Thomas Hoskyns Leonard Blog: JOHN W.TUKEY and the KINSEY REPORTS on HUMAN SEXUALITY

Monday 22 August 2016

JOHN W.TUKEY and the KINSEY REPORTS on HUMAN SEXUALITY

The Kinsey Reports on male and female sexuality emphasised that gay and lesbian behaviour was much more prevalent than hitherto acknowledged, and endemic in the population. One of the lasting effects of the report has been the socially labelling of people into categories into which they might not wish to be put, For example, some of us still believe that there is an element of choice. Others think that we are all, by and large, a mixture,

Alfred Kinsey has long since been vilified with various accusations regarding his supposed sexual activities, It is not obvious to me how many of these terrible accusations come from the reactionary American right wing, If true, then they could discredit Kinsey's scientific investigations,

John W.Tukey and his colleagues criticized the soundness of Kinsey's data collection procedures at an early stage, Despite the deep flaws which Tukey exposed, Kinsey's key conclusions could well be true, in broadly qualitative, though not in precise quantitative terms.

THE KINSEY REPORTS (1948 and 1953)

The Kinsey Reports are two books on human sexual behavior: Sexual Behavior in the Human Male^[1] (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female^[2] (1953), written by Alfred Kinsey, Wardell Pomeroy and others and published by Saunders. Kinsey was a zoologist at Indiana University and the founder of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction (more widely known as the Kinsey Institute).

Sexual Behavior in the Human Female was based on personal interviews with approximately 6,000 women. Kinsey analyzed data for the frequency with which women participate in various types of sexual activity and looked at how factors such as age, social-economic status and religious adherence influence sexual behavior. Comparisons are made of female and male sexual activities. Kinsey's evidence suggested that women were less sexually active than men.^[3]

The publications were immediately controversial among the general public. The findings caused shock and outrage, both because they challenged conventional beliefs about sexuality and because they discussed subjects that had previously beentaboo.^[4]

Kinsey's methodology used to collect data has received criticism. It has been suggested that some data in the reports could not have been obtained without collaborations with child molesters.^[5] The Kinsey Institute denies this charge, though it acknowledges that men who have had sexual experiences with children were interviewed, with Kinsey balancing what he saw as the need for their anonymity to solicit "honest answers on such taboo subjects" against the likelihood that their crimes would continue.^[6]^[7] Additionally, concerns over the sample populations used were later addressed by the Kinsey Institute. The conclusion of the Kinsey Institute was that none of Kinsey's original estimates were significantly affected by these data sources.^[8]

JOHN W.TUKEY

And way back in the 1950s, while working for the National Research Council, he made a splash by criticizing Alfred C. Kinsey's research on sexual behavior. The Kinsey Report had shocked the nation by depicting the country's sexual habits as far more diverse than had been thought. But Tukey thought the work was seriously flawed, using, as it did, convenience samples of people who knew each other (rather than scientific random samples). For years, Kinsey and Tukey clashed. Even at their first meeting, Kinsey asked Tukey to stop singing that Gilbert and Sullivan tune while working. Retorted Tukey: "A random selection of three people would have been better than a group of 300 chosen by Mr. Kinsey."

STATISTICAL PROBLEMS OF THE KINSEY REPORT
(COCHRAN, MOSTELLER, and TUKEY. 1953)