Skepticism and Criticism of Eugene Kanin’s Study of False Rape Reports

From the article:

"So what about Kanin’s report, which found that over 40% of rapes reported to police are false? I wouldn’t suggest that Kanin has a political agenda — but I do think his methodology (which consists of tabulating police data from an unidentified small town) was overly credulous."

It could be - depending on the small town. When companies wish to test market a new product in the United States they pick a location that has demographics that roughly represent a cross-section of the demographics in the United States. I do not know if something like this was done in this study. Studying human behavior is not like studying human biology or health. Culture - including religious beliefs - must be taken into account. For example, let us suppose that, in this small town, 90% of the residents were members of a religion in which women were considered very lowly and consensual sexual behavior outside of wedlock is a grave sin that would make them an outcast for the rest of their lives. A woman who was caught having consensual sex might have an incentive to claim it was rape even if she loved the person. Was this the case here? I do not know. I do not know what town it was.