TASK DEFINITION: Given a paragraph, generate a claim that is supported by the given paragraph. 1) The claim must contain information from within the paragraph. 2) A sentence within the paragraph can be used as a claim. 3) The claim should not have contradictions within the paragraph. 4) The claim should be at most one sentence long.
PROBLEM: "The release of a video showing NFL running back Ray Rice striking his now-wife in an Atlantic City, N.J., casino elevator revived conversations about domestic violence on the Sunday shows. On the Sept. 14,2014, edition ofCNN's State of the Union, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., shared an anecdote from her time as a prosecutor to illustrate the ills of domestic violence. ""We had a poster outside the door so everyone would see it when they came in. It was a picture of a woman beaten up with a Band-Aid over her nose, holding a little baby boy,"" Klobuchar said. ""And the words read, 'Beat your wife, and it's your son that goes to jail.' "" ""Kids that have seen it happen,"" Klobuchar said, are ""twice as likely to commit it themselves."" Klobuchar concluded that because the NFL puts ""out their players as role models,"" they have ""to set a different culture."" We were interested in checking Klobuchar's claim that kids who witness domestic violence are ""twice as likely to commit it themselves."" 90's kids We want to be clear upfront that witnessing domestic violence means witnessing it in a child's household -- not watching the TMZ.com Rice video. That said, the ""twice as likely"" talking point is fairly popular among advocates against domestic abuse, and suffice to say has been around for a while. The domestic violence literature we've seen often cited that claim with a 1990 book called ""Physical Violence in American Families: Risk Factors and Adaptations to Violence in 8,145 Families."" This book compiled the results of the landmark National Family Violence Surveys of 1975 and 1985, which constituted 60-minute face-to-face interviews and 30-minute phone interviews, respectively, with thousands of American families. Based on those interviews, the book's authors illustrated how a variety of factors influenced the incidence of domestic violence. Most of the book is about gender differences and roles in domestic violence, but the section on the effects on children crunches the surveys' numbers on whether abusers said they witnessed abuse as children. That produced the ""twice as likely"" estimate. The experts we talked to told us there hasn't been any study as definitive or comprehensive since, although other studies have taken stabs at the issue of intergenerational transmission of domestic violence. ""We've known for such a long time that the biggest risk factor for being abusive against wives and children is witnessing domestic violence at home or being abused,"" said Jacquelyn Campbell, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing who studies domestic violence. So ""people haven't repeated the research for a while,"" Campbell said, and ""a lot of stuff is old and mostly cross-sectional."" What the existing literature says Campbell pointed us to a 2010 study about intimate partner violence -- a subset of domestic violence -- which found that children who witnessed any intimate partner violence were 2.6 times as likely to perpetrate it themselves. Children who witnessed any violence were 1.6 times as likely, according to the study, to become abusers as adults. Klobuchar's claim, then, has grounds in literature both old and new. There are literally dozens of studies on this issue, though, and different studies tell different stories. A 2000 meta-analysis of 39 different studies on this issue found a ""small-to-medium"" correlation between witnessing and perpetrating. The studies in that survey, while a couple decades old, ranged from showing a causal relationship between witnessing and perpetrating to showing no relationship at all. That corroborates Klobuchar's larger point that parents' domestic violence has negative outcomes for their children, but that's not the same as these kids being ""twice as likely to commit it themselves."" Difficulties with measurements Putting numbers on domestic violence is particularly hard, and perhaps even inappropriate, said Ruth Glenn, executive director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. ""I wouldn't say twice as likely,"" said Glenn. ""So I would say that it is an additional risk factor. I get nervous when we start to assign data, because there's not enough data to support it. Domestic violence happens in families, and each of those families are individual units."" In other words, there's enough out there to suggest that children who witness domestic violence are more likely to perpetrate it, but saying something as precise as ""twice as likely"" is difficult. Domestic violence is ""hard to measure for various and sundry reasons,"" said Glenn, from the lack of ""good data"" on who's charged and convicted of domestic violence to confidentiality issues with its victims. And even when researchers can get affirmative data, there are methodological concerns. The studies about children who witness domestic violence often surveyed clinical populations -- meaning those with family issues, so a non-representative sample -- and ask respondents to self-report and to retroactively report. Extricating domestic violence from other family issues -- like mental health and substance abuse -- is also difficult, according to the studies Campbell referred us to. Our ruling Klobuchar, arguing that the NFL has a responsibility to hold its ""role models"" accountable to a ""different culture,"" said that kids who witness domestic violence in their households are ""twice as likely to commit it themselves."" There are legitimate, peer-reviewed studies that bear Klobuchar's claim out. But overall, even though there's a consensus that witnessing domestic violence puts kids at a greater risk for perpetrating it themselves, the precise figures differ. Measuring domestic violence is very difficult for a variety of reasons, and there hasn't been a recent, comprehensive study. So saying these kids are ""twice as likely to commit"" domestic violence is a little too precise."

SOLUTION: "Children who witness domestic violence are ""twice as likely to commit it themselves."

PROBLEM: On February 17 2020, an odd story came out of Cedar Rapids, Iowa viaThe Gazette,about thearrest of a man who allegedly forced made a woman watch the mini-seriesRoots so that she might better understand her own racism:A Cedar Rapids man [Robert Lee Noye, 52] who was arrested [February 17 2020] is accused of holding a woman captive and forcing her to watch "Roots" a nine-hour miniseries that chronicles author Alex Haley's family line from the capture and enslavement of his ancestor Kunta Kinte to the liberation of Kinte's descendants. []When she tried to move, Noye told her to "remain seated and watch the movie with him or he would kill her and spread her body parts across Interstate 380 on the way to Chicago," the complaint said.Mugshots paired with a sensational headline are often employed by "fake news" or "junk news" sites imitating small local outlets, andThe Gazette was a small-city paper. Because of this, many readers encountering the story including us were skeptical it was authentic.Not long after its publication, the news was aggregated to other outlets across the country:A criminal complaint stated Noye forced the victim to watch the show, which is a nine-hour historical miniseries about slavery in the U.S. through the post-Civil War era, "so she could better understand her racism."The complaint also stated the suspect told the victim he would "kill her and spread her body parts across Interstate 380 on the way to Chicago" if she did not sit and watch the show.We contacted the very responsive Cedar Rapids Police Department, and we spoke to an officer who confirmed that the report was accurate. They also sent over a brief release with additional detail about Noye's arrest:Robert Lee Noye, DOB [redacted] age 52, was arrested for False Imprisonment and Assault Domestic Abuse Simple. The victim, a 37-year old female, was not allowed to leave a room where the suspect was keeping her. The victim dialed 911 and had an open line with the Joint Communications Center (Cedar Rapids 911 dispatch center). Dispatchers could hear the victim asking to leave and the suspect was screaming at her. The suspect is accused of harassing his girlfriend and threatening to commit a forcible felony by saying that he was going to kill her, then spread her body all over U.S. Interstate 380.On February 17 at 12:14 a.m. Cedar Rapids police officers were dispatched to [redacted] for an open 911 line to the dispatch center with lots of screaming. Dispatchers and officers were able to use GPS to locate the area where the call was coming from and, after checking the neighborhood, determined the incident was occurring at 718 2nd Avenue SW. An intoxicated male, later identified as Robert Noye, answered the door. There was 37-year old female and 12-year old female inside the house who were both upset and crying. The suspect allegedly was calling the victim names while officers were present.According to the victim, Noye was verbally assaulting her all night and she set up a bed in the basement to get away from him. According to the victim, Noye came downstairs and told her to get upstairs and watch the movie "Roots" to understand how racist she was while he continued to verbally assault her. He then made threats to kill her. The victim and her daughter went into a room upstairs where the suspect did not allow them to leave. The victim was able to call 911 and leave the line open.The suspect was arrested and transported to the Linn County Jail.The claim that a man was arrested for allegedly forcing a woman to watchRoots on February 17 2020 was genuine, not "fake news," not "satire," and not fabricated to capitalize on Black History Month or for any other reason; the suspect's girlfriend is the alleged victim. The suspect was arrested and charged with first-degree harassment and false imprisonment.

SOLUTION: "A man was arrested for allegedly forcing a woman to watch the nine-hour miniseries Roots to ""better understand her racism."

PROBLEM: In an important discovery in the evolutionary history of sexual reproduction, the scientists found that male fossils of the Microbrachius dicki, which belong to a placoderm group, developed bony L-shaped genital limbs called claspers to transfer sperm to females. Females, for their part, developed small paired bones to lock the male organs in place for mating. Placoderms are the earliest vertebrate ancestors of humans. "Placoderms were once thought to be a dead-end group with no live relatives, but recent studies show that our own evolution is deeply rooted in placoderms and that many of the features we have such as jaws, teeth and paired limbs first originated with this group of fishes," said John Long, a paleontologist at Flinders University in South Australia who led the research. This new finding, he added, shows that "they gave us the intimate act of sexual intercourse as well". Matt Friedman, a paleobiologist from Britain's Oxford University who was not involved in the research, described its findings as "nothing short of remarkable" and said they suggested much more could be learned from the fossil fishes. Long, whose study was published in the journal Nature on Sunday, discovered the ancient fishes' mating abilities when he stumbled across a single fossil bone in the collections of the University of Technology in Tallinn, Estonia, last year. The research then involved scientists from Australia, Estonia, Britain, Sweden and China, who analyzed fossil specimens from museum collections across the world. These demonstrate the first use of internal fertilization and copulation as a reproductive strategy known in the fossil record. Measuring about 8 centimeters (3 inches) in length, Microbrachius lived in ancient lake habitats in Scotland, as well as parts of Estonia and China. Long explained that "Microbrachius" means little arms, but said scientists have been baffled for centuries by what these bony paired arms were actually there for. "We've solved this great mystery," he said. "They were there for mating, so that the male could position his claspers into the female genital area." In one of the more bizarre findings of the study, Long said the fishes probably copulated from a sideways position with their bony jointed arms locked together making them look more as if they were square dancing than having sex. "This enabled the males to maneuver their genital organs into the right position for mating," he said.

SOLUTION:
Humans should thank ancient Scottish fish fossils for joy of sex.