From Chris Williams, European Centre for the Study of Policing, Open University
Thornhill admits that his data on the fertilisation rate following rape are
based on interview evidence. If this particular assertion is to bolster his
theory, he needs to prove that all women will report rape in equal proportion,
whether or not they become pregnant. An alternative explanation is that most
women who get pregnant through rape will admit it, but the reporting rate is far
lower for those who do not get pregnant.
His conclusion regarding the likelihood of rape during break-ins and the
victim’s age also presupposes that this crime is consistently reported. Not for
the first time, a behavioural scientist appears to have erred through affording
social scientific data—the product of cultural and institutional
filters—equal validity to the results of controlled experiments. Humans
cannot be studied like scorpion flies.
Milton Keynes
