Things we didn't know

[oggbashan]

Ruddy researchers , don't tell the men! How do you think we housewives get by in Stepford? Tupperware parties?

Do you mean you have never seen the Tupperware erotic range?

The dishwashable double dildo? Or the dildo tripod for threesomes?

Tupperware parties aren't all they seem to be.

 

[49greg]

Well heck, why not? If I was a woman I won't give a guy a second glance, women are just too sexy and good looking. Men aren't. And breasts are sooooo great to .... well, you know. And a guy's junk is just plain ugly compared to a woman.

so of course women are bi or gay.

But then again my ex started hanging around with women, I asked her about it once and she said she was bi, then later made the statement that she was a lesbian and that there was no such thing as bi, "that's just women who don't want to hurt their boyfriends' feelings." She offered to check out any woman I dated to "sniff" them out to see if they were gay LOL. Of course now, 17 years later she identifies as 'Mr.' and I saw a pic of her when my current wife sneaked a peek at the ex's facebook page. the ex looks just like her father now!

 

[NaokoSmith]

Do you mean you have never seen the Tupperware erotic range?

The dishwashable double dildo? Or the dildo tripod for threesomes?

Tupperware parties aren't all they seem to be.

Ssh ssssh! don't tell everyone.

Gosh no, I am having a very dull time here with food storage items. Stay at the office a couple of extra hours, why don't you.
:whistlingemoticon:

49greg, your story was hilarious!

 

[rjordan]

If you get your science from the newspapers, you'll never lack for ignorance.

Responses in this thread just gave us a graphic demonstration of this.

The study was peer reviewed in a highly respected journal, but fortunately there's no need to waste time reading the actual paper to see what the research was really about.

Lit authors have critiqued the methodology described in a popular newspaper and found it to be bullshit.

"Paging Dr. Carson."

rj

 

[TxRad]

Responses in this thread just gave us a graphic demonstration of this.

The study was peer reviewed in a highly respected journal, but fortunately there's no need to waste time reading the actual paper to see what the research was really about.

Lit authors have critiqued the methodology described in a popular newspaper and found it to be bullshit.

"Paging Dr. Carson."

rj

Since no information was given on the paper other than the doctors name.... Makes it kind of hard to read.

ETA: I looked up the paper and what was in the newspaper was pretty much the synopsis of the paper. There was more detail in the paper but it all boiled down to the same thing the paper said.

So the choices to believe the findings or not still stand.

 

[oggbashan]

Since no information was given on the paper other than the doctors name.... Makes it kind of hard to read.

Many 'medical' reports in newspapers are likely to make the authors of the study get extremely angry because an observed effect as originally published has provisos and conditions.

The detail gets lost for an eye-catching headline.

 

[TxRad]

Many 'medical' reports in newspapers are likely to make the authors of the study get extremely angry because an observed effect as originally published has provisos and conditions.

The detail gets lost for an eye-catching headline.

Read the ETA on my post please.

 

[NotWise]

I don't really doubt their findings. I recently read about another study (can't get you a reference, but I think the article I read was in the Huffington Post) where the researches used brain activity to measure men's and women's response to visual stimuli. They concluded that men and women respond in exactly the same way.

That study went on to point out that while their findings on male responses were consistent with common male social behavior, their finding on women's responses were not consistent with common female social behavior. They concluded that women "filter" their physical response, so while women respond physically to the same stimuli as men they do not respond socially to the same stimuli.

So, women can all be bi (based on physical response) but most will still act straight.

 

[oggbashan]

Read the ETA on my post please.

I did.

It doesn't negate my comment which is a general one. If I believed all newspaper reports of medical research I would have been dead decades ago for making all the wrong choices.

Surprisingly, the most accurate populist reports of medical research seem to appear in the Reader's Digest.

 

[TxRad]

I don't really doubt their findings. I recently read about another study (can't get you a reference, but I think the article I read was in the Huffington Post) where the researches used brain activity to measure men's and women's response to visual stimuli. They concluded that men and women respond in exactly the same way.

That study went on to point out that while their findings on male responses were consistent with common male social behavior, their finding on women's responses were not consistent with common female social behavior. They concluded that women "filter" their physical response, so while women respond physically to the same stimuli as men they do not respond socially to the same stimuli.

So, women can all be bi (based on physical response) but most will still act straight.

Which all boils down to the fact that women show more control over themselves than men. That is nothing new.

Women have more social pressure than men.

Women bond with other women more easily over a million things that have no equal in men.

There are just too many factors to just up and use eye response to say 75% of women are Bi. It doesn't stack up with women I've known over a long life.

 

[rjordan]

Since no information was given on the paper other than the doctors name.... Makes it kind of hard to read.

ETA: I looked up the paper and what was in the newspaper was pretty much the synopsis of the paper. There was more detail in the paper but it all boiled down to the same thing the paper said.

So the choices to believe the findings or not still stand.

It took 10 seconds to google the doctor's name and find the abstract, to determine that it is, at least, legitimate science. Good science is meant to be criticized, but you can't use beliefs, hearsay or abstracts. You have to use science at least as good as what you are criticizing.

I wouldn't expect the article to be any different than the abstract, because the newspaper writer probably didn't read any more than we have.

So there is STILL no basis for believing or disbelieving the findings. The article and abstract are teasers, a brief synopsis. One meant for a general audience, one meant for the scientific community. Neither can be used to form an opinion of any kind beyond whether reading the paper would be interesting or not.

If it helps, think of the one-bombers who reject your stories admitting that they haven't even read them. That's what went on here.

rj

 

[rjordan]

I don't really doubt their findings. I recently read about another study (can't get you a reference, but I think the article I read was in the Huffington Post) where the researches used brain activity to measure men's and women's response to visual stimuli. They concluded that men and women respond in exactly the same way.

Like everyone else here, I haven't read the actual study either, but one feature of most scholarly writing is a review of available literature. What you publish must comport with what others before have noted, or offer an explain why they don't.

So any other relevant papers or experiments that have already been done would be reported. Maybe the study in HuffPost was covered in the paper. Not having read either, I can't say.

Science fiction is a lot like that. You can make up anything you want, but it can't violate known physical laws without a plausible explanation. Fantasy is more forgiving. Maybe that's why we all resort to it when we don't have a clue.

rj

 

[SamScribble]

I've got something to tell you about Great Aunt Louise. You may want to sit down...

Well ... I was starting to wonder about the strapping young lass that Great Aunt Louise refers to as her 'domestic companion'.

 

[Handley_Page]

I've got something to tell you about Great Aunt Louise. You may want to sit down...

"You see, son, all is not what it appears. Great Aunt Louise is the son of Great Grandfather Thomas."

 

[HandsInTheDark]

The study was peer reviewed in a highly respected journal, but fortunately there's no need to waste time reading the actual paper to see what the research was really about.

A friend of mine, studying biology at a decent school, and knowing a fair amount about design of experiments and statistics, just wrote me over this article, fuming. She's bi and has no bias against women interested in women. She tracked down the original paper (and sent it to me). Her contention: The paper itself is junk, and doesn't make the criteria for credibility (Cum Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc was her comment on it), and then she spent a few lines on how purely observational studies don't prove dick about causation. She then went on about how the newspaper article completely overrepresented what the paper even claimed was the hypothesis.

Bottom line, you can take this crap to a party and try to get your wet dream threesome going if you like, but good luck. The article has a lot to say about how lesbian women are basically like straight men, but there's nothing here of applicable social value.

 

[NotWise]

A friend of mine, studying biology at a decent school, and knowing a fair amount about design of experiments and statistics, just wrote me over this article, fuming.

Does your biologist friend also have a big background in behavioral sciences? The methods and standards are different.

 

[HandsInTheDark]

Does your biologist friend also have a big background in behavioral sciences? The methods and standards are different.

Her target field is neuroscience. I'd trust her grasp of things over anyone's here, unless someone wants to step forward as a professional researcher in the field.

 

[NotWise]

Not a researcher, and my profession is in physical science. My wife has a much greater interest in behavioral science, so through her instigation I have about 25 years behind me of reading in medical and behavioral sciences.

In behaviorlal sciences you can't dissect your subjects and defining causality is usually impossible. All you can do -- and the best you can do -- is offer a distinct stimulus and measure a clear response. The correlations they get in their studies are (from the point of view of a physical science) utterly abysmal. You might be surprised how poor the statistics are for the therapeutic effects of the medications we spend so much money for (in the US).

I can't entirely defend the newspaper article -- it was sensationalized. But you can read in the article at least part of what they actually found in the study, which was simply that most women responded physically to images of women as well as to men. Throw out any connotation that the response implies bisexual behavior. It doesn't. That was the sensationalized part of the article. They physical response and the social response are different.

We raised three daughters and when the oldest two were in high school we had a house full of their friends. I also spent years working with groups of girls while my youngest was growing up. It is entirely consistent with my experience that girls respond to the appearance of other girls. That does not imply bisexuality or lesbianism. It's the norm.

 

[rjordan]

Her target field is neuroscience. I'd trust her grasp of things over anyone's here, unless someone wants to step forward as a professional researcher in the field.

But the paper's authors field was not biology. It was psychology. As NotWise said, methodology is different in behavioral and social sciences. In most cases, they can't set up an experiment with controls, etc. They often deal with data sets that were never intended as data sets at the time.

You can't fuck with someone's sex life for science. You can only observe what is there and try to design experiments that proxy real behavior. Same in social sciences. Economists aren't allowed to dick around with an economy to see what happens. They have to deal with what's out there.

Anyway, I can't really argue about the quality of the paper as I haven't read it and it isn't my field. But I would have to give some weight to the fact that the paper was peer reviewed and appeared in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the journal of the American Psychology Association. They deem it to be good science, though it might not be what is possible in the hard sciences like biology.

rj

 

[Hypoxia]

I would have to give some weight to the fact that the paper was peer reviewed and appeared in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the journal of the American Psychology Association. They deem it to be good science, though it might not be what is possible in the hard sciences like biology.

I recall a truism that any discipline with the word 'science' in its name, isn't. Isn't science. Christian Science. Political Science. Computer Science. Behavioral Science. All fuzzy, or worse. The latter three are at about the level of alchemy circa 1600. Hast thou need of an alchemyste, sire?

No, such studies give no hard answers. Yes, they're easily sensationalized -- because humans ARE intently interested in sex and stuff, and sensational headlines grab eyeballs, same as Incest stories here. We're filthy monkeys.

I've not seen the paper but what jumps at me from the reports is that the Essex team earlier 'proved' that pupil dilation indicates sexual arousal. Proved? I've not seen that paper either but if hormone levels and brain activity were not being monitored with the visual stimuli, I am doubtful.

 

[Hypoxia]

..........

 

[TxRad]

I recall a truism that any discipline with the word 'science' in its name, isn't. Isn't science. Christian Science. Political Science. Computer Science. Behavioral Science. All fuzzy, or worse. The latter three are at about the level of alchemy circa 1600. Hast thou need of an alchemyste, sire?

No, such studies give no hard answers. Yes, they're easily sensationalized -- because humans ARE intently interested in sex and stuff, and sensational headlines grab eyeballs, same as Incest stories here. We're filthy monkeys.

I've not seen the paper but what jumps at me from the reports is that the Essex team earlier 'proved' that pupil dilation indicates sexual arousal. Proved? I've not seen that paper either but if hormone levels and brain activity were not being monitored with the visual stimuli, I am doubtful.

My thoughts exactly.

 

[Handley_Page]

WTF?
Cum Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc

Sorry, I didn't do Latin at my school, and Google's making a mess. . .

When this therefore this?

 

[oggbashan]

WTF?
Cum Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc

Sorry, I didn't do Latin at my school, and Google's making a mess. . .

When this therefore this?

It happened afterwards, therefore it was caused by the earlier event.

A couple of Og manufactured examples:

Prohibition in the United States happened before the Second World War, therefore Prohibition caused the Second World War.

My wife washed the dishes this evening; now she has a headache. Therefore washing dishes causes a headache. If I wash up the dishes tomorrow night, will she not get a headache and therefore I might get some nookie? (Or is the cause of her headache something else? Perhaps I shouldn't have agreed with her when she said that her butt looks big in the jeans she was wearing.)

 

[rjordan]

I recall a truism that any discipline with the word 'science' in its name, isn't. Isn't science. Christian Science. Political Science. Computer Science. Behavioral Science. All fuzzy, or worse. The latter three are at about the level of alchemy circa 1600. Hast thou need of an alchemyste, sire?

No, such studies give no hard answers. Yes, they're easily sensationalized -- because humans ARE intently interested in sex and stuff, and sensational headlines grab eyeballs, same as Incest stories here. We're filthy monkeys.

I've not seen the paper but what jumps at me from the reports is that the Essex team earlier 'proved' that pupil dilation indicates sexual arousal. Proved? I've not seen that paper either but if hormone levels and brain activity were not being monitored with the visual stimuli, I am doubtful.

Really? That truism would be surprising to the Botany & Plant Science department at my local university. Biological Sciences would be another, I suppose. How about Physical Sciences? The argument sounds a lot like something that would have been offered in the 17th Century and is still offered by evangelical science deniers of the 21st Century.

This is getting silly. A bunch of us stroke story writers with no apparent knowledge, let alone expertise in the field, critiquing a paper none of us has read, and probably couldn't actually understand.

I would be surprised if the paper claimed causality. I would be even more surprised if it claimed to have proven anything at all. Science and academia knows better. So far that claim has come from a friend of a friend on Lit who knows biology and some Latin.

The scientific method is pretty well known and rigidly imposed on anyone professing to be a scientist. Peer pressure is intense. Nobody gets away with much before being found out.

Experiments are never designed to prove a result. They are designed to be falsifiable. If there is any conceivable way the statement can be shown to be false, it is rejected (or modified).

All scientific experiments, even those in the hard sciences, use simplifying assumptions. It is impossible to deal with every real world condition within the scope of an experiment. So certain conditions are assumed to have negligible effect or their effect is not important to the outcome. These simplifying assumptions are careful described in any academic paper. If not, peers who want to take your grant money will jump your ass in a second, and it ain't pretty.

I have no idea what's in that paper. Less so from having read the popular article. But it might not be bad science for them to ignore hormone levels and brain activity as simplifying assumptions as long as the authors can justify doing so in the paper.

They weren't trying to build an entire human sexual response model. They were only trying to test one narrow hypothesis. It is idiotic for lay people to then extrapolate that as some sort of proof in a popular newspaper article.

BTW, the process of modeling the real world with simplifying assumptions is something we all do.
1. Let's assume that woman at the bar would actually go out with someone like me.
2. Let's assume that there are readers out there who would like a story about aliens with giant tentacles fucking our women.
3. Let's assume I can afford $300 a month for a car. Should I buy it?
4. Let's assume the doctors are right and there is no hope of resuscitation.

On that basis we make decisions, sometimes very important ones, about what we are going to do. We approach the woman, we write the story, we buy the car, we pull the respirator plug on dad...or not.

We build a simplified model of the real world and use that to make certain predictions about our chances of getting laid, earning red H's, driving a Mercedes to the class reunion or ever seeing dad alive again.

That's what science does. That's undoubtedly what those sex researchers do every day. You won't learn that from newspaper science.

rj