Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is such research actually. Look at the studies by Kanin, Jan, and their replications. The topic of what proportion of allegations are false is studied from time to time, but not often, because the studies that are done usually report eye-wateringly high figures. In the UK, official government research put the figure at 10% of all (rape) accusations being false. But if you read the reports, you'll see that the t…
This is interesting, and coheres with my working hypotheses about this subject. I'm planning to write a paper about this subject. Which paper do you mean by Jan and what replications have you got in mind? And where do you recommend I look for the UK figures?
A word of warning. I've found that there is a shocking rate of lying about these studies, both in other academic papers and the media. Moreover you have to read the papers carefully because they're often written by people with an explicit agenda (to minimise the false reporting rate - exception is Kanin who appers to have no agenda). You really have to watch out and not take any claims at face value, even when they'd appear to be in credible reports from credible sources. It's very sad but it appears that in a rather meta way, the topic of false reports of rape is dogged by false reports about studies of false reports about rape!
The idea that the rate of false reporting is very high is probably once of the most controversial and dangerous topics in our society today. If you write your paper you are very likely to be attacked for it, at least if your paper is based on police report data. Good luck!
Kanin, 1994
https://ia800209.us.archive.org/4/items/FalseRapeAllegations...
He reviews police reports for every single rape allegation in an unnamed American town, selected because the police department had the time and resources to investigate every allegation thoroughly. In 41% of the cases, the allegation was false. In this study, for a report to be considered false the accuser had to agree it was false. Thus the true rate must be higher, as there was no real incentive for the women to admit they lied to the police. The study provides data on the motives for why the false allegations were made.
Note the appendix. The original Kanin study was done on an unnamed American town. In the appendix they replicate the findings in a US university. Actually the percentage there is slightly higher at exactly 50% false reports (admitted false by the accuser).
The data Kanin provides on why false allegations are made has been replicated by the Dutch police:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313830325_Motives_f...
This Dutch replication doesn't examine the percentage of all claims that are false, just the motives for cases proven false.
Jan Jordan, 2004
http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/jhamlin/3925/4925HomeComput...
This study examines New Zealand police reports and replicates Kanin, by finding a 41% false reporting rate. The paper is horrendously biased, but nonetheless contains useful ground truth data about the NZ police conclusions in a large number of rape reports. The breakdown is:
- Genuine cases, 21%
- Uncertain/insufficient evidence, 38%
- Police investigated and concluded the complaint was false, 33%
- The complainant themselves said their own report was false, 8%
If we add together 33% and 8% we get 41%.
The paper goes into a lot of detail if you're looking for material.
Finally, the UK study is here:
https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110218141141/ht...
It states that in 9% of cases the claims were considered false by the police. This is quite far off Kanin and Jan, so what's going on? Again, it requires careful reading. About 20% of all reports are "no crimed", that is, the police classify the report as "no crime occurred". This classification is intended for very narrow and unusual situations like the original report being made accidentally, but the prevalence shows it's not being used like that. The UK has put considerable pressure on its police to always 'believe the victim' etc, and they appear to have come up with this way to minimise the number of reports classified as false. It should be clear that if someone files a report of rape (which can't really be accidentally reported), and the police conclude no crime occurred, this is the same thing as a false report. These two categories take the UK to 29%. Lower than Jan and Kanin but still very high. The missing chunk is probably the category where the accuser withdrew their police report so investigation did not continue. These reports may or may not be false. This study also contains some data on motives.
One theme that crops up in quite a few of these papers is that when police officers are interviewed and asked to estimate the rate of false reports, they give rates in the 40-50% range. In media reports you will frequently see a rate of 2% being quoted, so this is an exceptionally large difference in perception between journalists writing about the topic and police who deal with it. The UK study has some anonymised quotes from police talking about the problem.
There are many posts in this discussion thread stating that men are wrong to worry because "the statistics prove false allegations are not a problem". That claim appears to be false: replicated studies show the problem is vastly larger for rape than any other crime (false report rate for murder is ~2%). Men are probably right to be wary.