Friday, September 28, 2018

Social scientists are so helpful! They say somewhere between 1.5% to 90% of rape allegations are false!

This paper reviews studies that estimates the percent of rape allegations that turn out to be false. If I get time, I'll do a critical analysis of the individual studies, but for now let's say that the estimates range from 1.5% to 90%; in other words, I can guess with more precision than our social scientists.

It wouldn't be unreasonable, for starters, to focus on the median study which finds that 11% of allegations are false. If true, most women tell the truth, but there are enough liars to show that the maxim to "believe every woman" is simply evil. (Sorry about crooked columns!)

Table 1. A Selection of Findings on the Prevalence of False Rape Allegations

Source                                                       False Reporting Rate                     
                                                               Number                   %
Theilade and Thomsen (1986)             1 out of 56               1.5%
                                                             4 out of 39                10%
New York Rape Squad (1974)             N/A                            2% 
Hursch and Selkin (1974)                    10 out of 545              2% 
Kelly et al. (2005)                                67 out of 2,643           3%
                                                                                               22%
Geis (1978)                                          N/A                        3–31% 
Smith (1989)                                        17 out of 447           3.8 %
U.S. Department of Justice (1997)       N/A                             8% 
Clark and Lewis (1977)                       12 out of 116           10.3% 
Harris and Grace (1999)                       53 out of 483          10.9%
                                                            123 out of 483             25%
Lea et al. (2003)                                   42 out of 379             11% 
HMCPSI/HMIC (2002)                     164 out of 1,379       11.8% 
McCahill et al. (1979)                        218 out of 1,198       18.2% 
Philadelphia police study (1968)         74 out of 370              20% 
Chambers and Millar (1983)                44 out of 196          22.4% 
Grace et al. (1992)                                80 out of 335             24% 
Jordan (2004)                                        68 out of 164            41%
                                                              62 out of 164             38%
Kanin (1994)                                         45 out of 109            41% 
Gregory and Lees (1996)                      49 out of 109            45% 
Maclean (1979)                                     16 out of 34              47%
Stewart (1981)                                      16 out of 18               90%

2 comments:

  1. The best solution to the "he said she said" conundrum surrounding "rape" is a statutory definition that is operational:

    The County Recorder shall keep Sexual Consent Certificates, effective on the date filed by any women, having reached The Age of Consent. Sexual Consent Certificates shall be made available as Public Record. A Sexual Consent Certificate shall be rendered ineffective on the date revoked by the woman, with the County Recorder. No act of procreation between the woman and any man identified in an in-effect Sexual Consent Certificate filed by the woman, shall be rape. Conversely, any act of procreation between a woman and any man not identified in an in-effect Sexual Acceptance Certificate filed by the woman, shall be rape if the woman brings formal accusation within 3 months of the act.

    This reduces the "he said she said" nonsense to only one justiciable question: Did the act of procreation occur within the 3 month statutory limitation?

    Yes, this will severely limit the kinds of sexual interactions now so common between the sexes. However, by placing the onus on men to ensure that the woman has brought her hind-brain and fore-brain into consilience, and removing from the evolutionary stream those men who routinely do not, profound social and eugenic benefits would obtain. Likewise, women will be well advised to consider most-carefully the kind of men they consent.

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  2. lhtness10:30 AM

    You're assuming that these studies treat "false" as equivalent to "not true." I read one study with a 10ish% figure, and it turns out that to get that small a number, they had to come up with a bunch of non-false categories (including one for no available data, which was counted in the denominator). Also, they decided that the accuser recanting was not sufficient for calling an accusation false. However, recanting would cause the police to stop the investigating. Thus, if a woman said that she had been lying, that means her accusation is "not false". Make sense?

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