|
Ugh what a horrible, horrible article. Journalism covering research is usually pretty lacking but this really goes above and beyond the usual level of failure.
The article begins by describing the conclusion that 3 to 13 minutes as "the optimal amount of time for sexual intercourse." But most of the text seems to focus instead on the actual typical duration of intercourse, e.g. "the median time for sexual intercourse was 7.3 minutes." As if to conflate the issues even more, the title is "Sex Takes 3 to 13 Minutes, Study Says." (Shouldn’t it be "Survey Says?" -- cue Family Feud)
What is optimal and what is typical don't seem to necessarily have very much do to with one another, so it seems to me that one of them is out of place in the article. Furthermore, the claims made beg elucidation as to how these conclusions were reached, and the article really gives no meaningful insight into that.
In the first place, saying a particular measure is "optimal" with no point of reference is pretty meaningless. In order for it to mean something, we would want to know what it is optimal for. Even if we did know, the article describes the source of this claim as "a survey of sex therapists." But we don't actually know what the sex therapists were asked, or how they responded.
Beyond that, I'm not sure how much credibility I find in some "sex therapist's" declaration of what the "optimal" time is for intercourse. But one thing I can say for sure, is I find it much more credible than this shit:
| quote: | | Dr. Irwin Goldstein, editor of the Journal of Sexual Medicine, cited a four-week study of 1,500 couples in 2005 that found the median time for sexual intercourse was 7.3 minutes. (Women in the study were armed with stopwatches.) |
Now, I don't know what instructions the study participants were given, but even if I did, I wouldn't trust that they actually followed them properly. I mean, I'm trying to picture the scenario here:
Man: "Okay, I'm about to commence with penetration!"
Woman: Hold on, I have to get the stopwatch!"
...
And then what, does the woman try to time it so she stops the stopwatch simultaneously with the man's ejaculation? I have a hard time believing that people actually did this, much less accurately. And we have to assume that the psychological effect of being "timed" wouldn't affect anyone involved at all, which seems unlikely.
All in all, this article doesn't really provide any information because it's so badly written and poorly organized that it leads one to believe the author may well have woefully misunderstood the survey(s)/studies/what-have-you being reported upon. For all I know, maybe 3 to 13 minutes was really the amount of time spent on this piece of shit article and had nothing to do with the survey.
|
