Warsie wrote:
jrknothead wrote:
I will never understand how some people can look at children as sexual objects, or how they have the ability to ignore the damage that they do to their victims...
1. It's genetic, as is so-called "normal" attractions.
2. see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rind_et_al._(1998)
I think this is the key point from the study referenced above:
Quote:
Rind et al. contended that the degree of psychological damage was based on whether the child describes the encounter as consensual or not.
If your study sample includes everyone from people who consented to sex with a 19-year-old at the age of 17 to people who were violated against their will during early childhood,
of course your results will be misleading.
What participants did have in common was that they were all college students. This and the former are problematic from a scientific point of view. And then one must consider the vast generalizations people have tried to make from the results of this one study (a common tendency among people who read study results, but don't really understand the research process).
It sounds like there were multiple problems with the design of the study, especially the way they found participants and grouped them together.
This is why under-graduate course work in research design and statistical analysis are now
pre-requisites for most reputable PhD programs in the sciences. Not to mention what you're required to study during the program.