Where “Occam’s Razor” entails taking one comment #9 and calling it “a lot of weaving and dodging”. And that comment isn’t even from a scientist writing in a scientific publication.

But I don’t see anything suggesting that the survey was made specifically to allow people to conclude silly things about gender roles. Nothing at all. If people want to conclude weird things from the survey results, is it the survey’s fault? Or maybe Occam’s Razor demands that we see an ulterior agenda behind the survey itself even if none’s apparent.

“In surveys since the 1960s, men typically report having more sexual partners and than do women – a statistically impossible feat.”

She also got caught out for the sloppiness of conflating the mean with the median, which shows not that she is stupid but that she might have thought her readers are.

But no matter. As Katherine said above, we’re missing the larger point:

“And I’d also like to call bullshit on this statement in comment #9: since a man would have to persuade many women while a woman need only be easy to persuade

This is exactly the kind of bullshit that flawed survey results are used to justify.”

Nice. I see a lot of weaving and dodging and just plain shitting on occam’s razor in this thread because this article upends people’s cozy expectations. Let’s unpack that statement (#9) a little. “A man would have to persuade many woman”—It’s normal for men to want to have many partners—and “a woman need only be easy to persuade”—a woman who have many partners is an abnormal slut.

As the New Scientist article I mentioned, researchers at Ohio university found that:

“Women change their answers depending on whether or not they believe they will be caught out not telling the truth, the researchers found. The number of sexual partners a woman reported nearly doubled when women thought they were hooked up to a lie detector machine.”

Somehow I find this a more plausable source of the gap than all those women getting raped in their sleep without remembering it.

“I meant these kinds of figures, the like of which is fairly frequently bandied about, rather than this particular set of figures”

… Oh, duh. As always, truth needs no facts.

OK, you’ve called. Want to raise?

What is your objection?

Looks like their sexual lies are pretty similar.

Aww, man. It’s as if kharris looked up my Facebook profile.

Exactly which scientific paper, in which scientific publication, uses these survey results to “reason” about biological differences?

Or maybe it doesn’t whether this entire premise is true, and what’s important is that it serves at the pleasure of “a wider point”?

If we pay strict attention to your point, we miss all the fun of thinking up reasons that Brits and Yanks might have very different sexual lies. When statistics stand in the way of having a good time, I say stuff stats.

Speaking of a good time, once again, my mumber is 555-….

This is exactly the kind of bullshit that flawed survey results are used to justify.

The point of the article was not to bitch on about means, medians or statistical analysis (or not) by scientific reporters. It’s a bit sad that this has been lost.

0-1 partner: Men, 16.6. Women, 25.0.
2-6 partners: Men, 33.8. Women, 44.3.
7-14 partners: Men, 20.7. Women, 21.3.
15 or more partners: Men, 28.9. Women, 9.4.

From these figures you can estimate the total partners claimed by each sex. I got between 40 percent and 75 percent more male than female partners depending on how you guess the average on each interval.

There you have it. GIGO.

Dilemma resolved.

As to the disparity between US and UK males’ success rates, there is a simple explanation. In many parts of the US, population density is very low. Women are scarce. If there is one woman within a day’s drive who is a willing partner, you’re lucky, boys. So especially for males in the vast grasslands and the western mountains, even one partner is something of an accomplishment. You don’t know what it’s like…