Fact-Checking the Tweet that Got Andy Ngo Banned from Twitter

“While both of Ngo’s claims are technically true, the proper context paints a widely different picture.”

In late November of this year, controversial media figure Andy Ngo was suspended from Twitter. As we are all frequently reminded, Twitter is not real life. This is certainly true, and generally I do not find the discussions of events that happen on Twitter to be all that interesting. This, however, is a particular case, because I think it is better described as an example of a common argumentation tactic that happened to occur on Twitter. According to The Post Millennial, for which Ngo serves as editor-at-large, he was unfairly suspended for stating nothing more than mere objective facts. The specific incident that got him suspended was a reply to Chelsea Clinton in which he pointed out two facts. First, that the homicide rate for the transgender population is lower than that of the general population; and second, that the majority of those homicides are committed by black men. The article mentioned earlier from The Post Millennial reports that after this tweet, Ngo’s account was suspended for violating guidelines on hateful content. The reaction that followed, in particular from right-leaning figures, like those on the Intellectual Dark Web (or adjacent personalities), is a clear example of an insidious phenomenon that I believe can only be described as either statistical illiteracy—or bad faith. As I will explain further, I think the latter is the more likely conclusion.

The reaction from right-leaning and IDW-adjacent circles was nothing if not predictable. Public intellectuals like Christina Hoff Sommers and Peter Boghossian quickly denounced the suspension as a politically correct action by Twitter, targeting Ngo for stating uncomfortable facts. Both of them are accomplished academics in their fields, and while they may not be statisticians or work in fields specifically dependent on statistics, the statistical nuances behind Ngo’s claim are not so complicated that only someone with advanced knowledge in the field could comprehend them. It is for this reason that I believe that when they claim foul play from platforms like Twitter and play innocent regarding the nature of a technically factual claim like Ngo’s, I have to believe that the reason is bad faith rather than plain lack of knowledge of statistics. And, after all, it is no secret that statistical facts can be used to mislead and lie.

Let us assume for a moment, however, that what is behind this is actually lack of knowledge, and, from there, I will explain what is going on. Both of Ngo’s original claims are technically factual, but they are highly statistically misleading. A 2017 study on transgender homicide rates published in the American Journal of Public Health acknowledges that the first part of the tweet is true. The paper examines known homicides from 2010 to 2014. Using an analysis of known risk factors for homicide, the author concludes that even controlling for underreporting, risk factors of the transgender population predict a lower homicide rate than that of the cisgender population. The problem, however, is that the global homicide rate has very little use as an analytical tool. The same study also explains that when broken down by gender, transgender women have a higher homicide rate than the overall rate for women. Despite opposition to the use of specific gendered pronouns and so-called ‘gender ideology’ in general, it really makes more sense from a sociological point of view to compare homicide rates of transgender women with those of cisgender women. Trans individuals assume the social roles of their gender identity, not that of their biological sex, so, in terms of risk factors, they should be treated as their preferred gender. Doing the opposite would only serve a political agenda. And once this is done, the claim that the trans murder rate is lower than that of the overall population reveals itself to be meaningless. This is because once the rates for women were taken on their own, it became apparent that being trans does pose an added risk for becoming a homicide victim. If it did not, the trans rate would be similar to (or lower than) that of cis women.