How not to respond to bad science … by scientists

Even experts can leave you wishing they hadn’t said something so stupid

No doubt you will have heard of the great G-Spot Crisis of late? You see, a recent British study added more fuel to the smoldering controversy over whether or not the notorious supposed female erogenous zone exists when it concluded that, no, it doesn’t. This may appear to be definitive on the surface, but upon closer examination of their methodology, it becomes apparent that the whole thing amounts to little more than some very bad science and sloppy research, including the highly imprecise and subjective method of having the test subjects fill out a questionnaire, of all things. Note to researchers: you don’t conduct good, impersonal and objective scientific studies by asking people; you do it by going straight to the source of the matter at hand. Geologists didn’t figure out the Earth’s age by referring to people’s best guesses, for crying out loud. (And, for the record, no, I don’t know how one might test for G-spots directly, but then again, I’m not exactly an expert in all matters anatomical research techniques and technology, am I?)

Jen at Blag Hag has the details; suffice it to say that in the end, this study is, shall we say, less than definitive. Several other groups are resentful over the results and the modus operandi employed to garner them, including (ironically enough) French gynecologists. They launched bitter refutations to the English researchers, which is good.

Or, at least, it would be good, if it weren’t for the fact that the arguments they used to counter the British study were, to put it mildly, unscientific. Or, in more popular parlance: fucking stupid. [Note that the colors in the quotes are original.]

It didn’t take long, however, for this news to reach the French, who aren’t about to start taking sex advice from across the channel. A group of gynecologists there convened their own conference in Paris to denounce this assault on female pleasure. Surgeon Pierre Foldes told a “G-Day” conference across La Manche: “The King’s College study shows a lack of respect for what women say. The conclusions were completely erroneous because they were based solely on genetic observations” [The Register].

… What!?

Um … it doesn’t really matter what women say or believe when it comes to the objective practice of science? No offense to womenfolks, but things and concepts don’t become reality just because people honestly believe in them. Plenty of religious people claim that they honestly feel God (or Jesus)’s influence in their lives; does that make it so? Tons of people honestly believed they had fallen under witches’ curses in the Witch Hunt years and thought they could actually feel the effects of the spells; does that means they were actually curses, as opposed to them suffering through conversion disorder (ie. the believed in being ill so strongly that their minds actually produced symptoms in their physical bodies)?

Of course, I’m not trying to compare women’s impression on the existence (or lack thereof) of G-spots to religious experiences or witchcraft. (Not that I really needed to point that out; but then, you never know.) The point is that, to be blunt, it doesn’t matter “what women say”, as subjective experiences and belief simply can’t be taken into account in order to conduct good, valid and objective scientific research. Asking whether women feel they have a G-spot or not is, at best, completely pointless.

(And, I’ll just ignore that line about the study being “based solely on genetic observations”, as that has enough stupidity in itself to become its own Stupid Quote of the Day.)

Really, French gynecologists, you are not making yourselves look any better, or the British study look any less credible (its current lack of credibility notwithstanding), by countering its arguments with such fallacious nonsense. I do hope your arguments get better afterwards?

The angry French gynecologists said they’d found the real problem with their British counterparts: that they’re British. The King’s College study, they said, had fallen victim to an Anglo-Saxon tendency to reduce the mysteries of sexuality to absolutes. This attempt to set clear parameters on something variable and ambiguous, they said, was characteristic of British scientific attitudes to sex [The Guardian].

… Or even worse …

Gynecologist Odile Buisson went even further in blaming national sex attitudes for supposedly leading the British researchers astray: “I don’t want to stigmatise at all but I think the Protestant, liberal, Anglo-Saxon character means you are very pragmatic. There has to be a cause for everything, a gene for everything,” she said, adding: “I think it’s totalitarian” [The Guardian]. She also told The Telegraph that the G-spot is real for upwards of 60 percent of women, and that saying anything else is “medical machismo.”

…

I think I wanna cry.

Seriously – this is what French experts, doctors and scientists have got in terms of rebukes? Nothing but whining about how it was too objective – ie. too scientific?!

Just couple their ranting to the fact that the British study could hardly be called “too scientific” to begin with, and you’ve just formed yourself a black hole of stupidity that threatens to suck in every bad bit of logic in the Universe, there.

(Hey, was I channeling Orac just there …?)

(via The Daily Grail)