… lots of interesting responses. Writers debate in particular the author’s motivations.
The likeliest motivation, which does not appear on the list of possibilities to which I’ve linked you, seems to UD simple intellectual curiosity. Not to get revenge, or reassure yourself you’re hot, or compare notes to confirm you’re normal, or take control of your own narrative, yadda yadda…
Why don’t people take the thesis for what it is? It’s a thesis. This is a woman interested in a perfectly interesting question. How does a particular group of people behave sexually? What are the variants, etc?
Do we look at a Masters and Johnson study and say they did it in order to take control of their personal narratives?
True, their methods were not as unorthodox – or unethical – as those here, but the Owen study wouldn’t be the first in which an observer was in one way or another involved in her own protocol.
October 13th, 2010 at 10:12AM
Methinks you jest….but on the off chance that you’re serious, the study could have been improved by including other groups…say, the literature club and the calculus club…so that cross-group comparisons could be made. (Of course, this raises issues of sample size and logistical feasibility)
Imagine a bar graph with “average satisfaction per encounter” on the Y axis and “lacrosse players, literature club members, and calculus club member” on the X axis. This is possible Nobel Prize material, especially to the extent that the higher bar aligns with the backgrounds of the prize judges…
October 13th, 2010 at 10:53AM
small sample statistics can be dangerous, David…
October 13th, 2010 at 11:14AM
Bill…”small sample statistics can be dangerous”…indeed. But given the mathematical illiteracy of most journalists, this shouldn’t get in the way of extensive media coverage…
January 4th, 2011 at 10:17AM
[…] it quickly shifts to a merciless attack on Ms Sex Thesis herself, Karen Owen (background here and here. Flanagan calls this Duke senior (she was a senior when she researched and wrote the sex thesis; […]