Much of the information (though not the opinion) contained in the following is derived from a paper by Loyola Law School professor Edward Greer. You can read his paper here.

Psychology is a science.

Or, at least, that is how the discipline views itself.

This is a good thing, and I’m proud to be a part of it. I take great pride in saying that as an experimental psychologist, I am obligated to pursue the knowledge as objectively as possible, always working under the assumption that the truth exists, and the only thing left to do is discover it. As a scientist, I believe in reality, that matter exists (sorry Bishop Berkley), and that data are data; that is, the facts are the facts are the facts, regardless of what political or philosophical implications they may have.

So it is no exaggeration to say that I work under the assumption that when I encounter what is generally deemed to be a consensus, I can use whatever data said consensus brings about without ambivalence. I can trust that the long, ponderous peer review system has vetted any suspect data, or any conclusions that might be unduly influenced by a particular ideology.

This assumption serves me well most of the time, but on occasion, it fails me (and every other researcher). My recent investigations of rape and society’s view of rapists and their victims is just such an occasion.

I have been researching rape for as long as I have been involved in psychological research (which is, incidentally, not that long). Some statistics are encouraging, others are depressing. Overall, the trends are good: By and large, society views rape victims in an increasingly positive, supportive manner. Rapists are punished. This is a good thing, unless, of course, the “rapist” in question is innocent. This is the scenario I would like to address: The phenomenon of false rape reports, and a “consensus” reached by the academic community thirty years ago about their prevalence (or lack thereof).

On January 16th, 1974, Justice Lawrence H. Cook made a speech to the New York State Bar Association. In his speech, the good Justice remarked that

…according to the Commander of New York City’s Rape Analysis Squad, only about 2 percent of all rape and related sex charges are determined to be false and this is about the same as the rate of false charges of other felonies.

How Justice Cook came upon this statistic is unknown; the only other reference from that time period is an article published in The New York Times Magazine, by a reporter named Grace Lichtenstein. Ms. Lichtenstein cited the 2% claim, and listed her source as a NYPD Lieutenant named Julie Tucker. Sadly, today, no one seems to know who Ms. Tucker was or where she is today, much less contact her for comment.

Up to this point, what is eminently frustrating about this whole affair is the fact that no one – not Justice Cook’s speech writer, nor any other member of his staff – can recall where the 2% statistic came from. The only information we have is that it was most likely not from a written report.

Had Justice Cook’s speech gone completely unnoticed, I might be short one more blog posting, which would suit me just fine. As it turns out, however, Susan Brownmiller (a feminist ideologue masquerading as a journalist/scholar) was busy crafting her seminal work, a book entitled Against Our Will. You might know Brownmiller for her lifelong attempts to gut the First Amendment and legally ban any kind of media she deems inappropriate.*

Anyway, Brownmiller cited Justice Cook’s speech, stating:

[The FBI's] 15 percent figure for false accusations is undeniably high, yet when New York City instituted a special sex crimes analysis squad and put police women (instead of men) in charge of interviewing complainants, the number of false charges in New York dropped dramatically to 2 percent, a figure that corresponded exactly to the rate of false reports for other crimes. The lesson in the mystery of the vanishing statistic is obvious. Women believe the word of other women. Men do not.

…and it would appear that idealogues believe other idealogues. In the years following the publication of Against Our Will, the 2% statistic made its way up the ranks, and eventually gained acceptance. Not surprisingly, disciplines overpopulated with feminist conflict theorists found Brownmiller’s revelation to be just what they were looking for: evidence that, generally speaking, women do not lie about rape. Of course, in comparison to other crimes, this may indeed be the case - only further research will reveal the truth. The one thing we do know is that it almost certainly exceeds 2%.

Today, Brownmiller’s statistic is cited everywhere: in academic papers, in the general press, in pamphlets distributed to college freshmen, by rape councilors, by advocacy groups… everywhere. A PsychINFO (the central repository of psychological research) search for papers referring to Against Our Will, returns no fewer than 263 results, many of which reference the 2% statistic as established fact. The legal community has been even more accepting of this particular canard; in fact, a representative of the Association of American Law Schools has stated that it is the “overwhelming consensus”, and that its source is “government data”. The “government”, in this case, is apparently defined as a mysterious New York police Lieutenant, and the “data” are things she might have said to someone associated with a New York Appellate Court Justice and/or a reporter for the New York Times. This can hardly be described as comprehensible, much less scientific.

What is fascinating – or, perhaps more perplexing than anything else – about this whole affair is Brownmiller’s lone response to criticism of her proposition that only 2% of rape accusations are unfounded. While her claim has enjoyed wide acceptance, it has also been soundly refuted. Estimations of false rape reports range from 8% to as high as 51%; either way, it certainly seems that it is higher than the percentage of false reports for other violent crimes, a fact that stands in direct opposition to Brownmiller’s hypothesis.

In 1995, when faced with this unpleasant set of facts, Brownmiller’s only response was this e-mail, sent to a professor at the University of Texas at Austin:

The cite from the New York City Rape Analysis Squad was reported by Judge Lawrence Cooke to the NY Bar Association in 1974. Cooke was a leading appellate justice at that time. Cooke, the Bar Association, and the NYC Rape Analysis Squad were impeccable sources. The information was fresh & exciting. It had appeared nowhere else. The person who attempted to discount it in the post you reproduced denigrated New York State’s leading appellate justice, a city agency, and me.

Note the lack of any response to the actual charge at hand. Brownmiller attempted to sidestep her biased research by claiming that any attacks on her work are nothing more than ad hominem ramblings directed at not only herself, herself and a New York appellate justice, but both of the above and the entire New York City Police Department.

As I put on my scientist’s hat for a moment, allow me to make one more point: Brownmiller points out that the 2% figure was “fresh and exciting” and “had appeared nowhere else”, apparently under the diluted impression that she is presenting some kind of defense of her work. Susan, allow me to dispense a bit of advice, one feminist to another: Touting the fact that your data were unique, new, and had not been replicated is not a defense – it simply speaks to the probability of a flaw in the methodology used to obtain said data, the record of which – if such a beast exists in the first place – is probably lying deep in the bowels of some NYC government warehouse, possibly next to Jimmy Hoffa’s remains (envision the last scene in “Raiders of the Lost Ark”).

Don’t worry, Dr. Jones… we have top men working on it. Top men.

The 2% myth needs to die. It needs to die because I need a pool of literature untainted by unfounded claims. It needs to die so that academics will stop writing papers that have been degraded by its inclusion. But most of all, it needs to die so that we can start figuring out what percentage of rape claims really are unfounded, study the scenarios involved in the unfounded cases, learn how to differentiate them from legitimate rape claims, investigate said legitimate claims, arrest rapists, study them and figure out exactly what makes rapists what they are, and devise a method of actually reducing the number of rapes in America by reducing the number of rapists.

…is anyone actually interested in doing that? Gloria? Catherine? Kim? …anybody?

* Immediately after this entry was posted, it was brought to my attention that Catherine MacKinnon was responsible for introducing legislation banning pornography, not Susan Brownmiller. I am unaware of any direct attempts made by Ms. Brownmiller to bring about such legislation (although they may exist - I simply don’t know).