Can Query<int> be made safer?

[betty-crokker]

I just needed the Id column from a table so I did this:
var ids = db.Query<int>("select id from Data where channel=?", [channel]);
and it happily returned a List with a single value of zero.
The answer, of course, is:
var ids = db.QueryScalars<int>("select id from Data where channel=?", [channel]);

I see now that Query<> has to have a table type and that you can't specify a query that returns anything except entire rows.
Why, though, did it happily return a List instead of some kind of error? Is there a way to add error checking so it "notices" the mistake?