by Doctor Science
You're probably going to come across coverage of Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam's book A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the World's Largest Experiment Reveals about Human Desire, released this week.
But judging by Ogas' article in the WSJ or his interview at The Daily Beast, they're not going to tell you that Ogas & Gaddam are a byword for how Not To Do It -- where "It" includes science, research, communication, thinking, and human decency. As Ned Pepperell of RMIT University (Australia) put it,
the whole thing unfolds something like a live action version of the phenomenon Justin Kruger and David Dunning discuss in their “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments”.I had a front-row seat.
In the summer of 2009, I was one of several fans active in the fanfiction-producing end of fandom whom Ogas contacted. He said he was
a cognitive neuroscientist at Boston University studying the brain mechanisms involved with creativity and sexual behaviorIt sounded a little off-the-wall to me and I didn't really see how they were going to draw any kind of useful conclusions, but I exchanged a number of emails with them. They were trying to develop an online survey to give to fanfic fans and writers, and, I later recalled:
I kept *thinking* it was going to turn into something clever, because no-one could seriously think that you could figure out what people are *hard-wired*[1] for by looking at *fan-fic*.Meanwhile, fans with more finely-calibrated Bullshit Detectors than I were realizing that (a) Ogas and Gaddam weren't actually working at B.U. or any academic institution (B.U. made them stop implying any affiliation with them), (b) their approach violated all standards of survey design, privacy, human subjects protocols, and logic, and (c) they had received a very substantial advance from Penguin to write a pop-evolutionary-psych book on a topic about which they knew nothing.Also, as we were discussing at dinner, when Guy & I did occasional psych experiments for $ in college they *never* told us what they were *really* studying, so I kept thinking this would maybe turn out to be a Cunning Plan to study, I dunno, font usage.
[1] my new least-favorite phrase. Seriously, someone's getting *stabbed*.
The resulting storm is known as "SurveyFail", well-summarized in this Fanlore article. To really appreciate why fandom reacted the way we did, you have to look at the screencaps taken of Ogas/Gaddam's posts (before they were yanked):
screencap archived here
I found this literally unbelievably stupid -- it took some persuading for me to credit that yes, that's really the level Ogas & Gaddam were operating on. That's why Pepperell called them a scientific example of Dunning-Kruger, and why cultural anthropologist Greg Downey put it:
In my brief and incomplete survey of the discussions of this research, it became obvious that slash fans were particularly irritated, not just by the initial bad research design, but also by the seeming inability to apologize, learn from criticism or even simply back off on the part of the researchers.Despite the immolation of their "research" project, Ogas & Gaddam forged ahead with their book. I haven't seen a copy yet, but I feel confident that it will live up to the product tags fans have been adding to the book's Amazon page: my favorite is the one I used for the title of this post, but I also like your sample population hates you now, unhindered by scientific rigor, and phds written in crayon. Sorry, Steven Pinker, you and all the other pre-publication blurbers go into my Never To Be Taken Seriously Again file.This tenaciousness is interesting in a number of ways, not just that it layers on PR FAIL on top of initial Research Design FAIL. I serve on a Human Ethics Research Review board and have for a number of years, and it’s intriguing to see which researchers simply don’t get it, and then which ones also CAN’T get it when it’s pointed out to them.
Ogas isn't just wrong, he's so completely wrong that makes it hard for me to argue against him, because I don't know where to start. For instance, the WSJ article basically says: online, men look for porn and women look for romantic stories. This is because the male sexual brain is a simple, goal-driven thing, while women have an inner Miss Marple looking for clues to male suitability before it lets us get aroused. In other words, men never read love stories, women never objectify men shallowly.
Um, what?!?
This was an ad for the Australian
lingerie store Gilly Hicks; click for full, NSFW version. From TrendHunter
Ogas writes:
The most popular fan fiction website—and the world's most popular "erotic" site for women—is FanFiction.net, which boasts more than two million different stories and more than 1.5 million visitors a month.Yes, fanfiction.net is extremely popular and high-traffic. But -- as I told Ogas directly -- it is *not* an "erotic" site, and it is *not* "for women". FFN (also known as "The Pit of Voles" or just "The Pit") kicked off the explicit sex stories in about 2001 -- not because "women aren't interested in direct, physical descriptions", but because the average FFN user is under 18. I call FFN "The Kiddie Pool", because it's where teen and pre-teen writers and readers tend to hang out.
Then he says:
Fan fiction also reveals another fundamental difference between male and female sexuality. Men almost always consume pornography alone. But in the fan-fiction community, the online discussion of a story is as important as the story itself. This reflects one of the primary investigative techniques of Miss Marple: soliciting information from other detectives.Ogas has absolutely no self-awareness: no clue that he has disproven the existence of stripper parties, for instance. Nor does it seem to have crossed his mind that people who have created something (a story, for instance) might want to talk about the thing they've made.
Ogas is fractally wrong: mistakes, over-generalizations, and blithe assumptions permeate his work on every scale:
Fractal Brain from the blog Cognitive Design
The real story about the human mind here is how eager so many of us are to reinforce certain kinds of differences. I agree with Greg Downey, who says:
I find the focus of 'evolutionary' theorists on the supposed 'hard wiring' of sexuality to be one of the more irritating and, well, hard-wired theoretical assumptions, even in the face of OVERWHELMING evidence to the malleability of human sexuality.One of the most enraging aspects of SurveyFail for me was, as Downey says,
The problem with Ogas and Gaddam is not that they are scientists; it’s that they are really BAD scientistswho make science -- and especially evolution, my chosen field -- look bad.
They ended up not titling their book "Rule 34"--I wonder if it was because that's the title of Charlie Stross's new novel.
Posted by: Matt McIrvin | May 02, 2011 at 09:50 PM
Looks like a good example of "not even wrong."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong
Posted by: Narc | May 03, 2011 at 12:19 AM
i wonder if ogas and gaddam merely set out to tell the story *they* wanted to tell from the outset. and went looking for some 'obscure' 'little' sub-community to find a few anecdotes with which to pepper their 'discussion'.
it's not hard for some to get the idea in their heads that you can call anything 'social science' if you 'survey' people. psychology has enough trouble being credible without 'post-modernist'* hacks using it to roll out their prejudices as if they were reasoned examinations of some topic or other.
[* post-modernism is so badly misunderstood by so many that it's pretty much died on the inside for most practical purposes. ditto for psychology, and the social sciences in general.]
Posted by: maelorin | May 03, 2011 at 09:09 AM
The sad thing is that the issues that social scientists look at really are interesting and important. Make that "competent and objective social scientists" -- unfortunately, all too often their disciplines are hijacked by people who get wedded to a political philosophy and use their discipline to support it. Which, not surprisingly, degrades whole disciplines and thus robs us of the real and useful things we might learn from them.
When I was in school (some decades ago), sociology had already gone far down that road. Anthropology (one of my majors) was still fighting to remain focused on actual data, rather than ideology. And having what success it had only because the diversity of societies that we looked at made it easier to come up with lots of counter-examples to most of the ideology-driven conclusions that sociologists were given to.
Stuff like this "study" may not be typical. Then again, they may simply be an exceptionally egregious example of a general phenomena. But every time something like this happens, any credibility that their field still has is degrades a little further.
Posted by: wj | May 03, 2011 at 09:57 AM
I find the focus of 'evolutionary' theorists on the supposed 'hard wiring' of sexuality to be one of the more irritating and, well, hard-wired theoretical assumptions, even in the face of OVERWHELMING evidence to the malleability of human sexuality.
Of course human sexuality is malleable, since the human brain is malleable (cf. Damasio's amazing examples). But malleability does not contradict genetic predisposition and we are in many ways less free to choose who we want to be than we would like to think.
Maelorin: I'm not sure why you associate these guys with post-modernism, especially since one of the pillars of the movement has always been criticism of exactly the kind of meta-narrative we are offered by them.
Posted by: novakant | May 03, 2011 at 02:17 PM
A long long time ago, on a soc.feminism.moderated far far away, someone pointed out that:
In order to be a liberal, one must believe that sexual preference (gay, bi, straight, etc.) is pretty much hardwired and not subject to modification by nurture or environment (liberals no longer blame "cold mothers" for gay sons, we no longer fear "recruitment", we deride efforts to "fix" gay orientation) -- but one must also believe that gender roles (agression, interest in porn, nurturance, interest in math, childhood gun-vs-doll play styles, etc.) are almost completely socially constructed by nurture and environment.
On the other hand, to be a social conservative, one must believe that sexual identity is determined by nurture and environment, but that gender roles are largely hard-wired.
Ever since then, I mostly maintain a respectful silence when these issues are mooted, since it appears to me that both these stereotyped stances are internally inconsistent.
Your mileage may and probably does vary.
Posted by: joel hanes | May 03, 2011 at 04:23 PM
gender roles (agression, interest in porn, nurturance, interest in math, childhood gun-vs-doll play styles, etc.) are almost completely socially constructed by nurture and environment.
First, I don't think that this is the standard liberal position; what I've heard espoused is the idea that some (maybe all) of those things are strongly influenced by the social environment and that figuring out where nature ends and nurture begins is really really hard. Historically, many of our efforts to declare various gender roles to be hardwired have turned out to be be bunk, therefore we should tread carefully in this area and refrain from saying things like "women can't be scientists because the female brain can't handle math".
it appears to me that both these stereotyped stances are internally inconsistent.
Where's the inconsistency? Both of the liberal positions seem to be rooted in empirical evidence: it seems that efforts to change people's sexual orientation are not successful whereas there's a great deal of evidence showing that gender roles are far more plastic and amenable to social signaling.
Posted by: Turbulence | May 03, 2011 at 04:46 PM
I'd just note that the Pinker pre-pub blurb can be found here. My own feelings about Pinker are rather complicated, but I think the blurb, which is
"In a stroke of ingenuity, Ogas and Gaddam circumvent the deepest limitation of standard psychological surveys: that they merely tap undergraduates' socially acceptable responses, a flaw nowhere more damaging than in the touchy realm of sexuality. A Billion Wicked Thoughts is a goldmine of information about this hugely important topic, and, not surprisingly, gripping and sometimes disturbing reading."
is Pinker looking down and seeing the shark as he passes over it.
Posted by: liberal japonicus | May 03, 2011 at 08:23 PM
joel hanes references something someone said once a long time ago to distinguish what liberals vs. conservatives believe about sexuality and gender roles. That seems to have about the same level of authoritativeness behind it as the research under discussion in this post. The description of what liberals believe sounds more like "what conservatives think liberals believe".
Posted by: dnfree | May 03, 2011 at 08:45 PM
It is always easier to state what conservatives think liberals believe, just as it is easier to state what liberals think conservatives believe. When you look in from the outside, you can skip the nuances which are obvious up close, and just give a simple (and simplistic) stereotype.
The challenge, for all of us, is to see the details in the opinions of those who generally have a different view from ourselves. It ain't easy.
Posted by: wj | May 04, 2011 at 10:23 AM
I suspect that sexual orientation is more fluid than most people acknowledge, but I also think it shouldn't matter whether it's inborn any more than it should matter whether your favorite color is inborn. And I don't think it's primarily something you can consciously choose to have, and certainly not a question of sin vs. virtue. I doubt I'm going to get kicked out of the liberal club for believing all this.
Posted by: Matt McIrvin | May 04, 2011 at 10:31 AM
joel hanes references something someone said once a long time ago to distinguish what liberals vs. conservatives believe about sexuality and gender roles.
I didn't read it that way at all; I read it as Joel trying to explain why he has learned to tread carefully in this area. Even though I don't think his analysis is right, I appreciate someone expressing a bit of humility. Seems all to rare.
Posted by: Turbulence | May 04, 2011 at 10:54 AM
I'm with Matt at 10:31 AM, since I don't see anything wrong with people being gay or straight, whether they have a choice or not. Maybe I don't understand liberalism, but that sounds liberal to me.
I mean, it may be an interesting question, nature v. nurture with regard to sexual orientation, from a scientific standpoint, but it has no bearing on right and wrong.
Posted by: hairshirthedonist | May 04, 2011 at 12:05 PM
Matt, at the risk of getting read out of the conservative club (not for the first time) for using the word, I think reality is more nuanced. I suspect that, in the vast majority of cases, people are born either heterosexual or homosexual.
However the situation is not pruely black and white. There are also people who are bi-sexual. For them, sexual orientation (or at least their perception of their orientation) can be substantially impacted by their environment. I suspect that they are also the ones who provide the examples of people who had their orientation apparently altered -- via argument, prayer, or whatever.
Posted by: wj | May 04, 2011 at 02:54 PM
It has always seemed to me a shame - intellectually - that for understandable practical / political reasons the "gay liberation" movement, or whatever one would now call it, nailed its flag to the mast of "nature" over nurture in its early days, and has never dared to consider pulling it down.
Understandable because this interpretation gets right around the questions of choice and "Why do you do [bad] things?" and "How can we change you?" that otherwise beleaguered gays and lesbians routinely encountered. Assert loudly "This is how we are - deal with it!" and one might hope to curtail some of these lines of offensive commentary. Probably it helped, although I'm in absolutely no position to tell.
OTOH, it also effectively curtailed much of the public self-questioning on the topic that might otherwise have ensued. It is my impression - correct me if I'm wrong (as I'm sure you will!) - that for someone who is involved in same-sex relationships to raise openly the thought that s/he might have chosen his/her sexual preferences, or even have been heavily influenced by environment, would often expose that someone to considerable opprobrium from supposed allies in the LGBT community.
My own view, like "hairshirthedonist," is that I don't really care why people love whom they do - it's all fine. But I'd like to know, and I regret that this strategic aspect of the question inhibits our answering it more convincingly.
Posted by: dr ngo | May 04, 2011 at 11:57 PM
I'm not convinced that there is that much opprobrium for the belief that sexual orientation is not genetic. For instance, this not particularly recent fact sheet from HRC comments that (paraphrasing) [while there is some evidence that sexual orientation is hereditary, the evidence is far from conclusive. What is conclusive is that people can't change their existing sexual orientation by choice.] That seems to be the dominant orthodoxy to me.
I think it is a mistake to conflate "I did not choose my sexual orientation, and I can't choose to change it," with "my sexual orientation is genetically determined." Certainly, there are some activists who make that mistake, but I think it is actually a more common mistake made by non-activists misunderstanding the first claim as the second claim.
I didn't choose to grow up speaking English, but I am a English speaking monoglot, and no other language will ever be as natural to me. For some people, sexual orientation is even more deeply rooted than language, for other people it isn't.
Even going beyond traits that are environmentally developed very early and are hard to change once they are developed, there is a broad swath of traits that are strongly influenced pre-natally that are not genetic.
My recollection of the limited research I've read on the heritability of sexual orientation is that a large Australian twin study found that sexual orientation could not be confirmed as hereditary, but that childhood gender conformity can be, and that childhood gender conformity is strongly correlated with sexual orientation in many studies. So there is some evidence that sexual orientation is at least indirectly genetically determined.
Posted by: Charles S | May 05, 2011 at 01:49 AM
On the actual post topic, I remember hearing about this absurdity of astonishingly shoddy research while it was going on. I'm rather impressed that this shoddy bit of tripe actually made it to print.
Posted by: Charles S | May 05, 2011 at 01:55 AM
My impression (though this is the perception of an outsider to the movement, albeit one who knows a lot of gay people) is that there are generational effects. Older gay and lesbian people are more likely to, for instance, be uncomfortable with the idea that a lot of people are really bisexual, for reasons partly rooted in movement political history. Under-40 ones, not so much.
Posted by: Matt McIrvin | May 05, 2011 at 10:37 AM
Thanks to Charles S for his clarification (and the HRC link). I sit corrected.
Posted by: dr ngo | May 05, 2011 at 12:08 PM
They have a blog, too: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/billion-wicked-thoughts
Not surprisingly, they haven't backed away from their "shemale"/slash comparisons or their fondness for twisting data to fit preconceived notions.
Posted by: Linka | May 05, 2011 at 11:21 PM
There are plenty of porn sites that have social networking functions now. Most of the tube sites have ways to rate videos, contact other members, even leave comments on the videos themselves - just like youtube.
If straight men want to sit by themselves and eat porn, then why are there social networking functions on these sites?
Posted by: Almanzo Greenwick | May 06, 2011 at 01:57 AM
Miss Marple? Who is, canonically, an elderly spinster from an era in which such women never got any? I find it absolutely fascinating that the pair of them chose Marple, rather than literally thousands of other female detectives (hellooo? Kate Martinelli? Sookie Stackhouse?)
Yeah, she's my role model whenever I go looking for Doctor/Master.
I like what somebody over at Freakonomics has called out as the recursive nature of this. The original AOL data was poorly anonymized. That means this book is looking at anonymized data, inferring which of it is female based on content, then using this inferred femininity to characterize the content. Sweet.
Posted by: Madame Hardy | May 07, 2011 at 11:08 AM
Posted by: Gary Farber | May 16, 2011 at 11:02 AM
Erm, especially since when I try using a little-used LJ log-in, all I get is "Access is denied.
You do not have access rights to view this entry."
So what's the actual story here? Am curious, as it goes directly to the point of the post.
Posted by: Gary Farber | May 16, 2011 at 11:04 AM
Wait, sorry: that link goes to a warning that one needs to be 18, but then the next link goes to here, which is readable. It's the link here that goes here that goes to a link that can't be accessed. (Which seems like a less than useful link for a Wiki.)
But this link works. (And maybe should be at that Wiki instead?)
Posted by: Gary Farber | May 16, 2011 at 11:11 AM
Argh, and this, from the next footnote at the Wiki entry also results in:
A Wiki entry that is full of links that are only accessible if you're personal friends with the people involved seems a suboptimal way of informing people about something they don't already know about. It also seems, um, weird. What were people thinking when they did this?Posted by: Gary Farber | May 16, 2011 at 11:13 AM
Hmm, this, I suppose?
I have the unmistakable feeling of walking into the middle of a conversation; having to do research and google to understand what people are talking about does that. What's the "IRB"?Posted by: Gary Farber | May 16, 2011 at 11:18 AM
Argh, I should have taken notes for one comment. Apologies!
But what does this mean?
Who's getting stabbed? What?Apparently I'm really dense this morning. Sorry about that. But I'm totally not understanding what this means, I'm afraid.
Posted by: Gary Farber | May 16, 2011 at 11:22 AM
Posted by: Gary Farber | May 16, 2011 at 11:24 AM
Who's getting stabbed? What?
Someone who uses the phrase "hard wired."
Also: huh? Connection?
The ad is an example of the objectification of men, presumably by women.
Posted by: hairshirthedonist | May 16, 2011 at 11:34 AM
Hard-wired:
I'm just over-used to this, so never mind, and thanks for responding! It was done by an all-woman ad agency? I'm skeptical. But thanks for explaining what was presumably meant!I seem to be feeling a bit more alien than usual this morning, but that's usual. :-) Sorry for being dense/outlier-as-usual.
I get that that's what's implied, but I'm not following why. Over-literal and too used to seeing the phrase for so many decades of reading on electronics, psychology, neurology and other areas where the phrase is a commonplace.Posted by: Gary Farber | May 16, 2011 at 12:33 PM
(I posted this in response to your comment on the freakonomics site: http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/05/17/the-neuroscience-behind-sexual-desire-authors-of-a-billion-wicked-thoughts-answer-your-questions/#comment-241592 )
Thank you for pointing out this error.
I was hoping to see you offer evidence of your own, but I am disappointed --and even a bit frustrstated-- to see the rest of your comment fit the same pattern or snark, outrage, and vitriol that makes a genuine scientific debate very difficult.
I read your post and see assert that the website is a "kiddie pool" , but provide no supporting evidence for it.
"it is *not* an "erotic" site, and it is *not* "for women" Ok, I am somewhat inclined to believe you, but will not until I see some supporting facts. Please point me to facts if you want to argue against assertions.
You attempt to refute a statistical statement by providing a single counterfactual: "existence of stripper parties" and yet here point out similar reasoning as equivalent to pointing to sad-looking apples and oranges and calling Wal-Mart a farmers' market. Aren't you doing worse?
I understand this is a blog post, but if you want to be taken seriously, you can't make statements like "fractally wrong" and not show why. A particularly toxic and detestable debating strategy is to laugh at the opponent and ridicule them for what is an unpopular opinion, without marshaling any evidence or logical argument.
What is your theory then? If the theory is that sexuality is malleable and there is "overwhelming evidence" for it, please do point to it. And do try to explain, without empty and evasive ridicule, why women and teenage girls are writing fanfiction and boys, straight and gay, are watching porn (statistically of course, no one's saying these are the sole and exclusive province of either sex). Otherwise your post and comment are just other rants in the garbage heap that vast swathes of the internet has become.
Posted by: Cassandra | May 20, 2011 at 02:32 PM
@Cassandra
The facts you're asking to be pointed to are common knowledge within fandom and can be confirmed with a quick Google, if one is not too lazy. I'm not usually one for doing people's Googling for them, but I had a free five minutes and an urge to school someone tonight, so here you go.
Re: ff.net being a "kiddy pool":
"A third of them are 18 and under, and about 80% are female, according to creator Xing Li..." --Time Magazine, 2002. (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1001950,00.html)
Re: ff.net not being an erotica site:
"On September 12, 2002, FanFiction.Net banned material that was rated NC-17. Stories categorized as NC-17, or advertised as potentially such, were removed." --Wikipedia (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/FanFiction.Net)
I didn't bother to find a more authoritative cite for that second one; I was around when the whole NC-17 ban exploded and I remember it. I'm sure if you really care, you can find something further about it in ff.net's TOS or by doing your own Google research.
I look forward to your next comment where you demand proof that water is wet.
Posted by: Montana | May 25, 2011 at 05:53 AM
I can't speak to how they handled their surveying of the fanfic community, but I still found the book very interesting in its conclusions.
We did a live interview with the author which you can watch here: http://elmaveshow.com/billion-wicked-thoughts-ogi-ogas-interview/
I never got the impression that they were "just in it for the money" or looking to prove something they had already pre-determined. If anything their initial thoughts were totally wrong. The book definitely presents another counterpoint to our own sexuality...which not many people approach in this manner.
Posted by: Benic | June 23, 2011 at 04:03 AM