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someone who actually read the study pretty much tears it apart
http://thesexevolution.com/blog.html
Part 1
Today, one of my favorite pages, I F*cking Love Science, let me down...er...down there.
She reposted an article on some pretty specious findings regarding female squirting during sex. The headline to the IFLS article proclaimed:
"Study Concludes That Women Who Squirt During Sex Are Actually Peeing"
But that's a very biased take on what the research actually found.
First, the research was based on a sampling of seven women, making it extremely suspect as to the legitimacy of applying any of the findings to the general population of billions of women. Do we now F*cking Love Specious Science?
But, it gets much worse from there...
The medical term for "peeing" is "urination." First, let's look at the definition of "urination."
Urination - "the primary method for excreting water-soluble chemicals from the body" (wikipedia)
and what, exactly, is urine?
"Urine is an aqueous solution of greater than 95% water, with the remaining constituents, in order of decreasing concentration urea 9.3 g/L, chloride 1.87 g/L, sodium 1.17 g/L, potassium 0.750 g/L, creatinine 0.670 g/L and other dissolved ions, inorganic and organic compounds." (wikipedia) (emphasis mine)
So, basically, the bladder flushes water-soluble chemicals from the body in a fluid that is...almost entirely water.
All of the women in the study had an empty bladder at the start of the sexual arousal. During sexual arousal, the bladder began filling with fluid. After that fluid was "squirted," it was analyzed for content. They found that the fluid contained "urea, creatinine, uric acid, and prostatic-specific antigen." (emphasis mine)
prostatic-specific antigen = female ejaculate
So the "fluid" that women "squirt" appears to be 1) generated by sexual stimulation 2) almost entirely water and 3) contains elements of female ejaculate, in addition to the other water-soluble chemicals of urea, creatinine, and uric acid.
So, this begs the question...isn't it entirely possible that the build up of mostly water in the bladder and subsequent excretion containing female ejaculate is the female body's way of flushing the female ejaculate from the body?
Also, the study itself does not "conclude" anything. To quote the language of the actual published research article, these findings only "indicate" what the fluid expelled during orgasm may be.
from the IFLS article:
"Squirting, they found, is essentially the involuntary emission of urine during sexual activity—though there’s also a small contribution of prostatic secretions as well."
So, what this sentence is saying is "squirting is the involuntary emission of water meant to flush water soluble chemicals from the body that contains, among other trace constituents, female ejaculate."
A more accurate headline that reported and framed the actual research findings in a way that is supportive of the reality of female sexuality would have been,
"Study Indicates That Some Women Who Squirt During Sex Are Experiencing an Orgasmic Flush"
The researchers of this study are now "working on a protocol to test whether the kidneys work faster to produce urine during sexual stimulation than at other times" which, if found to be true would actually support the idea that squirting is related to sexual activity and is a function of female sexuality.
In only one hour since this article posted on IFLS, the post has over 68,000 likes and over 28,000 shares. And so the misinformation machine rolls on...
IFLS just set women's sexuality back decades, if not centuries.
Part 2
IFLScience’s posting of a specious article on female squirting set women’s sexuality back decades, but it’s also a good example of the trend I see in the majority of articles posted on the internet about “sex” research that commit basic errors of science and journalism.
The IFLScience article and the study it reports on have a total of at least eight quite glaring and all too common errors that make this "news"
F*cking BAD Science.
here they are...
Three degrees of separation
how an “indication” for some becomes a “conclusion” for all
The IFLScience article is quoting another article which appeared in New Scientist that is quoting yet another study that appeared in The Journal of Sexual Medicine. And much gets lost or changed with each successive retelling of the information. For example, to quote the study itself, it “indicated” what might be the composition of female squirting. The New Scientist article’s headline was “Female ejaculation comes in two forms, scientists find.” Yet by the time this information reached IFLScience, the article “concludes” that women “are actually peeing.”
Most shockingly of all...check out this screenshot of the URL address for the IFLScience article, which clearly shows that at some point, the title for this article was changed from women “may” be peeing to women “are” peeing.
Picture
Hmmmmm.... Whether this was unintentional or done deliberately to create a click bait headline, well...you can decide for yourself.
Sample size
seven out of three-and-a-half billion?
The squirting study used seven women from the human population, which makes it a qualitative study, not a quantitative study. Which means you can’t extrapolate any conclusion from this study to the general population because the sampling size wasn’t large enough to eliminate the possibility that these seven women are outliers of some sort. Yes, you can say this data “indicates” (as the researchers do say) but you can’t “conclude” anything with respect to "all women” (as the IFLScience article does).
The close-ended question
it’s just bad science
This article poses what is extremely bad form in science. Namely, setting up an “either/or” universe of possibilities before you collect your data. From Janet Fang’s article, referring to female squirting...
“What it is exactly and where it comes from has been hotly debated: female ejaculation or adult bedwetting?”
Here she’s only giving us two options from the get go: either squirting is female ejaculation or it’s...adult bedwetting? Aside from the fact that “adult bedwetting” is an extremely biased, shaming term to apply to a natural sexual phenomenon, this framing leaves out the possibility for a third option, namely that the fluid is neither female ejaculate nor “adult bedwetting.” Which is, in fact, what the study suggests.
If you read the study, the fluid expelled was 1) the result of sexual activaty 2) expelled during orgasm and 3) contained female ejaculate.
So the study itself suggests that the fluid is a third, as yet undefined phenomenon that I have termed an “orgasmic flush.”
Correlation is not causality
"similar" is not "the same"
Just because the fluid contains elements of urine does not make it identical to urine or originating from the same process that produces urine nor does it mean that the fluid serves the same purpose as urine. The study indicated that the fluid women squirt during orgasm does contain female ejaculate, which urine does not contain.
Bias in selecting variables
if it looks different and smells different and tastes different...
As many of the commenters of the IFLScience article have pointed out, the fluid many women squirt does not look or smell or taste like urine, so something else is clearly happening here. The researchers determined that chemical composition was the only variable to quantify. Did the researchers observe differences in the appearance, smell or taste of the two different fluids? If not, they've created a bias in their definition of relevant variables by limiting it to chemical composition.
In reality, the appearance, smell and taste of the fluid would be much more relevant factors to consider as to the human experience of the phenomenon than the percentages of trace chemical elements written on a piece of paper. Yet, amazingly, (as you'll see below) the effect of this abstract quantifying of chemical elements by "researchers" is so powerful that it can actually change people's experience of the phenomenon.
Researcher bias
who’s framing the findings?
In a quote from the New Scientist article, Samuel Salama, the head researcher for the female squirting study believes every woman is capable of squirting "if their partner knows what they are doing.”
Whah!?!?!?!
Clearly, this researcher has a bias towards women’s sexuality, i.e. that women are passive participants who require their partner to “know what they are doing” in order for the woman to squirt. Yet, in Salama’s own study, some participants stimulated themselves to squirt through masturbation!
As I say in my Creating Yourgasm workshop, “No one gives you an orgasm, it’s Yourgasm.”
The idea that it’s taboo for women to stimulate themselves during heterosexual intercourse using their partner’s physiology is exactly why the vast majority of females do not regularly achieve orgasm through heterosexual intercourse. Do we say that males can achieve orgasm “if their partner knows what they are doing?” Of course not.
If this quote is accurate and not taken out of context, Salama betrays that his paradigm regarding women’s sexuality does not view women as the subject of their own stimulation, but as the object of their partner’s. What other unconscious bias is he bringing to his research analysis?
Reporter bias
who chooses what we’re reading?
On January 9th (the same day IFLScience published this article) the news broke all over European headlines of a Danish study of 34,000 men published by The Royal Society of Medicine titled “ritual circumcision linked to increased risk of autism in young boys.” Specifically, the study’s data suggests that circumcision nearly doubles the risk of autism in boys. From the published study:
“Professor Morten Frisch of the Statens Serum Institut, Copenhagen, who led the research, said: ‘Our investigation was prompted by the combination of recent animal findings linking a single painful injury to lifelong deficits in stress response and a study showing a strong, positive correlation between a country’s neonatal male circumcision rate and its prevalence of ASD in boys.’”
Now, what do you think is more “newsworthy” research to report related to sexuality? The chemical composition of female squirting or findings that an early sexual trauma may have lifelong health repercussions for half the population? Again, hmmmmmmm....
We are in dangerous territory when social media mavens select what stories to pass on because of their ability to generate massive hits and controversy rather than choosing to pass on stories that have massive health and wellness consequences for the population.
Is it news?
old news is no news
The idea that that the fluid women squirt comes from the bladder and is expelled through the urethra is not news. In fact, there’s only so many places in a woman’s physiology where that much fluid can accumulate. What is hotly debated is how this squirting is related to female sexuality and what purpose it serves. This study did observe that the fluid accumulated as a result of sexual activity and that it contained traces of female ejaculate.
If anything, this study is an affirmation that squirting is a natural function of female sexuality. Yet the headline that women "are actually peeing" implies the exact opposite.
So, in the face of all this bias, what's a Facebook user to do?
Think for yourself
credentials can mean crap
Yes, as a society, we should give more voice to the opinions of experts on a subject, but that doesn’t mean we should get lazy once those opinions are voiced. Elise Andrew (the person behind IFLScience) and Janet Fang (author of this article) both have science degrees. But they both clearly dropped the ball here. Be careful of not applying critical thinking yourself just because you think someone else already did that for you. All too often, they didn’t.
Think for yourself, Part Two
value your own reality
The comment thread on the IFLScience article is full of men and women expressing that they are now disgusted by something that used to give them pleasure, i.e. female squirting. And all because of what some biased researcher said about seven women in France that was erroneously framed and then miscommunicated and flippantly passed on by two seemingly credible sources.
Dial it Back, People
you're either part of the problem or part of the solution
We have created a media climate in which social media outlets feed the insatiable 24/7 appetite of their readers by passing on specious information without doing the proper fact checking that used to be taken for granted as part of journalistic integrity. Then we leave it up to the "comment section" for readers to do the job the original posters should have done in the first place. But by that time, the damage is already done with hundreds of thousands of "shares" to people who will only read the bad science. And we are dumbing down and diminishing our sex lives as a result.
The errors I have pointed out are well known in the scientific community. Dozens of informed commenters in the comment thread of the IFLScience article have pointed out many of the biases in the article that Andrew and Fang should have realized with their scientific credentials. If they are going to put themselves out there as scientific social media sources, then they should be held to the same journalistic standards as anyone else. Otherwise, they are only using their popularity to fuel a massive misinformation machine.
As for readers, please, do the math. According to wikipedia, "Andrew is currently the sole maintainer of the page." Without a support team behind her, Andrew cannot possibly fact check the credibility of the science in all of the articles she posts on IFLScience throughout the day, making the name of her page disingenuous.
Use your own critical thinking skills before you hit that "share" button just because you agree with the headline or even disagree. We are wasting too much valuable time and energy debating the merits of "science" that was so specious in the first place, it doesn't even deserve our time or energy to discuss, let alone share with the masses.
And before anyone says "Geez, women are always criticizing other women and stuff. Women should support other women!"
I am glad that Andrew and Fang are making female scientists more visible. And I'm supporting them by giving them both the respect of holding them to the same standards of integrity set by the fields of journalism and science that should be observed by anyone with a substantial media megaphone, male or female.
I am a human who is analyzing the behavior of other humans. Analysis has no gender. Behavior has no gender.
Making something that isn't about gender about gender is...sexist.
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