1 in 200 American Pregnancies Virginal

[Link]

Actually, I don't accept Jesus as my "Lord and Saviour", but I do identify as a cultural Christian.

That's the worst kind.

[Alcon]

I'm not sure I buy the 'statistical noise' theory - 45 people who were pregnant were asked if they ever had sex and they said 'no' - that suggests some.... lack of knowledge among certain people. Although perhaps some did answer no for trolling purposes.

We're not claiming it's statistical noise.  It can't be solely statistical noise, because statistical noise doesn't apply when you're picking up on a population that doesn't exist.  We're claiming it's behavioral noise: you get enough people in a sample, and you'll inevitably have a few who provide inaccurate, combative, sarcastic, ironic, whatever, answers, and 1-in-200 doesn't seem drastically high.

Plausible but I doubt it can explain all cases. Again, I recommend you read the abstract.

Intuitively, I agree with you that it's probably a mix of sincere and insincere responses, but I don't agree with the idea that a 1/200 statistic is too high to be "behavioral noise."

[Tetro Kornbluth]

I'm not sure I buy the 'statistical noise' theory - 45 people who were pregnant were asked if they ever had sex and they said 'no' - that suggests some.... lack of knowledge among certain people. Although perhaps some did answer no for trolling purposes.

We're not claiming it's statistical noise.  It can't be solely statistical noise, because statistical noise doesn't apply when you're picking up on a population that doesn't exist.  We're claiming it's behavioral noise: you get enough people in a sample, and you'll inevitably have a few who provide inaccurate, combative, sarcastic, ironic, whatever, answers, and 1-in-200 doesn't seem drastically high.

Plausible but I doubt it can explain all cases. Again, I recommend you read the abstract.

Intuitively, I agree with you that it's probably a mix of sincere and insincere responses, but I don't agree with the idea that a 1/200 statistic is too high to be "behavioral noise."

Possibly... I find it difficult to imagine 45 different people saying "Yes, I'm clearly pregnant but no, nobody has ever touched me" though.