The thing is we already know that some languages are much more error prone, than other languages. But languages are not entirely to blame. Before we can find out proper correlations we should answer the question: how these errors came to be?
For example, what caused a typo in a sting somewhere, that now contains "foo" instead of "bar"? Likely cognitive overload, because the code was too complex to keep entirely in memory. I.e. author was to busy processing the code in his head to notice the typo he just made. Therefore code with lower cognitive load is likely to have fewer bugs like this or even overall.
Some programmers have learned that there is a way to prevent string typos with appropriate test cases and some programmers keep their code as simple as possible, i.e. with lowest cognitive load. So, we should see correlations to which languages such programmers prefer and which languages encourage such coding practices.
This is a complex subject that has much more to do with psychology, than with technology. And it should be studied as such. Trying to study bugs without touching psychology is pretty much bs.
For example, what caused a typo in a sting somewhere, that now contains "foo" instead of "bar"? Likely cognitive overload, because the code was too complex to keep entirely in memory. I.e. author was to busy processing the code in his head to notice the typo he just made. Therefore code with lower cognitive load is likely to have fewer bugs like this or even overall. Some programmers have learned that there is a way to prevent string typos with appropriate test cases and some programmers keep their code as simple as possible, i.e. with lowest cognitive load. So, we should see correlations to which languages such programmers prefer and which languages encourage such coding practices.
This is a complex subject that has much more to do with psychology, than with technology. And it should be studied as such. Trying to study bugs without touching psychology is pretty much bs.