O.T. The Kinsey report



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Topic: Religions > Atheism
User: "Eris"
Date: 01 Jul 2005 04:14:03 PM
Object: O.T. The Kinsey report
The rabid right has been claiming that everything that Kinsey reported
on or discovered has been disproved many times. Any truth to this.
.

User: "Jenny6833A"

Title: Re: O.T. The Kinsey report 02 Jul 2005 10:03:43 AM
Eris wrote:

The rabid right has been claiming that everything that Kinsey reported
on or discovered has been disproved many times. Any truth to this.

As you state it, there's no truth to it.
Kinsey was the first to enter a forbidden field. He worked under
severe restrictions that affected the accuracy of his work, and he was
well aware that this was the case. And, he was a man of his times with
many of the baseless prejudices of his time -- some of which he
overcame and some of which got in the way.
As happens to any pioneer, those who followed have refined his work,
have gone considerably beyond it, and have come to very different
conclusions on a relatively few matters.
Overall, Kinsey holds up quite well. Offhand, I can't think of any
ground-breaker who did better.
:-)
Jenny
.

User: "atheist@home"

Title: Re: O.T. The Kinsey report 02 Jul 2005 06:08:19 AM
On Fri, 01 Jul 2005 17:14:03 -0400, Eris <vithant@nospamgmail.com>
wrote:

The rabid right has been claiming that everything that Kinsey reported
on or discovered has been disproved many times. Any truth to this.

Lol!
It appears you already know what you want to believe so why not just
believe it and be done with it eh?
atheist@home#1554
.
User: "Eris"

Title: Re: O.T. The Kinsey report 02 Jul 2005 09:46:50 AM
On Sat, 02 Jul 2005 11:08:19 GMT, "atheist@home" <atheist@home.com>
wrote:

On Fri, 01 Jul 2005 17:14:03 -0400, Eris <vithant@nospamgmail.com>
wrote:

The rabid right has been claiming that everything that Kinsey reported
on or discovered has been disproved many times. Any truth to this.


Lol!
It appears you already know what you want to believe so why not just
believe it and be done with it eh?

atheist@home#1554

I honestly don't know and seek accuracy in this forum.
.
User: "Katt"

Title: Re: O.T. The Kinsey report 02 Jul 2005 10:11:20 AM
"Eris" <vithant@nospamgmail.com> wrote in message
news:m5adc15bchv4kv47qhjgmpa1d2211p9ipk@4ax.com...

On Sat, 02 Jul 2005 11:08:19 GMT, "atheist@home" <atheist@home.com>
wrote:

On Fri, 01 Jul 2005 17:14:03 -0400, Eris <vithant@nospamgmail.com>
wrote:

The rabid right has been claiming that everything that Kinsey reported
on or discovered has been disproved many times. Any truth to this.



I honestly don't know and seek accuracy in this forum.

Have a look at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Kinsey
Looks to me like he's simply the target of the usual terrified rightard
baloney: "Don't tell me what people are really doing, just make it seem that
my childhood fantasies about my parents are true and eternal and
natural...!!"
It's worth saying, though, that in science one really looks at *60-year-old
literature* as something of a 'last resort' (or as an act of admiring
nostalgia...): there's bound to be stuff done more recently that's
methodologically and statistically a bit more sound. That's the way science
works, after all!
Katt.
.

User: "Lars Eighner"

Title: Re: O.T. The Kinsey report 02 Jul 2005 10:56:54 AM
In our last episode,
<m5adc15bchv4kv47qhjgmpa1d2211p9ipk@4ax.com>, the lovely and
talented Eris broadcast on alt.atheism:

On Sat, 02 Jul 2005 11:08:19 GMT, "atheist@home" <atheist@home.com>
wrote:

On Fri, 01 Jul 2005 17:14:03 -0400, Eris <vithant@nospamgmail.com>
wrote:

The rabid right has been claiming that everything that Kinsey reported
on or discovered has been disproved many times. Any truth to this.


Lol!
It appears you already know what you want to believe so why not just
believe it and be done with it eh?

I honestly don't know and seek accuracy in this forum.

Well, that "everything you know is wrong" approach is pretty
broad. Essentially nothing in Kinsey's studies of sexual
behavior in human beings has ever been disproven because there
has never been a survey so large with such an accurate
instrument. If you send college kids around to knock on doors
with a twenty-question form, or call up people on the telephone
and ask them about their sex lives, you are going to get a lot
of doors slammed and phones hung up, but the responses you do
get will always be heavily biased toward what people think are
the conventional "right answers." You might as well ask
strangers "Do you cheat on your taxes and if so by how much?"
If you look at the survey instruments (i.e. the questionaires)
used by any study that supposely "disproves Kinsey," you will
see that they are grossly inadequate by comparison to Kinsey's.
There are some legitimate criticism of Kinsey, none of which
nearly so telling as this simple fact: Kinsey's study is now
nearly 60 years old - and those are sixty years in which
American society has changed in profound and fundamental ways.
Just to hit two points: 1) although America was a predominantly
urban nation by the time Kinsey did his survey, a large part of
the adult population had some rural background, and 2) Kinsey
could not find enough black respondents; America was still
highly segregated. You can make a lot of the cultural changes
since Kinsey did his work - the "sexual revolution" and all of
that - but that tends to distract from more fundamental social,
economic, and demographic changes.
Kinsey's idea of how to select a survey sample really lacked
statistical validity. Kinsey dispaired of obtaining really
random samples, so he opted to try to get 100% samples of the
groups he found to include in his survey. Kinsey's approach
makes a lot more sense for a pilot study, and really that is
what he was doing. He did not know what was out there, and
neither did anyone else. Kinsey's work did an excellent job of
determining what was out there when no one really knew. We
cannot be quite so confident that he did as good a job at find
how much was out there, although as I have pointed out, it is
still the best study that exists. The main reason, of course,
that it is still - after 60 years - the best work of its kind,
is that conservatives have always opposed funding for studies
with a similar depth.
--
Rev. Lars Eighner ULC Atheist #1965
http://www.larseighner.com/
Blasphemy is a blast for me.
.
User: "Katt"

Title: Re: O.T. The Kinsey report 02 Jul 2005 01:32:51 PM
"Lars Eighner" <eighner@io.com> wrote in message
news:slrndcde8i.1beh.eighner@goodwill.


Well, that "everything you know is wrong" approach is pretty
broad. Essentially nothing in Kinsey's studies of sexual
behavior in human beings has ever been disproven because there
has never been a survey so large with such an accurate
instrument. If you send college kids around to knock on doors
with a twenty-question form, or call up people on the telephone
and ask them about their sex lives, you are going to get a lot
of doors slammed and phones hung up, but the responses you do
get will always be heavily biased toward what people think are
the conventional "right answers." You might as well ask
strangers "Do you cheat on your taxes and if so by how much?"
If you look at the survey instruments (i.e. the questionaires)
used by any study that supposely "disproves Kinsey," you will
see that they are grossly inadequate by comparison to Kinsey's.

There are some legitimate criticism of Kinsey, none of which
nearly so telling as this simple fact: Kinsey's study is now
nearly 60 years old - and those are sixty years in which
American society has changed in profound and fundamental ways.
Just to hit two points: 1) although America was a predominantly
urban nation by the time Kinsey did his survey, a large part of
the adult population had some rural background, and 2) Kinsey
could not find enough black respondents; America was still
highly segregated. You can make a lot of the cultural changes
since Kinsey did his work - the "sexual revolution" and all of
that - but that tends to distract from more fundamental social,
economic, and demographic changes.

Kinsey's idea of how to select a survey sample really lacked
statistical validity. Kinsey dispaired of obtaining really
random samples, so he opted to try to get 100% samples of the
groups he found to include in his survey. Kinsey's approach
makes a lot more sense for a pilot study, and really that is
what he was doing. He did not know what was out there, and
neither did anyone else. Kinsey's work did an excellent job of
determining what was out there when no one really knew. We
cannot be quite so confident that he did as good a job at find
how much was out there, although as I have pointed out, it is
still the best study that exists. The main reason, of course,
that it is still - after 60 years - the best work of its kind,
is that conservatives have always opposed funding for studies
with a similar depth.

This is an excellent response, if I may say so: certainly it's better than
the one I posted!
I might also perhaps venture to say that while I have heard, over the years,
of various smaller studies with better sampling and statistics (and a bit
less of a 'campaigning' attitude behind them!), Lars is perfectly correct in
reminding us of how substantial research in this field gets *blocked* by
people who simply don't want us to know the answers to the questions. In
particular, I have a clear memory of Margaret Thatcher personally
intervening, c.1982, to block a grant of about £2,000,000 that was due to be
spent on the biggest ever study of what 'British family life' really is. She
was, of course, the most revolting and destructive conservative ***** our
nation has ever made Prime Minister -- and it's revealing that a 'family
values' Tory like her was *so afraid* of this research: the ***** *knew in
advance* that the results would shatter the homely illusions that she wanted
to propagate...!!!
Katt.

.


User: "atheist@home"

Title: Re: O.T. The Kinsey report 02 Jul 2005 11:59:46 PM
On Sat, 02 Jul 2005 10:46:50 -0400, Eris <vithant@nospamgmail.com>
wrote:

On Sat, 02 Jul 2005 11:08:19 GMT, "atheist@home" <atheist@home.com>
wrote:

On Fri, 01 Jul 2005 17:14:03 -0400, Eris <vithant@nospamgmail.com>
wrote:

The rabid right has been claiming that everything that Kinsey reported
on or discovered has been disproved many times. Any truth to this.


Lol!
It appears you already know what you want to believe so why not just
believe it and be done with it eh?

atheist@home#1554


I honestly don't know and seek accuracy in this forum.

It's the "rabid right" thing.
People right and left can disagree with Kinsey's techniques and
conclusions.
Many object to the fact that he used child molesters as a source for
studies regarding childhood sexuality.
They are generally extremely biased in their opinions and claims about
children and sex.
At any rate Lars pretty well covered it.
atheist@home#1554
.




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