Hopefully I will get a few more hits on here now that I have posted something with ‘Sex’ in the title. But you’ll have to consider this one a quickie.
The British newspaper lifestyle pages (Telegraph, Daily Mail, Daily Star, etc) are running a story fed to them via press release by the British Psychological Society, purporting to assert that having lots of sex will keep you healthy and young. And how was this established? Well, an ‘expert’ said so. He formed this conclusion by reflecting on the fact that he had spoken to lots of people who had lots of sex and noticed that they were young-at-heart and sprightly. And he had read some articles showing that healthy people have lots of orgasms — which IN NO WAY IS A CORRELATION, and had nothing to do with the possibility that having lots of energy in the first place is the reason these folks are able to have lots of sex.
And, notwithstanding the fact that the ‘research’ and the conference at which it is being presented is focused on “older adults”, the Daily Star give us a nice picture of 32-year-old Kim Kardashian to illustrate the work’s implications.
You see? Science!
Brian Hughes is an academic psychologist and university professor in Galway, Ireland, specialising in stress, health, and the application of psychology to social issues. He writes widely on the psychology of empiricism and of empirically disputable claims, especially as they pertain to science, health, medicine, and politics.