From Live Action:
As noted in part one of this series, there are many legitimate criticisms to be leveled against “Father of the Sexual Revolution” Alfred Kinsey’s books, “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” and “Sexual Behavior in the Human Female.” Specifically, aspects of Kinsey’s methodology have been called into question – including his sampling methods, his statistical analysis, and his interviewing technique. Kinsey’s books have also been criticized because they invoke the authority of science (which, as we’ll see, is not science at all) to promote a radical, revolutionary sexual agenda.
Kinsey himself stated: “[R]emember that even authorities sometimes publish things that aren’t so … [W]hat experts believe to be true may be found incorrect upon further investigation.”[1] Though he almost certainly did not intend these words to apply to himself or his work, an examination of the methodology behind his books shows that they, in fact, do.
Perhaps the most obvious methodological problem with Kinsey’s research lies within the sample population itself. Kinsey biographer James H. Jones writes that, because Kinsey’s sample was “far from random,” its reliability was “problematic.”[2]
Kinsey’s sample was not just non-random – it was deliberately skewed to favor unusual individuals. Jones notes that Kinsey “went to great lengths” to obtain histories from people with non-traditional sexual histories and habits, which “undermine[d] the representative quality of his sample.”[3]
And who were these unusual individuals? Jones writes that Kinsey interviewed too many prisoners, including and especially sex offenders. He also interviewed too many college students, and “too many [people] he knew in advance to be gay.”[4]
Kinsey co-author Paul Gebhard stated that, in their prison-based interviews, the Kinsey team “had no plan of sampling – we simply sought out sex offenders, and, after a time, avoided the more common types of offense (e.g. statutory rape) and directed our efforts toward the rarer types.”[5]
In other words, Kinsey sought out sexual deviants and gleaned his research primarily from them.
Although these individuals were clearly far from “average,” Kinsey used data obtained from them to make generalizations about the American population as a whole, effectively representing it as far more sexually promiscuous than it actually was.[6]
Another problem with Kinsey’s sampling method is that he relied on volunteers. Only a certain type of individual is willing to be interviewed about his or her sex life — a problem of which Kinsey was aware.[7] Noted psychologist Abraham Maslow – architect of the Hierarchy of Needs theory – conducted research on what he termed “volunteer-error,” and stated that “any study in which data are obtained from volunteers will… show a falsely high percentage of non-virginity, masturbation, promiscuity, homosexuality, etc.”[8]
In a paper co-authored by James M. Sakoda, Maslow concluded that people “with histories of unconventional sexual behavior would volunteer for [Kinsey’s] sex studies, while those whose histories were conventional would generally not participate.”[9]
Shortly after the “Male” volume’s release, anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer said that, because Kinsey relied on volunteers at college lectures and “on personal introductions from interested individuals … his population is completely distorted” and “statistically invalid[.]”[10]
Noted statistician John W. Tukey said that it was doubtful “whether useful and significant generalizations about the population as a whole can actually be inferred from the kind of samples which Dr. Kinsey has used.”[11] (Read more.)
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