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I'm aware of all the criticisms of the Kanin study. None of them seem valid. If the USA believes polygraphs are unreliable they should be banned from all usage

I'm aware of all the criticisms of the Kanin study. None of them seem valid. If the USA believes polygraphs are unreliable they should be banned from all usage, for all types of crimes and government screening. That hasn't happened. Instead, people who didn't like Kanin's conclusions - and noted that many rape accusers prefer to drop their accusations rather than take a polygraph test - decided it should be banned for that specific crime only. This is not internally consistent but is consistent with the long-term trend towards trying to increase the number of rape reports. The critics then retroactively claimed the usage of this technique made the entire study invalid, which it does not do. These people are actually trying to subtly argue something different and much more extreme - that US police statistics and records for rape accusations in that entire period are completely worthless due to the use of polygraphs and therefore no conclusions can be drawn about the accuracy of rape reports during this time at all. This also isn't the case. Attrition between rape reports and prosecution is extremely high in other western countries that don't use lie detectors, and there is attrition at every stage of the pipeline. Offering to use a polygraph and having some complainants decide to drop their cooperation entirely is just one source of attrition amongst many. The Kanin study is utterly damning on many levels and aligns with the self-reported perceptions of police (that false accusations are very common), not just in that study town but across the USA and in other countries as well, like the UK. > The study mostly used the investigator's judgement That is not correct. The study only marked a rape complaint as false if the accuser stated it was false. Cases where the investigator concluded it was false were not counted. This standard is clearly far too strict - women who made provably false claims and steadfastly refuse to ever admit it would not be counted in this statistic, thus the 40% figure for that study must be too low when using a more reasonable definition of false claim. > Question: if you go to 100 actual false accusers ten years after that incident, and ask them "Did you falsely accuse X of rape back then?". Do you really believe that 40% would be stupid enough to tell you? It might be worth reading the original study. It is here: https://ia800209.us.archive.org/4/items/FalseRapeAllegations/false-rape-allegations-archive.pdf https://ia800209.us.archive.org/4/items/FalseRapeAllegations... The answer is yes, 41% said they lied. I don't know where your 10 year requirement came from. Most cases were resolved as false far quicker than that, usually because inconsistencies in the stories surfaced very quickly. As you can see from the case files the study quotes directly, admission that the story was false is usually accompanied by an explanation of why they did it and the study shows almost all false accusations were motivated by just three reasons. I don't know why you think this requires stupidity. Prosecution for making false rape claims nearly never happens. It is extremely safe to admit you lied. But irritating the police makes it much less safe. It makes more sense to admit you lied quickly than to drag it out and risk the police deciding to prosecute for perversion of justice.

DanBC 9y ago
> with the self-reported perceptions of police (that false accusations are very common), not just in that study town but across the USA and in other countries as well, like the UK UK police are pretty clear that false allegations of rape are very rare, and are much rarer than either occurances of rape or true reports.
- peoplewindow 9y ago
  That's incorrect. The UK government did a study of this, which can be found here: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20100408125722/http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs05/hors293.pdf http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20100408125722/htt... The study is deeply biased, doesn't try to hide it and quite clearly tries to tell politicians what they want to hear. Nonetheless it has a lot of useful data and states two things of interest in this thread: 1 - the false reporting rate is stated as being about 10% in the UK. 2 - all police interviewed for the the study believed that figure was far too low. With respect to point (1) - once again this is a very, very generous definition of "false". For instance it doesn't include cases where someone reports a rape on behalf of the alleged victim and the alleged victim later states that no rape in fact took place. This is clearly a false accusation and it'd be just as distressing to the accused, but isn't counted as false. The inconsistency between the figures the study reports and the perception of police themselves is noted and discussed in the study: "Even if all those designated false by the police were accepted (a figure of approximately ten per cent), this is still much lower than the rate perceived by police officers interviewed in this study" Example quotes from working police officers: "I do deal with a lot of allegations that don’t go anywhere, because it transpires that it’s not quite a rape, certainly with juveniles ... we spend a lot of time dealing with allegations of rape that really aren’t rape, that take a lot of time up. I would say a good half that come through are not genuine ones." A different officer: "We have a lot of allegations that are then retracted, we have a lot of allegations that it comes out in the wash one way or another that it was consensual." And a different one: "Well, honestly, it’s because most of them are not telling the truth ... I mean I have dealt with hundreds and hundreds of rapes in the last few years, and I can honestly probably count on both hands the ones that I believe are truly genuine." There are no quotes or interviews with police officers who believe the 10% figure is accurate or think it's too high.

DanBC 9y ago

> with the self-reported perceptions of police (that false accusations are very common), not just in that study town but across the USA and in other countries as well, like the UK UK police are pretty clear that false allegations of rape are very rare, and are much rarer than either occurances of rape or true reports.

peoplewindow 9y ago
That's incorrect. The UK government did a study of this, which can be found here: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20100408125722/http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs05/hors293.pdf http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20100408125722/htt... The study is deeply biased, doesn't try to hide it and quite clearly tries to tell politicians what they want to hear. Nonetheless it has a lot of useful data and states two things of interest in this thread: 1 - the false reporting rate is stated as being about 10% in the UK. 2 - all police interviewed for the the study believed that figure was far too low. With respect to point (1) - once again this is a very, very generous definition of "false". For instance it doesn't include cases where someone reports a rape on behalf of the alleged victim and the alleged victim later states that no rape in fact took place. This is clearly a false accusation and it'd be just as distressing to the accused, but isn't counted as false. The inconsistency between the figures the study reports and the perception of police themselves is noted and discussed in the study: "Even if all those designated false by the police were accepted (a figure of approximately ten per cent), this is still much lower than the rate perceived by police officers interviewed in this study" Example quotes from working police officers: "I do deal with a lot of allegations that don’t go anywhere, because it transpires that it’s not quite a rape, certainly with juveniles ... we spend a lot of time dealing with allegations of rape that really aren’t rape, that take a lot of time up. I would say a good half that come through are not genuine ones." A different officer: "We have a lot of allegations that are then retracted, we have a lot of allegations that it comes out in the wash one way or another that it was consensual." And a different one: "Well, honestly, it’s because most of them are not telling the truth ... I mean I have dealt with hundreds and hundreds of rapes in the last few years, and I can honestly probably count on both hands the ones that I believe are truly genuine." There are no quotes or interviews with police officers who believe the 10% figure is accurate or think it's too high.