pm
Terror is an intense, paralyzing fear or the dread of it and thus has both psycho-emotional and debilitating aspects, particularly about future or potential terror. Does an act induce such a fear?
Individuals can, for their own purposes commit such acts and criminals can as well. They involve threats and require collective action to prevent or counter. However, the use of terrorism methods by what we would generally consider to be criminals is different from how such acts are usually used in a war so I suggest separating criminal uses from the use of terrorism as a form of warfare in pursuit of political goals.
All of the great strategists seem to have had their own definition of war but, as best I can tell, the elements of the following definition by Donald J Hanle are present in all of the definitions: War is a struggle among two or more groups for control of people, resources or territory in which the defining characteristic is a clash of arms, actual or threatened. Is the act(s) consistent with Hanle’s definition?
Then, to identify acts of terrorism, working from Hanle again, I suggest that all of the following must be present: First, the use of lethal force must be intended to be perceived as abnormal by the targeted observers (observers need not be present, just able to learn of the act involving the abnormal use of lethal force and think “that could have been me or mine on the receiving end”). Second, the targeted observers must perceive the use of lethal force to be abnormal. Third, the purpose of that force is to cause a certain behavior by creating a specific psychological condition in the targeted observers of the terror. Are all three of these characteristics present?
Following this reasoning then with regard to the bet, we need to know if the bettors meant “terrorism” in the more restricted sense I have outlined or did it include all acts of terror. If the latter, I don’t think a number or even a range can be estimated because the total number of acts involving terrorism can be extremely large (e.g., school yard bullying can sometimes have terrorism characteristics).
Roger Sweeny
Jun 3 2018 at 9:57am
Many people who want stronger gun control laws have been buoyed by the recent school shootings, which have made passage considerably more likely. However, that does not mean that the shootings were caused by “gun controllers” or “gun controllism.”
Cheering a plane crash after the fact does not cause it.
Roger Sweeny
Jun 3 2018 at 10:04am
Matthew Moore, Brian gives his count at
http://www.econlib.org/econlog/archives/2018/05/i_win_my_french.html
Comments are closed.