I don’t think, however, that we can toss out the study by arguing that it’s all just language.

I suspect that the 10% number is probably high. But so far, the evidence (little that it is) suggests that the number is significant, whatever the number is. The unpublished follow up with the questions reversed resulted in a large number of men in the category – not 10% but not 1% either.

Warren,

I don’t fault the peer research comparisons. That is certainly responsible. And it is important to show that the study appears anomolous.

However, the letter tries to discredit and belittle Pathela’s study. Take the sentence: This profile suggests that many may have misunderstood the question and were reporting sex with their wives rather than “vaginal” sex with other men.

There was no suggestion that anyone was having vaginal sex between men. This notion was introduced by the letter writer. Clearly they did not like the conclusions of the study but rather than provide analysis (as did the peers) they instead introduced the ludicrous and tried to imply that this was part of the study. That’s not very responsible.

The intent of the author of the letter is not to come to the facts of the case, whatever they may be. They simply want the media to tell a different story – one which serves their goals (which we can all guess at).

Agenda: discredit Pathela’s study.

I can only imagine that this may be true for other countries and that there may be difficuties in nuance and meaning and translation…even if the questioner has be trained in a specific language.

Just some things to consider.

And they appear to be saying the following:

A total of 17 476 men were interviewed, and 13 026 reported having at least 1 sexual partner in the past 12 months. The Table presents weighted results for men who reported having sex with men, women, or both men and women in the past 12 months by self-reported sexual orientation. Among the self-identified straight men, 0.4% reported having sexual intercourse with men (0.3% with men only and 0.1% with both men and women). We found little variation across regions (Los Angeles, 0.4%; San Francisco, 0.5%; San Diego, 0.2%; and Sacramento, 0.2%) or racial or ethnic groups (white, 0.4%; Latino, 0.2%; and African American, 0.3%).”

They are concerned based upon the above research that Pathela and colleagues research is quite divergent from California data.

That doesn’t seem to be agenda driven, so much as a reasonable observation to report and explore (time will tell).

So the assessment is not just with San Franciscans in the paper…although an important piece of the paper is devoted to statistics and inferences drawn solely from San Francisco. And this is definately a population that is not typical of NYC.

do you find this assessment uninteresting?

“Respondents who said “yes” were disproportionately foreign-born, had low education, and were married.”

The first two variables suggests some likelihood of misunderstanding, the third variable indicates access to sex.

Easy way to find out, flip the questions and call again.