
Young 'pranksters' skewed landmark sexuality study - pavel_lishin
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2014/01/young-pranksters-skewed-landmark-sexuality-study
======
GuiA
> more than 70 percent of the self-reported adolescent nonheterosexuals had
> somehow gone “straight” as older teens and young adults.

Sexual orientation isn't a fixed value that stays the same forever. Especially
during teenage years, a lot of people are still unsure of their preferences
and may identify a in a certain way at a certain point in time that they won't
down the line.

And yes, of course teenagers are likely to check random boxes as well - either
to be silly, or because they fear that their results may be identified and
used against them by parents/teachers.

None of those 2 things should be shocking for anyone who's ever worked with
teenagers.

~~~
speeder
Say that to some gay rights activists and they will get VERY upset (usually
those that defend that gays are born gay, and thus this is why gays must have
several rights, and why the religions should not consider it wrong).

I had a particularly heated discussion once, with a hetero woman that was
sympathizer of gay rights, she was VERY convinced that sexual orientation was
fixed, she told me that there is no such thing as "ex-gay", and all "ex-gay"
are just closeted homosexuals and will become gay again given enough time.

I gave her some articles about ex-gays complaining about receiving MORE flak
after becoming ex-gay than when they were gays (including there is a existance
of... closeted hetero, people that were gay, and do not assume to be hetero
because both hetero and homosexuals then attack them, assuming he is still a
sort of traitor gay), this still did not convinced her.

Then I showed a discourse by Luiz Mott (leading gay rights activist in
Brazil), where he claims that he was hetero, and now is gay by his own choice,
and that he was NOT born gay.

This STILL did not convinced her, she told me that Luiz Mott was a liar, but
only in that case (and that everything else he says is true).

Sometimes people disappoint me.

~~~
12throwaway345
Using a throwaway as I am not out yet and If I am out, I would be disowned at
best or killed at worst. Sexuality is fluid. That is 100% true. Though I'd
never been attracted to women, sexually, I had fooled with a friend in Uni,
who is bi. He says that he started liking guys only after he was 20. He never
thought about having sex with guys before and asked why he wanted to have now,
he said initially he was curious and now he likes it after trying for the
first time.

The concept of sexuality being fluid can be a touchy topic to gay activists
and also some gay people is because of the religious people. If everyone
starts to think that sexuality can be changed, the bigots and crazy religious
people will put more effort into the conversion therapy. In the current state
of the world, that will do more harm than good.

~~~
wwweston
I suspect there are degrees of fluidity: that some people have a flexible
orientation largely driven by choice and experience (I know at least one
person who reports this is how it is for her), but for others, orientation is
largely fixed and even significant conditioning efforts don't make much of a
difference.

------
Crito
I'm just stunned their data is as good as it is. In high-school I never
answered a single survey like that honestly. Nobody I knew did. The idea that
adults would be shocked to learn that all teenagers had unprotected sex with
hundreds of random partners a month was too amusing.

In retrospect, there may have been a reason we had to go to so many
educational 'assemblies'...

~~~
rprospero
I'm on the reverse end of the spectrum. When researchers came in to ask
questions about violence and weapons in schools, I truthfully tried to help
them as best I could. It was only later that I understood that, when they
asked if I'd seen a student fire a weapon at school in the past month, they
hadn't meant for me to include the latin club's trebuchet.

~~~
Pinckney
I helpfully told them that I used theobromine weekly (in the form of
chocolate).

------
dasil003
Being in this demographic (I graduated high school in 1996), right away this
reminded me of a friend of mine who was so not gay but claimed bisexuality in
this time period. I don't think it was in any way a prank, I just think there
was a certain trendiness about it. Looking back, a sort of aggressive
tolerance of GLBTs feels like a defining factor for my generation from the
kids who came up in the late 80s.

After my generation it just seems to be taken for granted a bit more, and thus
uninteresting to youth culture. I realize this is just anecdotal, but suffice
it to say that this result does not surprise me in the least and I think
researchers are bit out of their depth when they try to ascribe logic to the
phenomenon ex post facto. The "data" they have does not reflect the dominant
cultural psychology of the time which is paramount in any youth study.

------
awakeasleep
I think the assumption that self-reported data can be trusted makes a mockery
out of every field of study that relies on it.

Setting aside the fact that it's hard enough to design a double (triple?)
blind study of mice, setting aside the fact that people will lie and joke
around for pleasure, how can you ever get past the fact that 'who we are' and
'who we want to be' are inextricably linked?

~~~
Crito
> _double (triple?) blind study of mice_

Would that be a study where the _mice_ are not aware of if they are in the
control or not?

Has the placebo effect been seen in mice?

~~~
jmmcd
You've never heard of the three blind mice? I believe the farmer's wife won a
Nobel prize for her work in regeneration of severed limbs.

~~~
Crito
I'm a little ashamed to admit that you had me googling for that. ;)

Seriously though, the idea that mice might have a placebo effect is
fascinating. I would have thought that the placebo effect would require some
high-level form of self-awareness (which perhaps mice do have, I don't really
know) and an understanding of at least the purpose of medicine. Maybe not
though...

~~~
yaddayadda
Mice are the most intelligent species on Earth. In fact, they are so smart
that they are immune to placebo effects. However, they act like they aren't
because our reactions provide them much entertainment -
[http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Mice](http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Mice)

Edited to add: On a more serious note, I don't know if mice are susceptible to
a Hawthorne-like effect
[http://psychology.about.com/od/hindex/g/def_hawthorn.htm](http://psychology.about.com/od/hindex/g/def_hawthorn.htm)
Even physical science researchers have to deal with observer effects
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect_%28physics%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect_%28physics%29)

Edited to clean up brain-drained errors.

------
lifeisstillgood
My favourite part is from a related study where the youngsters "miraculously
grew back missing limbs".

I think we are all getting better at noticing badly designed studies. A while
back some study in the UK was publicised saying that nearly a 1/2 of 12 year
olds had committed a crime, and 1/4 a violent crime. Yes. 12 year olds. The
expected out cry was muted. I assume most people did what i did and imagined a
study like this

* researcher walks into playground and asks group of kids if any have ever committed a crime.

\- I might have taken a mars bar from the corner shop once. \- Well I take a
mars bar every week \- That's nothing, I take the cash out the till while he
is watching you take the mars bars. \- yeah well last week he saw me do that
so i stabbed the cashier. \- Only stabbed him, I took a shotgun the last time
and had to reload while the blood was pumping out of his twitching body and I
slipped on his guts on the way out of the shop.

------
crystaln
This came out of Cornell??

1) Adolescents are well known to be more confused about sexuality than adults,
often conflate friendship and charisma with sexual attraction, and often
experiment with sexuality and later decide what's for them. It's not
surprising at all that the number of bisexuals would drop.

2) As I read this, they changed the question from "romantic attraction" to
"sexual attraction" between the two surveys. Seriously???

------
pje
> “We should have known something was amiss,” says Savin-Williams. “One clue
> was that most of the kids who first claimed to have artificial limbs (in the
> physical-health assessment) miraculously regrew arms and legs when
> researchers came back to interview them.”

------
jaiball
I'm kinda surprised the researchers were "stunned" by the initial results,
trusting those young whippersnappers to be al truthful...

------
001sky
_“We should have known something was amiss,” says Savin-Williams. “One clue
was that most of the kids who first claimed to have artificial
limbs...miraculously regrew arms and legs when researchers came back to
interview them.”_

...You can't pay for better monologue material than this.

------
leoc
Straight out of the /Onion/.

------
websitescenes
The actual percentage of homosexuality or bisexuality in adolescents is
probably much higher. I am sure that there are many that answered as hetero
out of fear, confusion, or peer pressure. 5 to 7 percent seems like a
ridiculously low number.

~~~
lotharbot
One reason we gather data is because our opinions of what "seems like" reality
are likely biased in significant ways based on our experiences, philosophies,
and wishful thinking.

Generally speaking, surveys from various western countries seem to indicate
1-5% of adults identify as LGBT, with a slightly higher percentage of adults
reporting either some same-sex attraction or same-sex sexual experience at
some point in their lives. It came as a surprise when surveys revealed a
higher incidence of homosexuality among teens (5-7%), who are generally more
reluctant to self-identify as LGBT and less likely to be sure of their
sexuality; it now appears that those answers were unreliable.

See
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_sexual_orientat...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_sexual_orientation#Modern_survey_results)
and
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_United...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_United_States)

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maerF0x0
I kept looking at the address and title bar expecting to see "the Onion"...

------
cafard
“One clue was that most of the kids who first claimed to have artificial limbs
(in the physical-health assessment) miraculously regrew arms and legs when
researchers came back to interview them.”

Assessing sexual tendencies and their occurrence in the population clearly is
difficult. But is it really that hard to figure out rates of prosthetic limbs?
I'd have thought there was sound data about that. And if those numbers looked
funny, why would you trust the rest of the data?

------
andrewflnr
I must say, I don't see the potential for confusion in "have you ever had a
romantic attraction to a man/woman?". I mean, there is definitely a difference
between romance and sex, but the question still seems pretty clear in what it
asks. Maybe they should have asked about both.

------
sp332
Fortunately this is a longitudinal study, so the effects can be seen over time
with the same people.

------
NAFV_P
Back in college there was a Gay, Bi and Lesbian group. My mate and I decided
to gatecrash it (he even took his girlfriend). This was considered typical
college behaviour, _to explore the universe_ ...

... although I tended to prefer the local fetish club. One night I managed to
survive until eight in the morning, and heard all this action coming from the
third floor.

"What's going on?", I said... "Some gay porn mate." "Hardcore?" "I presume
so."

