Yes, You Should Be Skeptical about the UVA Rape Story

Truth matters more than the narrative

‘The truth may be puzzling,” wrote Carl Sagan. “It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what’s true.”

And the hecklers shouted, “Idiot!”

Such, at least, was the reaction of Jezebel’s Anna Merlan to the news that two free-thinking writers had begun to ask whether an explosive Rolling Stone article that purported to reveal a hideous gang-rape at the University of Virginia was, in fact, entirely true. Having initially failed to “question the incident itself,” Reason’s Robby Soave wrote on Monday, he had come to find “some of the details . . . perplexing on subsequent re-reads.” “I’ll be following any and all developments in this case,” Soave promised, “and am eager to see this particular story either confirmed as true or exposed as a hoax.” A week or so earlier, a formerGeorge editor named Richard Bradley had noted for the record that “nothing in this story is impossible,” but contended nonetheless that he had serious questions. “To believe it beyond a doubt, without a question mark — as virtually all the people who’ve read the article seem to — requires a lot of leaps of faith,” Bradley submitted. In both cases, the men explained why they were suspicious and vowed to look more deeply into the case. In both cases, the pair were dismissed as rubeish and misogynistic dilettantes who, in Merlan’s words, have “no idea what they’re talking about.”

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