Difference between revisions of "Talk:Alfred Kinsey"

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(10% or 4%: common knowledge)
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I would suggest immediate removal of this section from the article for all of these reasons.--[[User:Reginod|Reginod]] 15:19, 10 May 2007 (EDT)
 
I would suggest immediate removal of this section from the article for all of these reasons.--[[User:Reginod|Reginod]] 15:19, 10 May 2007 (EDT)
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== Unreliable source? ==
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The referenced article 'The re-whitewashing of pedophile Alfred Kinsey' seems to be quite suspect. Its published by Renew America, who have political disputes with Kinsey's work, and seems to be concerned mainly not with criticisms of his research but a combination of personal accusations and claims that Kinsey was and still is destroying society. Look at some of these:
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''This collection comprised nudist magazines that contained pictures and drawings of nude men and boys, and Kinsey would show them to his young male charges in his tent — alone — late at night.''
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Source, perhaps? No? Was Kinsey ever charged with any type of sex crime? Nope. Are there any witnesses or accounts of these late-night showings? Nope.
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''Kinsey is without a doubt one of the most vile, destructive and perverted individuals I have ever had the displeasure of studying.''
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Could it be that the writer is just the tiniest bit biased against Kinsey?
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A lot of the claims made are also dubious. The entire section on Dr. Fritz Von Balluseck, for example - the Nazi Pedophile who the article claims Kinsey protected and encouraged. If you do a bit of research on that, just a little googling, it seems that this claim was pulled out of the blue by a British TV program called 'Kinsey's Pedophiles' - which based its claims on 'newspaper findings' without nameing any specific newspaper. A claim which it appears to have in turn pulled from the claims of one Dr. Judith Reisman - who the author of the re-whitewashing article seems to hold in high estem.
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This Reisman is also reaponsible for many of the other claims repeated - most, if not all. Yet her own credability is pathetic. She appears to be on an anti-Kinsey crusade, publishing a series of books and a website attacking him, and making numerous claims which I can see at a glance to be nonsense. For example, the ''Kinsey's 'research' alleged that 10% of American males were homosexual'' line, which is actually just a misreading of his definition (The research actually claimed that 10% of males had homosexual tendencies, which could include bisexuality, or even heterosexuals who had recurring homosexual thoughts or fantasies even if not acted upon). And she makes some very dubious claims - once stateing that watching pornography caused the formation of toxic chemicals in the brain.
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The re-whitewashing writer seems to have a bit of a nazi obcession, comparing Kinsey to them no less than five times. Including one time where he argues that Kinsey must be like the Nazis because they both supported eugenics - well, eugenics was hugely popular at that time, quite a few US states passed eugenics laws and yet noone calls those representatives Nazis. It was in fashion.
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I just dont think we should refer to this collection of unfounded accusations and lies, written by a peddler of unfounded accusations and lies, in turn repeated by the creator of unfounded accusations and lies and without a spec of credability at any chain. I advise that it be removed, and never refered to here again, in the name of retaining what little credability Conservapedia has.
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I have not seen such an appallingly bad source used on Conservapedia since the article that claimed the Nazi Party encouraged homosexuality.
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  Suricou, the annoyed raven.
  
 
== 10% or 4% ==
 
== 10% or 4% ==

Revision as of 20:07, May 10, 2007

“He used faulty statistical sampling methods to baffle the unsophisticated.”

The following is a source by source explanation for my removal of the sentence ““He used faulty statistical sampling methods to baffle the unsophisticated.” from this article.

I removed the source “Felicity Barringer, "Sex Survey of American Men Finds 1% Are Gay," The New York Times, April 15, 1993, p. A- 1.” because the source did not say anything about “He [Kinsey] used faulty statistical sampling methods to baffle the unsophisticated.” It did say the numbers were lower than those reported by Kinsey, but not that his methods were in any way flawed. Did not support the claim it claimed to support, so removed.

I removed the source “Boyce Rensberger, "How Many Men in U.S. Are Gay?," The Washington Post, April 17, 1993, p. A-1.” because the source contradicts the first sentence of the article (it says that Kinsey estimated the percentage at 4%), and because source does not claim that he “used faulty statistical sampling methods to baffle the unsophisticated.” – it does say “Kinsey's numbers were not based on a statistically valid sample.” But that is a much weaker claim than the article here makes. Additionally, the full title of the article should be given, it is “How Many Men in U.S. Are Gay? Estimates Vary By Millions” not “How Many Men in U.S. Are Gay?”

I removed the source “Barbara Vobejda, "Survey Finds Most Adults Sexually Staid," Washington Post, October 7, 1994, p. A-1.” because it like the previous source does not accuse Kinsey of trying to baffle the unsophisticated, it simply says, “While studies of Americans' sexual practices date back to the work of Alfred Kinsey in the 1940s, much research in the field has focused on fertility, teenage sex or behavior related to AIDS. Many of the studies, including Kinsey's, were not based on a representative sample of the population.” (Very week criticism, if criticism at al,l compared to what the article claims.) Additionally the full title is “Survey Finds Most Adults Sexually Staid; Americans' Average Is Once Per Week”.

I removed the source “Judith A. Reisman, Kinsey: Crimes and Consequences the Red Queen and the Grand Scheme” because it does not contain the accusation that Kinsey intended to “baffle the unsophisticated” with his statistics—it does not support the claim it is used to support. Additionally Dr. Reisman has a degree in Communications, not statistics, biology, human behavior, or any relevant field and so is not really an appropriate source for this article at all. (She is also the major proponent of “erototoxins” a theory that has no science to support it—not even any she has produced—which pushes her views so far to the fringe that even if her background were in a relevant field—which, I repeat, it isn’t—she shouldn’t be used as a source here).

I removed the source “Tom W. Smith, "Adult Sexual Behavior in 1989: Number of Partners, Frequency of Intercourse and Risk of AIDS," Family Planning Perspectives, Vol. 23, No. 3, May/June 1991, p. 104.” because it does not even mention Kinsey – it mentions his institute and a 1970 study conducted by it, but does not even touch on the issue of the statistics used in Kinsey’s major studies. It does not support the claim it allegedly supported, and so was removed.

I removed the source “Franklin D. Jones and Ronald J. Koshes, "Homosexuality and the Military," American Journal of Psychiatry, Vol. 152, No. 1, January 1995, pp. 16.” because it contains the 4% number not the 10% number, and because it does not criticize Kinsy’s statistical methods. It does not support the claim it allegedly supported, and so needed to be removed.

I removed the source “Stuart N. Seidman and Ronald O. Rieder, "A Review of Sexual Behavior in the United States," American Journal of Psychiatry, Vol. 151, March 1994, p. 339.” because it notes that the Kinsey studies had “severe methodological limitations” but not the stronger claim that “He [Kinsey] used faulty statistical sampling methods to baffle the unsophisticated.” This source goes on to use the Kinsey data to make some evaluations of behavior, while noting the limitations of the data.

None of the 7 sources listed to support the claim, “He [Kinsey] used faulty statistical sampling methods to baffle the unsophisticated,” in fact support that claim. Since after seven tries no good source to support the claim was provided I removed the claim all together as it will likely not be supported.--Reginod 14:52, 10 May 2007 (EDT)

I removed these again, sine the revert seemed targeted at the 10% number not this claim.--Reginod 16:06, 10 May 2007 (EDT)

Reisman

For the reasons stated above, I would advocate removing Reisman (and especially the reference here [1] )from this article. I also want to add a few additional reasons here. First, she is not the first person to point out the statistical flaws with Kinsey’s methodology—so she can hardly be said to have “debunked” him. Second, Kinsey’s data, when the limitations of it are recognized, is still valuable and used in scientific papers – one of the sources above used it. Third, her quote stops short of the conclusion it seems to be used to support, in context she goes on to say:

Under scrutiny is the role of Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey and his contention that Americans are 10% to 47%, more or less, homosexual. Kinsey's percentage was seized upon by Harry Hay, the father of the homosexual "civil rights" movement, when Hay formed the Mattachine Society, urging that homosexuality be seen no longer as an act of sodomy but as a 10% minority class. Today, scores of homosexual activists cite Kinsey as the man who made the homosexual movement possible.[3]
But what if all of Kinsey's work was fraudulent, or worse? What if it reflects unethical scientists conducting unprosecuted criminal acts? For example, is it possible that scientists have conducted sexual experiments on children? Or that they could allow or encourage child abusers to conduct such experiments? The possibility that this actually occurred-and indeed that the claimed results of such experiments have played a critical and sustained role in our law and public policy-has led Congress to submit legislation which calls for an examination of the relevant facts. The legislation focuses on the research and publications of Dr. Alfred Kinsey and his colleagues ("The Kinsey Institute") conducted at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. The legislation is known as H.R. 2749, "The Child Protection and Ethics in Education Act.”

Fourth, she questions his results on homosexuality because:

However, without question, any "scientists" who reprint and encourage production of data on child sexuality which have been taken from child sex offenders engaged in "manual or oral" sex with babies and children, are not scientists but propagandists-indeed guilty of admitted criminal sexual conduct, by the descriptions in their publications, whether the sexual offender(s) were identified and prosecuted or not. To trust anything these men or their disciples produce is to put one's faith in those who use the language of science to accomplish personal, criminal, and/or sexual interests. Hence, whatever Kinsey's claims of homosexual percentages and normality were, these become, pragmatically, as invalid as his child sexuality data.

That is, she finds some of his subject area distasteful and therefore we should reject all his data. This is (at best) a moral critique of the study of sex research, it is far from a scientific critique. Fifth, her “evidence” of criminal wrongdoing on the part of Kinsey and his associates is minimal at best—I see lots of hand waving and hysteria, but no actual evidence—and even if Kinsey were guilty of encouraging the sexual abuse of children (a fact I highly doubt, but am open to the possibility of being wrong on) that doesn’t invalidate his other numbers.

I would suggest immediate removal of this section from the article for all of these reasons.--Reginod 15:19, 10 May 2007 (EDT)

Unreliable source?

The referenced article 'The re-whitewashing of pedophile Alfred Kinsey' seems to be quite suspect. Its published by Renew America, who have political disputes with Kinsey's work, and seems to be concerned mainly not with criticisms of his research but a combination of personal accusations and claims that Kinsey was and still is destroying society. Look at some of these:

This collection comprised nudist magazines that contained pictures and drawings of nude men and boys, and Kinsey would show them to his young male charges in his tent — alone — late at night.

Source, perhaps? No? Was Kinsey ever charged with any type of sex crime? Nope. Are there any witnesses or accounts of these late-night showings? Nope.

Kinsey is without a doubt one of the most vile, destructive and perverted individuals I have ever had the displeasure of studying.

Could it be that the writer is just the tiniest bit biased against Kinsey?

A lot of the claims made are also dubious. The entire section on Dr. Fritz Von Balluseck, for example - the Nazi Pedophile who the article claims Kinsey protected and encouraged. If you do a bit of research on that, just a little googling, it seems that this claim was pulled out of the blue by a British TV program called 'Kinsey's Pedophiles' - which based its claims on 'newspaper findings' without nameing any specific newspaper. A claim which it appears to have in turn pulled from the claims of one Dr. Judith Reisman - who the author of the re-whitewashing article seems to hold in high estem.

This Reisman is also reaponsible for many of the other claims repeated - most, if not all. Yet her own credability is pathetic. She appears to be on an anti-Kinsey crusade, publishing a series of books and a website attacking him, and making numerous claims which I can see at a glance to be nonsense. For example, the Kinsey's 'research' alleged that 10% of American males were homosexual line, which is actually just a misreading of his definition (The research actually claimed that 10% of males had homosexual tendencies, which could include bisexuality, or even heterosexuals who had recurring homosexual thoughts or fantasies even if not acted upon). And she makes some very dubious claims - once stateing that watching pornography caused the formation of toxic chemicals in the brain.

The re-whitewashing writer seems to have a bit of a nazi obcession, comparing Kinsey to them no less than five times. Including one time where he argues that Kinsey must be like the Nazis because they both supported eugenics - well, eugenics was hugely popular at that time, quite a few US states passed eugenics laws and yet noone calls those representatives Nazis. It was in fashion.

I just dont think we should refer to this collection of unfounded accusations and lies, written by a peddler of unfounded accusations and lies, in turn repeated by the creator of unfounded accusations and lies and without a spec of credability at any chain. I advise that it be removed, and never refered to here again, in the name of retaining what little credability Conservapedia has.

I have not seen such an appallingly bad source used on Conservapedia since the article that claimed the Nazi Party encouraged homosexuality.

 Suricou, the annoyed raven.

10% or 4%

Two of the references use on the original version of this page show that Kinsey claimed that 4% not 10% of the American public was homosexual—no references have been provided supporting the 10% claim—I think that if my addition is going to be reverted, at least some sources should be provided. The articles make a point of saying the Kinsey was misunderstood to be claiming the 10% number, so a reference to “everybody knows” Kinsey said it is not sufficient here.--Reginod 16:04, 10 May 2007 (EDT)

It's common knowledge. RobS 16:06, 10 May 2007 (EDT)