Volume 42, Number 7 · April 20, 1995
Sex, Lies, and Social Science
By Richard C. Lewontin
Science in the Bedroom: A History of Sex Research
by Vern L. Bullough
Basic Books, 376 pp., $25.00
The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States
by Edward O. Laumann, by John H. Gagnon, by Robert T. Michael, by Stuart Michaels
University of Chicago Press, 718 pp., $49.95
Sex in America: A Definitive Survey
by Robert T. Michael, by John H. Gagnon, by Edward O. Laumann, by Gina Kolata
Little, Brown, 300 pp., $22.95
I once knew a man who was posted as a research scientist at an agricultural institute in what was then British Uganda. He told me with great frustration that he was having extreme difficulty in finding out whether his African assistants had actually carried out the procedures that he had prescribed because they had become so anxious to please their colonial bosses that they always answered 'Yes' to every question asked. He claimed, however, that he had thought of a way around the problem. In the future he would always elicit the same information twice in such a way that the correct answer would be 'Yes' the first time he asked and 'No' the second. It apparently had not occurred to him that if his assistants really always answered 'Yes' to every question, his scheme was doomed to failure.
Review, 6366 words
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