HIM AGAIN, THIS AGAIN.

We can dispense quickly with W. Bradford Wilcox's Washington Post thing, "One way to end violence against women? Stop taking lovers and get married." (They've since changed the title, perhaps because it reminded readers of an old Will Ferrell and Rachel Dratch routine.) We have seen Wilcox before, telling people marriage makes you rich, and now he's telling them that marriage also protects women from abusers. Sample:

For women, part of the story is about what social scientists call a “selection effect,” namely, women in healthy, safe relationships are more likely to select into marriage, and women in unhealthy, unsafe relationships often lack the power to demand marriage or the desire to marry. Of course, women in high conflict marriages are more likely to select into divorce. 

...What’s more: women who are married are more likely to live in safer neighborhoods, to have a partner who is watching out for their physical safety, and—for obvious reasons—to spend less time in settings that increase their risk of rape, robbery, and assaults.

Let me introduce another term used by social scientists: correlation, which is different from causation.  This is like saying a brand-new Jaguar prevents rape because women who can afford a brand-new Jaguar tend to live in safer neighborhoods.

You can and do, however, get these wonderful results by giving people money. Wilcox would have you believe that wedding vows are talismanic and cause wealth, but sane people know it's not so; if you pass out marriage certificates in the slums, it won't turn them into luxury condos.

 I suspect that as one of the "conservative reform" crew Wilcox expects to have a sub-cabinet office dedicated to that purpose come Der Tag, funded with sweet, faith-based-initiative cash. As long as they see that at the end of the rainbow, they'll keep this nonsense up.

UPDATE. Mona Chalabi at Nate Silver's Nerd Farm:

One of the charts used in the article (seen at left) comes from a Department of Justice study published in 2012. I got in touch with the study’s author, Shannon Catalano, a statistician at the Bureau of Justice Statistics, who said her chart was presented without sufficient context.

Well, add statisticians to climate scientists as members of the Scientists' Conspiracy to destroy America -- which will be thwarted by Republican Lysenkoism!

UPDATE 2. Comments are terrific, of course. whetstone has a list of complaints with Wilcox, including: "Our data on domestic violence prior to the 1970s-1980s isn't very good. All the societal changes conservatives are shitting their pants over were basically done at that point... It's worth noting that we have good data now because FEMINISTS IDENTIFIED THESE PROBLEMS AND THEN WE STARTED MEASURING IT. So it's particularly infuriating when these statistics are used as a cudgel against feminism."