Rape
A team of University of Nebraska researchers recently learned just how difficult it is to give advice.
Several months ago, they published a study showing that resistance--fighting back or screaming--was the best way to avoid rape. Their study showed that only half the women who resisted, but nearly all those who didn't, were raped. The results, which were based on police reports, contradicted long-held assumptions that physical resistance would backfire and increase brutality.
Soon after the story swept the popular press, a woman on campus was raped--after doing just what the study suggested. "The young woman apparently threatened to expose the identity of the man who broke into her room," explains Ann Coyne, Ph.D., author of the study. "He got frightened and strangled her to death." Later, in checking police records for a description of the incident, Coyne made a startling discovery. "Her case was listed as a homicide, not a rape. That opened up a truly fatal flaw in the study: "It may be that ours was not a sample of everyone who was raped in Omaha that year, but only those that the police categorized as rape." Apparently the police were classifying those rape cases involving major injuries or death as serious bodily assault or homicide.
