Talk:Rind et al. controversy/Archive 1

comments entered without a section heading
I cannot see why this article is needed as it is. First of all, an encyclopedia cannot cover every controversial journal article. Second, since "Rind" most likely has written more than one article, the title of this article is inappropriate. Third, if any of this article is needed at all, it should be covered under "child sexual abuse" or so in a paragraph about controversies over the scientific research of harmfulness of abuse. Get-back-world-respect 01:58, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

See Votes for deletion/Rind et al for discussion on whether the article shoiuld be deleted. Andrewa 20:31, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I've created a redirect from A meta-analytic examination of assumed properties of child sexual abuse using college samples, which was suggested as a better name on VfD. I agree that some will search under this name, so this redir is appropriate at least.

But the suggestion was for the article to be moved there. This is still possible, we should discuss it here not on VfD and if the decision is that it should be moved there I'll help as I've now made it more difficult.

I'm also guessing of course that the article will be kept, if not then we'll have a redir to delete too. Andrewa 20:31, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Explain the study
Could somebody who has really read this article elaborate on what it says and what are it's bases, how the study was done and what are Rind's conclusions, because right now there is almost nothing but critisism of the study. That if anything is not very scientific and least of all encyclopedic. 84.253.253.245 (talk) 16:00, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Neutrality
To me the anecdote about the scientists talking about common sense and the comment on it are grossly inappropriate. No one would describe it as "common sense" that the world is flat. It is just what one would think without proper examination. "Common sense" as I would interprete what she reportedly said is just that she was not convinced by the study, which does not mean that she would have said the earth was flat had she seen a photo taken by a satelite. For this and other reasons I add a neutrality dispute note. Get-back-world-respect 01:21, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * As the flat world "common sense" has gone I expand on why I still dispute the neutrality of the article. First, even without the "flat world" the judgment of a sentence quoted out of its content as misguided is still inappropriate, and the explanation that "common sense is rarely applicable to phenomena outside our everyday experiences" is ridiculous. I have never had an everyday experience with a kangorooh, I however can tell using common sense that probably while in their mother's pocket young kangoroohs cannot jump very high. One more seriously dubious sentence is the description of one "of the more controversial conclusions": "CSA does not cause intense harm on a pervasive basis regardless of gender." Does it cause intense harm but not in a statistically significant way? What exactly is meant with "not regardless of gender"? Does it mean the study found females suffering intensely and statistically significant enough? How did the American House of Representatives "condemn the study"? Did they name it and pass a law about its wrongfulness? The final sentence is tendentious: "No evidence has been provided thus far to disprove the study." Many studies have found serious harm caused by child abuse, no one would even think of starting an extra article about them, using the name of the first author + "et al." as title and ending it with a statement that it was not disproven. Get-back-world-respect 23:16, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)


 * I do not know what anecdote you are talking about, but common sense is generally regarded as an invalid way to come to conclusions in the study of psychology. So many common sense notions have already beed disproven in that field.  The conclusion you quote is simply stating that the effects of child abuse found in the study were small, and were not statistically significant for males that were from samples that included both consensual and nonconsensual CSA.  It was significant for males  from samples that only included non-consensual encounters.  Females in the same group showed significant differences in adjustment that were greater than the male's.  So women and men reacted differently to CSA, which challenged the claim that CSA affected men and women equally.  And the last sentence is refering to the fact that there were no challenges to the methodology of the study that were widely held in the scientific community or that weren't refuted by Rind, Tromovitch, and Bauserman.  The name is probably like it is because that is how the study is refered to in scientific writing.  That's because it is in Harvard referencing format.  As such, I don't see that it is all that bad a title.  It is at least neutral and recognizable. Crazywolf 07:36, 15 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Actually I disagree with Crazywolf re: psychology and "common sense". As a psychology professor myself, I can attest that psychology has been notorious for spending an enormous amount of effort to ultimately come to conclusions that were "common sense" all along.  Some fields, particularly social psychology, do indeed take particular glee in claiming to contradict common sense, but oftentimes these conclusions ultimately are found to rest on very weak evidence.  So long as psychology continues to maintain such a low threshhold for evidence I don't think it's reasonably to conclude that psychology is thusfar capable of "disproving" common sense.  Probably a bit tangential, but worth mentioning I think.   MV Guy

Renaming this Article
In my opinion, "Rind, et al." is a very bad name for this article. Normally, the title of the paper in question would be the best title for the article. Considering the length of the official title of this study, however, I would suggest renaming this article "The Rind Report", which seems to be how it is often referred to in the media. --Zanthalon 04:39, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * I object. As the article itself indicates, Rind has written many journal articles. This one was in co-operation with others. "Rind-report" ignores both and exaggerates the importance of this one article, which I insist should be covered under the appropriate topic rather than isolated. Get-back-world-respect 06:54, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * I concur, this article is very poorly named and is against any common nomenclature used by Wikipedia. Semiconscious ( talk  ·  home) 01:04, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
 * We should move it to the title of the article. --  stillnotelf   is invisible  01:52, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I have no objections to moving it, as long as there is a redirect from Rind et al. and Rind et al.(1998). That is how it is often refered to in textbooks and scientific literature.

Child sexual abuse
Yesterday I went to Berlin's meeting of wikipedians and spoke with the head of the German wikipedia organization, Kurt Jansson. He said that the problems with the articles related to pedophilia and abuse were well known for quite some time and probably started with a posting in a forum for pedophiles about wikipedia as a great opportunity to spread the message that sex with adults is helpful for children. He already mentioned it in an interview with a newspaper in order to increase awareness of the problem. In the German pages the most notorious abuser is de:Benutzer:Mondlichtschatten, his english version - or at least one of them - is user:Moon_light_shadow. Here user:Zanthalon seems to play the main role. Checking their contribution lists tells easily which articles need a complete rewrite: List of self-identified pederasts and pedophiles, Childlove movement, pedophilia, Child sexuality, Child pornography, Child sexual abuse, Capturing the Friedmans, Rind et al.. I put the german articles on the list of articles that lack neutrality and need more care - the latter was immediately reverted by guess who. Please help taking care of the trouble. Get-back-world-respect 12:35, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC) If the articles were written by people supportive of pedophilia and/or ephebophilia, it does not invalidate them. Whether or not someone is    abusing wikipedia depends on the accuracy of their work; therefore, it's impossible to determine the accuracy of someone's work by determining whether or not they abuse wikipedia (or by calling them a pedophile). The article should be judged by its own merits, and it does not attempt to show that "sex with adults is helpful for children." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.81.88.104 (talk) 06:41, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

"Importing Criticisms"
Making an entirely knew section called "Rejection of Report Claims" is redundant. We already have a section call "Critics". If there is anything new to add in the way of speculation over the falsity of the report's claims, they should be inserted there.

Read articles before you just start appending stuff to the end of them please. Thanks. Corax 00:12, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

A note on balance and NPOV
The current article is in a state of disorganization and imbalance. I have been working as time allows to present Rind's responses to the criticisms leveled in the "criticisms" subsection.

It is important for people making edits to understand that the article is NOT a debate page, nor is it a Wiki talk page. If you are going to add VALID and COMPREHENSIBLE criticisms, make it CONCISE and integrate it with existing text. do not simply nest it onto the response of the existing criticisms.

Secondly, terms such as "straw man" are highly POV, and they should not be included in any Wiki articles unless it is clearly represented as somebody's opinion.

The article will be overhauled soon so as to have better organization and more balance. That is, the article will explain what the article says and not just some confused critics' ideas of what the article says. It will explain the methodology, the conclusions, and the politiciziation of the conclusions. Additionally, it will discuss criticisms and Rind's responses to those criticisms -- with EQUAL time given to both. Corax 04:57, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Reverts
Why is there a link to pedophilia in ==See also ==? 24ip | lolol 18:00, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Because it is a highly related topic. &middot; Katefan0(scribble) 18:11, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Howso? 24ip | lolol 18:23, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Both concern sex with children. -Willmcw 19:14, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Pedophilia is just an attraction to children; it doesn't inherently mean you desire sex with children, and actually having sex with them is even less connected. Most of this is done by situational offenders rather than pedophiles. Also, if we're categorizing this article in Category:Pedophilia then we're saying it's about pedophilia, which it is not; it's about child sexual abuse. 24ip | lolol 20:37, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Aren't the perpetrators of child sexual abuse pedophiles? -Willmcw 20:56, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Some child sexual abusers are, of course, pedophiles, just as some are heterosexuals or homosexuals. Most, however, are situational offenders (see Sexual_abuse). 24ip | lolol 21:40, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Since some, perhaps most, child sexual abusers are at least situational pedophiles then the category makes sense. Inclusion in "See also" means that "pedophilia" is a related topic. -Willmcw 21:49, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
 * But they're not situational pedophiles, they're situational offenders. A pedophile is someone whose primary subjects of sexual attraction are pre-pubescent children, not a child molester. Some child sexual abuse is perpetrated by pedophiles, but in most cases, the offender is situational.
 * Again, I do not consider pedophilia to be related. Perhaps the childlove movement or the NAMBLA folks are related to this (since they advocate child sex), but pedophilia is just an attraction. 24ip | lolol 21:57, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Yes, and those who act on their attraction are the perpetrators of the activity that is being examined in this study. -Willmcw 22:12, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Not all child sexual abuse is committed by pedophiles. Most isn't. 24ip | lolol 22:31, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
 * But much is. So it is related and should be included in the area for related topics. I would imagine that not all child sexual abuse is done out of "childlove," yet you were in favor of including that in the "see also." &middot; Katefan0(scribble) 22:32, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Because members of the childlove movement advocate child sex, which is what this article is all about. Yes, some child sexual abuse is perpetrated by pedophiles. Some is done by heterosexuals, some by homosexuals, and some by bisexuals. Should we include all of these in the See also section? 24ip | lolol 22:40, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
 * If those articles concern sex with children, then we should include them. Last I checked they did not. -Willmcw 22:47, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Pedophilia does not inherently concern sex with children. Heterosexuality does not inherently concern sex with children. None should be included. 24ip | lolol 22:51, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Pedophilia inherently concerns desire for the sexual abuse of children, whether or not the desire is acted upon. This study concerns the effects of acting on that desire. Hence the direct linkage. -Willmcw 23:02, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Unless I'm misdefining "pedophile" and "sexual attraction," this is not true. You could call me a "pedophile," I guess, though not technically, according to the APA, since I'm under 15. I have no desire to have sex with children, and I'm sure not all pedophiles do (though I have nothing against them). It is not inherently related. 24ip | lolol 23:13, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
 * This isn't about you. If a pedophile does not desire to have sex with a child, in what way is he a pedophile? -Willmcw 23:44, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm aware it is not about me. They are a pedophile because they are primarily sexually attracted to children. 24ip | lolol 23:50, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
 * pedophilia doesn't necessitate sex with children, but to say it doesn't concern it - or that they're not related subjects - is ludicrous coddling to mainstream apprehension. some trees don't have leaves, but trees and leaves are related.

I'm not sure that I follow your argument. In one post you say that "I have no desire to have sex with children, and I'm sure not all pedophiles do", while in the next post you say that a pedophile is someone who is primarily sexually attracted to children." Are you saying that someone whose sexual attraction to children is secondary is not a pedophile, That pedophile don't necessarily desire sex with children, that the majority of child sexual abusers are not primarily sexually attracted to children, and therefore a study on child sexual abuse has nothing to do with pedophiles? There seems like quite a stretch. -Willmcw 23:59, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm saying that pedophilia is not inherently related to child sexual abuse. And this article should not be categorized as being about pedophilia, certainly. 24ip | lolol 19:51, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
 * You are welcome to say that, but the inherent desire of a pedophile is to be sexual with underaged persons, whether or not they actually act on that desire. This article is not about pedophilia, it is about the after-effects of pedophilic activities. -Willmcw 18:44, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Also, I see that this study is used as a reference for our article on pedophilia. Would that be an incorrect linkage too? -Willmcw 00:04, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
 * That is a reference. It is not claiming that pedophilia is related. 24ip | lolol 19:51, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
 * why would you reference something unrelated? --dan 20:38, 9 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Then maybe it will be easiest for you to consider the links provided under "see also" as a reference as well. &middot; Katefan0(scribble) 20:46, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

May I remove the category? 24ip | lolol 22:52, 27 September 2005 (UTC)


 * No, please don't. -Willmcw 23:02, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Criticisms section lacks objectivity
It's very important to cite the Leaderchip Council critique of Rind et al. (1998), but it is misleading to cite it without Rind et al's response.

The problem is that the critisims contained in the article "Science Or Propaganda" are entirely based on critiques Rind et al. had previously rebutted.

In fact, there is no need to read Rind et al.'s responses to realize Dallam et al. are dishonest.

- For example, about the selection bias: In their 1998 article, Rind et al have NEVER claimed their college samples were representative of the general populationnd they indeed claim that "Despite all the empirically based similarities between the college and national populations, it is tempting to speculate that certain differences exist. Persons with extremely harmful CSA episodes may be unable to attend college or remain there once they have begun. In this way, surveys of college students may miss extreme cases of CSA, limiting the generalizability of findings from the college population. Nevertheless, the results of the current review, while not demonstrating equivalence between the two populations, strongly suggest that the gulf between them is narrow, and much narrower than child abuse researchers have generally acknowledged." (Rind et al.(1998), p.42). Rind et al's critiques ignore results coming from Rind et al.(1997) based on national samples.

- The blame of "Statistical Errors and possible manufacture of results" can be directed to Dallam et al. instead of Rind et al. By reading the original article, it can be concluded that Dallam et al. wittingly distorted Rind et al.'s claims.

Dallam et al. claim that "''It is important to note that .03 was the exact difference in magnitude that Rind et al. reported between male and female effect sizes (r = .07 and r = .10, respectively). Because lower effect sizes indicate better adjustment, Rind et al. reported that a major findings of their study was that "self-reported reactions to and effects from CSA indicated that. . . men reacted much less negatively than women" (p. 22). After correcting for attenuation due to base rate differences, Dallam et al. reported that effect sizes for males corresponded to r = .11, which is practically identical to the corrected effect size for females, r = .12''."

But guess what Rind, Bauserman and Tromovitch claim in their meta-analysis ! "The contrast between the female (r u= .10) and male (r u= .07) unbiased effect size estimates, based on 14,578 participants, was nonsignificant ...."' [(Rind et al.(1998), p.33)]. Effect sizes r =.07 for males and r =.10 for females were based on all samples they had. Among these were samples resctricted to unwanted experiences and others contained people with wanted and unwanted experiences. They divided their samples into two categories, "unwanted only" and "all level of consent" and reanalyzed the contrast between males and females. They claim that "Finally, for all types of consent, the contrast between the female (r u= .11) and male (r u= .04) effect size estimates, based on 11,320 participants, was statistically significant ... "(Rind et al.(1998), p. 34) Thus THIS is the analysis from which Rind et al. conluded that "effects from CSA indicated that . . . men reacted much less negatively than women" (Rind et al.(1998), p. 22)

By the way, concerning the correction of effect-sizes due to low base rates Dallam et al. talk about, Rind et al. demonstrate in their response (see infra) hat this is innapropriate. Anyway Rind et al. redo their analyse with corrected effect-sizes and demonstrate the constrast between "unwanted" and "all level of consent" in male samples is significant. (see reference infra)

- Before the Leadeship Council published their article in the Pscyhological Bulletin (Dallam et al.(2001), they took an active part in the condemnation of Rind et al.(1998) by Congress. In 2000, Rind et al. demonstrated that The Leadership Council deceived the Congress members with worthless and UNPUBLISHED critisism (read Rind et al. 2000)

Dallam et al.(2001) looked more serious but was as much flawed. Why was it published in the Pychological Bulletin then ? Only to enable Rind and his colleagues to rebut it. This what they do in Rind et al.(2001)

Thus the article "Science or propaganda" which is based on "Dallam et al.(2001)", is not rebuttal of the controversial report.

References to add:

Rind, B., Tromovitch, Ph. & Bauserman, R. (2000) Condemnation of a scientific article: A chronology and refutation of the attacks and a discussion of threats to the integrety of science, Sexuality & Culture, 4-2, Spring 2000

Dallam, S.J., Gleaves, D.H., Cepeda-Benito, A., Silberg, J.L., Kraemer, H.C. & Spiegel, D.(2001) The Effects of Child Sexual Abuse: Comment on Rind, Tromovitch, and Bauserman (1998); Psychological Bulletin, 127, 6, 715-733, 2001

Rind, B., Tromovitch, Ph., & Bauserman, R. (2001) The Validity and Appropriateness of Methods, Analyses, and Conclusions in Rind et al. (1998): A Rebuttal of Victimological Critique From Ondersma et al. (2001) and Dallam et al. (2001); Psychological Bulletin, 127, 6, 734-758, 2001
 * —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jean 939 (talk • contribs)


 * You are, of course, absolutely right. I myself have been meaning to issue significant revisions to the page, but have been too busy to do so.


 * It is important for you to understand that there are many people on Wikipedia who, quite frankly, have an agenda. They will revert any and all changes that do not support their vision of an article, no matter how distorted or biased it is.  In addition to outright censorship, some of their other preferred tactics include the misleading juxtaposition, disproportionate focus on people's opinions that align with their own, repetition of weasal-worded opinions ("some people say...," "critics argue..."), etc.  And all of these tactics are evident in this article.


 * To combat these antics is trying to one's patience, but nonetheless important if wiki readers are to have access to neutral and factually correct articles. I applaud your efforts with this article and encourage you to implement your changes. Corax


 * Allright. I'll modify this article with a more comprehensive summary of the report and its related controversy when I have more time. Jean 939 23 November 2005, 19:41(UK time)

Criticisms section updated
I have updated the criticisms portion of the article not only by reformating it, but also by including Rind's rebuttals to criticisms leveled by Dallam et al. Before this revision, the "criticisms" section was little more than a copy-paste job of an article published by the "Leadership Council." That oversight has now been remedied. Corax 00:54, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

the 1998 versus 1997 distinction
A separate study that Rind was also on, dated 1997, is mentioned in the introduction to this article. Now I read the article child sexual abuse, and when it mentions Rind et al., it says "1998", and I wondered if it was confused with 1997, since when I tried comparing the two, I found it harder to tell them apart. I don't really understand the distinction between the two, because their descriptions seem fairly overlapping; "A meta-analytic examination of assumed properties of child sexual abuse (CSA) using college samples" (1998) seems almost indistinguishable in its goal from "A meta-analytic review of findings from national samples on psychological correlates of child sexual abuse" (1997). The only noticeable difference seems to be where the data is originally from (college samples vs. national samples). Can someone explain the distinction better? Phoenix-forgotten 11:09, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Pedophilia/Ephebophilia links in See also
Why are there links to pedophilia and ephebophilia in the ==See also= section? Where does Rind et al. mention pedophilia? What further relevant information on the harm of child sexual abuse do the pedophilia and ephebophilia articles have to offer? TrueMirror 23:17, 14 March 2006 (UTC) (24.224.etc)


 * Pedophilia is closely associated with child sexual abuse, the topic of the paper that this article concerns. -Will Beback 23:36, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Rind et al. is specifically about the impact of child sexual abuse on children, not child sexual abuse in general. Our article on pedophilia does not provide any further information on the degree of harm done to children by child sexual abuse and its inclusion in See also is therefore unreasonable. Indeed, Rind et al. does not discuss the sexual fixation on children at all.
 * Besides, pedophilia is only vaguely releted to child sexual abuse. TrueMirror 00:58, 15 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Besides, pedophilia is only vaguely releted to child sexual abuse. That is absurd. It is like saying that thirst is only vaguely related to drinking. -Will Beback 01:40, 15 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Many people who abuse children aren't pedophiles, and many if not most pedophiles don't abuse children.--Prosfilaes 01:43, 15 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, and many people who are thirsty don't drink, while many who are not thirsty do drink. -User:Will Beback 01:52, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
 * So maybe our article on thirst should have a See also link to drunk driving? Or, better yet, our desciption of a study on the whether or not it hurts to get hit by a drunk driver should have a See also link to thirst, right? TrueMirror 02:00, 15 March 2006 (UTC)


 * The more apt comparison there is "alcoholism" from "drunk driving". No, not all alcoholics drive drunk, and not all drunk drivers are alcoholics. It is especially od that we have a link to Pedophilia activism but not to pedophilia. That's like having a link to the hospitality lobbying group from an article about drunk driving.  -Will Beback 00:42, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Since Rind et al. is a key study -- perhaps the key study -- of adult-child sex activism, and since Rind et al. is frequently accused of being abuser "propaganda" for such activism, the two subjects are linked and obviously relevant. The adult/child sex sect of the childlove movement centres completely around the dispute of whether or not having sex with children harms them -- the topic of this study. On the other hand, Rind et al. hardly mentions pedophilia or adults who are sexually attracted to children, and certainly doesn't focus on pedophiles. The topic of pedophilia is not relevant because this study has nothing to do with it; the topic of adult-child sex activism, termed at Wikipedia as "pedophile activism," is clearly suitable. Can you explain how our topic on pedophilia can even fathomably provide any further enlightenment on whether child sexual abuse hurts? TrueMirror 01:55, 16 March 2006 (UTC)


 * That's correct, "Rind" focuses entirely on the victims, not on the perpetrators. But to suggest that the perpetrators have nothing to do with the crime is absurd. -Will Beback 04:15, 16 March 2006 (UTC)


 * As you admitted above, the perpetrators of the crimes aren't necessarily pedophiles. So that's a completely absurd argument. And why shouldn't we link to male, since a much higher percentage of child sex abusers are male than pedophiles?--Prosfilaes 05:07, 16 March 2006 (UTC)


 * That's fine with me, though I expect that we can work all of these terms into the text. -Will Beback 05:26, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

If I'm reading this right:
 * Proponents of changing or eliminating age-of-consent laws, such as pedophiles

you are now trying to define pedophiles as proponents of changing or eliminating age-of-consent laws. Very no. TrueMirror 22:59, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Dispute over intro
User:Will Beback has correctly noted that Rind et al has been used by people who advocate revising age-of-consent laws. He believes that this fact is noteworthy enough to receive mention in the introduction. For lack of a better place in the article, I have no problem with this. However he has twice phrased the introductory passage in a way that is unsatisfactory. The version I rendered reads: Proponents of changing or eliminating age-of-consent laws often make use of reports such as Rind et al. in contending that adult-minor sexual relationships do not always cause psychological harm for the minor. This statement is entirely factual and points out one of the main factors contributing to the article's controversy in the general public.

Will Beback insists on an alternate version which reads as follows: Proponents of changing or eliminating age-of-consent laws, such as pedophiles, often make use of reports such as Rind et al. as part of pedophile activism, in contending that adult-minor sexual relationships do not always cause psychological harm for the minor. This rendering has two problems. First, it has a factual problem. It implies that all pedophiles advocate for changing or eliminating age-of-consent laws. Unless Will has proof for this implication, he needs to qualify the word "pedophiles" by preceding it with the word "some." Even then, his rendering faces a second problem, one of containing a blatant POV. Besides some pedophiles, many other people advocate eliminating age-of-consent laws. The youth rights group ASFAR, some ephebophiles, and -- yes -- some heterosexual adults also advocate retooling age-of-consent laws, citing Rind's studies to bolster their varied positions. Consequently, mentioning only that pedophiles reference the study in support of revising age-of-consent laws, while failing to mention specifically other groups or people who also do so, has the imbedded POV that pedophiles' use of the study is noteworthy but not ephebophiles' use of the study. It therefore legitimizes the POV perception that Rind's study is an "emancipation proclamation" for pedophiles, rather than an empirical study that has informed the political positions of some pedophiles and some members of other demographic groups. Such text is in violation of Wikipedia policy and, consequently, merits immediate removal. Corax 01:30, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Controversy section
Needs to read less like a timeline. --DanielCD 19:24, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject Pedophilia Article Watch
This article is part of WikiProject Pedophilia Article Watch. The article is assoiated with both child sexual abuse and pedophilia. WP:PAW works on articles related to both topics. IMO, if you stop 100 people on the street and ask them if pedophilia and sexual abuse are related the overwhelming majority will say yes. The argument that they are not related is hypertechnical and not helpful for reaching consensus.

See also is a navigational tool to help users find information. See also like categories is not information of fact about the article. (See arbcom ruling on this. Ruling) See also points a user toward information that might be of interest related to the original article topic. It isn't a stretch to think that people reading this article may have an interest in the subject of adults desiring to have sex with children. Would someone please add the Pedophilia back to See also. FloNight  talk  01:51, 29 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I think people are playing games. I read this article today and I've read the study and some other articles on this over the past few days, and I think this article is overly-apologetic toward the people who initially brought the "criticisms", if you can even call them that, against the study. I'm not going to make any major changes, but from what I've read, this whole thing is a case study in how people can tell outright lies and be lauded for it by a population existing at a near-ape level of intelligence. It's astonishing. --DanielCD 02:11, 29 March 2006 (UTC)


 * So now arguments you don't like aren't helpful for reaching consensus? If they help consensus be reached, then they are useful. The addition of a group of people who the referenced subject is not about (from Child sexual abuse, "Most offenders are situational offenders ... rather than pedophiles or ephebophiles.") isn't useful. See also should be focused, not catch alls for everything that someone could possibly want to look up.


 * I think the fact that Will Beback said that "But to suggest that the perpetrators have nothing to do with the crime is absurd." is precisely why we shouldn't add, because that is the false reason behind the addition.--Prosfilaes 03:31, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

--Prosfilaes 03:29, 29 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Prosfilaes, Hypertechnical arguments aren't helpful. We both know that pedophilia has several definitions. This isn't a medical textbook, it is a general encyclopedia. As the pedophilia article says, the general public equates pediphilla with child sexual abuse. Removing the pedophilia article from See also isn't going to change the public opinion, it will just deny users easy access to an article of interest. I have an 1RR, so I won't put it back in the article. Edit wars aren't the answer. I'm confident that the WP comunity will agree that pedophilia is associated with this article and will be added back to See also. regards FloNight   talk  03:56, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Yeah, it's very unfortunate that the general public is made up of a bunch of fucking idiots. On Wikipedia we use the word "pedophile" in the "I'm-not-a-fucking-idiot" sense, and that's what the article discusses. Those who want to look up child sexual abuse can look up child sexual abuse. As it stands, our article on pedophilia barely touches the topic of child sexual abuse, except in its relation to pedophilia, which Rind et al. doesn't say anything about. 24.224.153.40 17:59, 29 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Because it's so, so hard to type pedophilia into the search box? The See Also links aren't there to provide easy access to any article that might come into the reader's mind; the links are there as suggestions on things a reader should look at. As an encyclopedia, we should use the precise clear technical definition instead of a more vague generalized definition, out of a need for clarity.--Prosfilaes 04:12, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
 * This is a spurious argument. Obviously there's a point of diminishing relevance, but nobody's adding Disneyland. Pedophilia is hardly something that might just randomly and appropos of nothing "come into the reader's mind." It's imminently related. &middot; Katefan0(scribble)/ poll 04:15, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
 * People have molested children at Disney World before. Pedophiles have molested children before. Heterosexuals have molested children before. Homosexuals have molested children before. Black people and white people have molested children before. Canadians and Americans and Mexicans and Iraqis and Africans and Egyptians have molested children before. People with the last name "Green" have molested children before. Men and women have molested children before. Indeed, more heterosexuals and homosexuals and whites and men in general have fucked children than pedophiles. Pedophilia is related to child sexual abuse. Pedophilia is not related to Rind et al. 24.224.153.40 17:59, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
 * People who have sex with children are pedophiles, regardless of whether they're gay, straight, black, white or anything else. All these groups are segments of pedophiles. Obviously, then, the most correct reference point is to pedophilia. &middot; Katefan0(scribble)/ poll 19:54, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
 * That's not what the article pedophila is about. If you want to argue what pedophilia means, go elsewhere; the question is, should we link to an article that defines pedophilia as a medical condition.--Prosfilaes 04:53, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Prosfilaes, WP shouldn't be deciding on correct definitions or narrowing definitions. We need to include all relavent information. -- FloNight'  talk  04:22, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Of course WP should be deciding on correct definitions. For one thing, if you don't have any agreement on what a word means, how can you decide whether something is appropriate to add to an article or not? How can you communicate, without agreeing on what a word means? And it's not about the definition of the word, it's whether the article on the other end is useful?--Prosfilaes 04:53, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
 * So now arguments you don't like aren't helpful for reaching consensus?

Where is this coming from?


 * My comments above were more in general, not so specific to my edits. Perhaps they were misplaced. I have a bad habit os thinking (messaging) aloud. As far as my edits, I will respond to that after I get some sleep. I'm not dead set on anything here, and will negotiate. Consider my other comment a rant not quite relevant to the edits I made. Prosfilaes, I am not your enemy, please be patient with me. If I'm wrong, I will admit it. --DanielCD 04:05, 29 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Also: near-ape level of intelligence., this is not directed at anyone here at Wikipedia, so please no one misinterpret it. --DanielCD 04:06, 29 March 2006 (UTC)


 * DanielCD, I think he/she was responding to my edit not yours. -- FloNight  talk  04:09, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, I don't mind reinserting it. See also sections are for related topics and this is an obvious one. · Katefan0(scribble)/ poll 04:11, 29 March 2006 (UTC)


 * How is it obvious? Should we add Catholic priests to the see also too, as another group of sterotypical (and frequent real-life) child sex abusers?--Prosfilaes 04:16, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
 * The answer to how it's obvious is rather, well, obvious, to anybody without an axe to grind. The rest is a strawman; don't bother. &middot; Katefan0(scribble)/ poll 04:23, 29 March 2006 (UTC)


 * You mean an axe like not furthering the stereotype of a group of people with a mental disorder? I fail to see why arguing that we should add one group of people notorious for sexual abuse of children is a strawman and the other is obvious.--Prosfilaes 04:32, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Answering my arguments with questions intended to obfuscate the debate isn't really helping your cause. The only question to be answered is: is pedophilia related enough to the Rind etc. study to be included as a "for more information see..." type link? The obvious answer is yes. The rest of this hand-waving is just theatrics. &middot; Katefan0(scribble)/ poll 13:22, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Your argument consists of "why? lol, it's obvious." Indeed, I don't know why Prosfilaes even bothered answering it. 24.224.153.40 17:59, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
 * To the extent that priest molest children they do it because they are pedophiles. Pedophiles don't molest because they are Catholic priests. -Will Beback 05:23, 29 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Priests do molest because they are priests; it offers them easy access to and power over young boys and denies them alternate forms of relief of their sexual drive. Furthermore, most priests who molested kids molested adolescents, which means they aren't pedophiles. And of couse, as the article on child sexual abuse says, most abusers even of prepubescent children aren't pedophiles.--Prosfilaes 04:46, 30 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Say what?? That one went right over my head. --DanielCD 13:05, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
 * How do you know they were pedophiles? 24.224.153.40 17:59, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
 * People who have sex with children are pedophiles. &middot; Katefan0(scribble)/ poll 19:55, 29 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Not all of them. That's hardly a definition. Some people who molest are pedophiles. Not all pedophiles are molesters. --DanielCD 22:42, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Adults who have sex with children are molesting them. All this definitional parsing is farcical. &middot; Katefan0(scribble)/ poll 23:10, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Ergo they're child molesters, not pedophiles. Correctional Services Canada (incest only), the Australian National Crime Authority, the FBI, and anyone else who has even a vague understanding of child sexual abuse agrees that a large majority of child molesters are not pedophiles. (i.e. one with a sexual preference for children.) "... The 10 percent of child molesters who make up the second category [of child sex criminals] are the bona fide "pedophiles," those who genuinely favor sex with children." Rind et al. does not talk about pedophiles. It does not say anything about adults who are sexually interested in children. How is this relevant? 24.224.153.40 00:34, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I am adding a new argument to this, and I do not know how to proceed, and I will not edit this article. But I do have this much to say: The fact that pedophilia is not much related to Rind et al. is also much common sense. I do not know why you are dismissing the arguements as "too technical" but the fact is that they are correct. Also, anyone who would think for at least five to ten seconds will realize that this study is not much related to pedophilia. My previous sentence may be an unfounded claim, but so is the idea that "everyone in the common streets will know that Rind et al. is related to pedophilia." The only relatedness that it could have is that that pedophiles may be a common cause of the thing being studied. For a crude analogy, if a study on the effects of moss on its environment will not be much related to the reason moss would be there in the first place.--A 00:47, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

24.224.153.40 you are refusing to accept that there are multiple meaning of the word pedophilia. WP:NPOV says that it is important for WP to present all of the definitions of the word. Not just the one a particular editor prefers. Pedophilia means a sexual attraction to children or having sexual relations with children. FloNight  talk  01:08, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
 * ok FloNight -- we're giving a See also link to pedophilia -- our article on pedophilia discusses people who are sexually attracted to children -- it is not about the sexual abuse of children -- the article child sexual abuse is about the sexual abuse of children -- so we link to the child sexual abuse article, and not to the one that discusses those sexually oriented towards children, because Rind doesn't study these people. our article on pedophilia focuses on the reasonable definition, not society's muddled attempt at redefining English. 24.224.153.40 01:25, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
 * by the way, if you want to know why Wikipedia should use the sensible definition, read my last comment here. 24.224.153.40 01:27, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

From WP pedophilia article: ''Outside the medical community, the term pedophile is frequently used to denote not only people meeting the medical definition but, also, people who are sexually attracted to adolescents and not prepubescents, as well as people who have engaged in sexual activity with a child. Some scholars refer to a sexual interest in adolescents as ephebophilia.[1]'' Clealy the definition is broader than you say. -- FloNight  talk  01:46, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Any word can be used in an idiotic fashion. Wikipedia needs to be clear and consistent.
 * If "pedophile" also describes people interested in adolescents, for example, most everyone on the planet is a pedophile. 24.224.153.40 02:01, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
 * WP:NPOV may mean that we should give all definitions of the word, but it doesn't mean that we shouldn't use the word in a clear, reasonably technical manner. To use various definitions indescimenately would produce confusion. Moreover, we aren't defining the word pedophile here; we're linking to a page that is about a subject; any argument that is about whether the word is appropriate and not about whether the article is appropriate doesn't help consensus.

The only reason anyone knows this study exists is because people hyped it being about pedophiles. The hype is most of the story here, and the hype has to do with the public definition of "pedophilia". I'm not sure that means it merits a link to a medical condition though. Just wanted to mention that with stuff like this, what seems to be the subject is not necessarily the whole case. In a large sense, this article is about the hype, not the actual study. --DanielCD 02:31, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
 * In a similar sense, you could make the argument that this article is actually more about Dallam et al. (2001) than Rind et al. (1988). The entire POV of the article comes from Dallum et al.'s criticisms - the setup is "Dallum et al. say this / Rind et al. counter with this".  I find it quite interesting that so many people support the idea that "any one who was sexually abused as a child is scarred for life and has no hope of being a normal functioning person".  How different is that than saying "any one who was spanked as a child is scarred for life and has no hope of being a normal functioning person"?  Or "any one who was called a name on the playground is scarred for life and has no hope of being a normal functioning person"?.  The same people who will denounce the universally damaging impact of spanking and name-calling as people making excuses for their behavior will gladly endorse the universally damaging impact of child sexual abuse.  I think people are bit more resilient than others give them credit for. Solitary refinement 00:10, 2 June 2006 (UTC)


 * The fact is that that this article should be about the Rind et al. 1998 report. Fundamentally, it is not about the hype. The public has its interests, but this article should be about the substance. I think that this encyclopedia should actually give information about the subjects of the articles, not make articles be primarily about its media buzz or its current events. An encylopedia is not something to please the masses. It is to give factual information.--A 00:58, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

The connection to pedophilia is indirect, through pedophilia's connection to CSA. So why not let the readers be directed to pedophilia after going through the see also link to Childhood Sexual Abuse? Crazywolf 20:47, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Renaming the article
I think this article should be renamed to reflect the public contraversy. I think this is the better option since it is the reason that the article is well known. This particular study on its own merits is not otherwise remarkable. Another opition is naming it to the correct title. FloNight  talk  15:44, 31 March 2006 (UTC)


 * As I've said in the other discussion above, I think we should rename it to the title of the article - a "Controversy etc." title and the current title can be redirects. -- stillnotelf   is invisible  17:26, 31 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't think "A meta-analytic examination of assumed properties of child sexual abuse (CSA) using college samples" is a great name for an article. Nor do I think that some made-up name is particularly useful. We have links to this article already; we may as well leave it as is.--Prosfilaes 17:36, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Lillienfeld-APA controversy
I don't know if this article is the appropriate place, but one thing worth expanding on is the controversy concerning the publication of Lilienfeld's 2002 American Psychologist article on the APA response to Rind et al. (1998). It may be worth an entirely new article, as it is more concerning publication, peer review, and APA adding insult (further [deserved] scorn from the scientific community) to injury (its own spineless capituation to outside influence) concerning the Rind et al. issue. I could work on it but, as you may tell, I might have POV problems... Solitary refinement 19:20, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Couple of issues with one para in "Controversy" section
I have a couple of issues with this passage in the "Controversy" section:
 * December 1998 - the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) criticized the study for its methodology and conclusions. It was then attacked by The Wanderer, a Catholic religious newspaper, the talk show host Dom Giordano, Dr. Laura Schlessinger (known on her popular radio talk show as "Dr. Laura") and numerous Republican politicians.

The questions I have have here are:
 * NARTH and Schlessinger are pretty much extremist, marginal figures. Giordano I don't know, but it says he's a talk show host, which is often not a signifier of an erudite and subtle mind, and he's redlinked, so he's probably not a towering figure. The Wanderer I don't know, but I'm pretty sure it's not one the nation's top papers. Was the study not mentioned by the NY Times, LA Times, the Washington Post, or other major media outlets, whether to attack or defend it. That would be surprising to me since it was the subject of a Congressional resolution. The passage as it stands kind of leaves the impression that the article was noticed (and criticized) by only a few marginal figures. I'll look into this but it might not be easy to dig up this info.
 * "...numerous Republican politicians." Since the House and Senate passed a resolution basically triggered by the article, and the Senate unanamously at that, is it really so that only Republican politicians criticized the study. The passage implies that by mentioning one party specifically. Did the Democrats ignore it, or did they defend it, or what? (The latter would seem unlikely since the resolution passed, plus it would have been political suicide). I think the party mention can just be removed, n'est-ce pas? Herostratus 02:43, 15 July 2006 (UTC)


 * There is no reason to remove the Republican qualifier unless you can find examples of Democratic politicians who criticised it from verifiable sources. Otherwise the article will give impressions that aren't supported by the facts. Crazywolf 07:46, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I would be inclined to say that, as it stands, there's a pretty strong implication that Democratic politicans ignored or supported the article. Since a resolution against the article was passed unanamously by the US Senate (I don't know the House vote), I think the burder of proof lies with editors who want to keep the "(just) Republican" wording. Herostratus 16:17, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
 * How exactly do you propose that those against the change provide sources that a group of people did not say a particular thing. That is not a reasonable thing to prove, as it is quite likely that, even if it was true, there would be no mention of it.  The task of showing that democratic candidates did criticize the article, on the other hand, is a completely reasonable one.  Also, it doesn't seem all that strange that democrats would avoid committing political suicide by voting against the bill, but would have values that stopped them from criticizing an article with sound methodology based on it's conclusions.  But if you tell me what would represent a citation for this, and that would certainly exist if there were no or very few democrats that criticized the bill, I will go look for it.  --Crazywolf--72.177.139.207 05:49, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
 * While Schlessinger is an extremist I don't think she's that marginal, she's pretty influential (18 million listeners at the time of the controversy). The order makes sense though, thing's percolate from marginal to mainstream.  However, I looked it up in Factiva (a database of newspaper stories) and it seems like the timeline is off.  In December NARTH did the story on it and then it circulated on the internet.  It was only in March that it was in the wanderer (THE WASHINGTON TIMES 23 March 1999).  Later in March it jumped to "Dom Giordano's radio talk show on WWDB-FM in Philadelphia" and then to Laura Schlessinger."  (THE WASHINGTON TIMES 13 May 1999).  I can't find before April any criticism of the study by any politician, Republican or otherwise.  Then it really starts hitting the mainstream media and politics.  So it seems that unless we can find a citation of Republican politicians attacking it earlier then we should ax "Republican politicians" from that part of the article Makgraf 21:39, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

POV Problems
This article talks more about the criticism of the study/review than what is said in the study. Therefore there are some POV problems. There is nothing wrong with criticism obviously, but majority of the article shouldn't be devoted to it. If someone can add what is said in the study more clearly, then it can balance the neutrality that this article needs. I may just do this (depending on how much time I have). Zachorious 05:36, 5 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Dear Zachorius, there is a GFDL'ed document at http://www.clogo.org/Child_Love_TV_20070513_E1.html that explains the findings of Rind and from which you might want to take excerpts and another good source is http://groups.google.de/group/de.alt.jugendschutz/browse_thread/thread/5e34264423a97fef/6fb429122ca5c18a.  Your efforts to get this more NPOV would be dearly appreciated. Roman Czyborra 18:55, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

odd reference?
This seems odd:


 * Simplified, Rind et al. (1998) found that 3 out of every 100 individuals in a CSA population had clinically significant problems (compared to 2 out of every 100 in a general population).[ref]Rind and Tromovitch (2007). "National Samples, Sexual Abuse in Childhood, and Adjustment in Adulthood: A Commentary on Najman, Dunne, Purdie, Boyle, and Coxeter (2005)," Archives of Sexual Behavior'', 36, 101-106[/ref]

How can a 2007 paper be a reference for a 1998 statement? Herostratus (talk) 01:55, 25 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I concur that reference is off-topic. I removed it when it first appeared, and the editor who added it reverted and re-added it.  S/he reverted again after you removed it as well.


 * To avoid a revert-war, I've now moved the statement into the section for responses to the Rind study, since it is a response, but it's still off-topic and should still be removed completely once we have this worked out on the talk page.


 * The quoted paper is a 2007 response from Rind & Tromovitch to a 2005 study, unrelated to Rind et al 1998, that found damage to adult sexual functioning in adults who were abused as children. In their critique of the 2005 study, Rind & Tromovitch quoted their 1998 study. The 2007 paper and 2005 studies have nothing to do with the 1998 study or the subsequent controversy, and does not belong in this article. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 02:55, 25 February 2008 (UTC)


 * In passing, Rind and Tromovitch offer a layperson-friendly interpretation of their 1998 findings, which Rind et al. (1998) presents in a more technical manner. It's more useful for us to recite this explanation than "The resulting effect size estimate was r u= .09" or whatever, as WP:OR would otherwise require.
 * Only material which directly pertains to Rind et al. (1998) is cited from Rind and Tromovitch (2007), so I've restored my version. --AnotherSolipsist (talk) 04:11, 25 February 2008 (UTC)


 * You've now reverted this article 3 times within one day, re-inserting material you added, contrary to the comments of two other editors. Please be aware of WP:3RR and the possibility that those reverts could be seen as edit warring.


 * Regarding your comment about why you want to include that information - it doesn't make sense. A re-interpretation by the study authors 10 years later, in a critique they wrote about someone else's study, is not relevant to the topic of this article.  It has nothing to do with the public controversy  that makes the study notable for an article.   --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 04:27, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

The off-topic sentence is still in the article. It needs to be removed, or moved to a section for later responses, since it is a later re-interpretation of  the original Rind study. I'm not making this edit right now, but this is an open item that needs to be addressed. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 22:25, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
 * It's not a re-interpretation, it's a simpler way of stating their results. Your suggestion that a summary of Rind et al. (1998)'s findings is irrelevant to "the topic of this article" merely because it comes from a secondary source is absurd. --AnotherSolipsist (talk) 00:25, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I can only laugh at their conclusion that only 3 out of every 100 individuals in a CSA population have "clinically significant problems"

 * I can agree with AnotherSolipsist that it is a simpler way of stating their results, but I have to add that their results are of no use. Why? Because the "clinically significant problems" does not cover all the problems that survivors of childhood sexual abuse have to deal with aftermath as a consequence of being too early initiated into sexual activities with adults who were suppose to put the child's needs before their own.
 * The vast majority of this population just never gets included into clinical settings so they never get the label of having this or that clinically diagnosed disorder, but prefer to join self-help groups (or even prefere to deal with the problems on their own).
 * Additional complication is that many problems are of delayed nature and they don't show up until some triggering event many years later. For example, in my case I have successfully graduated, being all the time single and a nerd at the university, but when I started dating after graduation problems started, making me join one self-help group after another, and out of the blue when some emotional event puts emotions up, such as mother's death in my early thirties, suddenly flash-backs of overwhelming childhood feelings against adult men sitting too closely did arise with full force, to name just one problem that complicated my relations with the rest of the family and my life in general, almost in fatal way (I won't go into details here), looking for help on-line and off-line going from one alternative-medicine workshop to another, meeting my future wife that had to put a lot with me with all the flash-backs and overwhelming reactions triggered by intimacy, and after becoming a parent myself I started to have nightmares about my own children and that was enough for me, I went to my GP and demanded that I see specialist for childhood sexual abuse, but all the specialists in our public health system were too occupied with other worse cases and told me to pay to somebody else who is in private practice if I want to get some specialist's help... so I have no clinically significant problems despite all the problems and all those years spent in various self-help groups. I can only laugh at their conclusion that only 3 out of every 100 individuals in a CSA population have "clinically significant problems". Ha ha ha —Preceding unsigned comment added by SloContributorSince2005 (talk • contribs) 09:58, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

suggested page title change
I suggest changing the title of this page to Rind et al. (1998) child sexual abuse meta-analysis controversy, or something similar.

The controversy resulting from the study is what makes the study notable. There are thousands of studies every year that are not notable enough for an article, even when they are important studies.

This particular study was condemned by Congress and stirred huge controversy in other ways as well, that's why it's notable enough for an article, so the controversy should be reflected in the title.

I recommend the title change be implemented soon. Comments? --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 17:36, 25 February 2008 (UTC)


 * It's long. How about Rind et al. controversy? Herostratus (talk) 19:51, 25 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Yeah, it's long. I was trying to avoid vagueness. Your version is OK with me, it's better than the existing title.   --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 19:59, 25 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree. Thanks, SqueakBox 20:36, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

OK, done, per this discussion. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 22:15, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

more
'When Worlds Collide' at http://facstaff.bloomu.edu/jleitzel/classes/adolesnt/lilienfeld_2002.pdf disputes the methodological criticisms against "A meta-analytic examination of assumed properties of child sexual abuse (CSA) using college samples"

"A meta-analytic examination of assumed properties of child sexual abuse (CSA) using college samples" fails to factor in adverse delayed reactions to child sexual abuse (CSA) because that goes beyond the scope of the study which is of shorter term correlations.

--AaronAgassi (talk) 6:42, 1 March 2008

Archive
I've archived the entire page since it looks like the last comment was made in 2008. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules: simple/complex 16:50, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Dallam
How much of the criticism is based on a single article by Dallam? Seems like a lot, her name is mentioned 5-10 times in the article. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules: simple/complex 16:50, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Struck. There's a lot of untapped criticisms and responses that seem like they should be included in addition to Dallam, and when that is done I think a good read-through and summary of all of them will eliminate the "Dallam said..." effect as well as improving the article greatly.  WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules: simple/complex 12:54, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Leadership Council
As I state in my edit summary, I removed the leadership council documents because they are an advocacy organization, not a scholarly one. Scholarly analysis of a scholarly document should come from scholarly sources. In addition, they are analyzing the paper, not the controversey (arguably, could be a reference but I'd rather not). Leadership council is also, from what I've seen, a fairly partisan advocacy organization. I can't see them being a medically reliable source for a page like this one. Both papers, the 1997 related one and 1998 one this page is about were peer-reviewed and it's appropriate that criticism come from peer-reviewed scholars.

I've also removed the other external links - from what I could tell they were basically citations of the papers and they're already referenced. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules: simple/complex 19:41, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The condensing of the reference is fine. It was a mess.
 * However, I have not seen as of yet any compelling evidence that the Leadership Council is some sort of dangerous organization. Their staff and membership list  is mostly composed of doctors, psychologists and other scientists who are regular contributors to established peer-reviewed journals.  Not "concerned parents" or politicians.  In fact several members are the very ones who published criticisms of Rind in such journals.
 * I would also like to add that this is about the controversy, which very much so involved politics and culture, not just arguments among from medical journals. It seems too strict a decree to remove all sources that are not journal articles in the absense of some compelling reason to distrust them.  I currently know of no such charge leveled at the Leadership Council, unless you can provide a source from a neutral party to that effect.Legitimus (talk) 20:21, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
 * If the criticisms have been published in the journal, then I would much rather add those sourced articles than this one. I'd be equally reluctant to use the FMSF as a source, but would be willing to use publications by members.  I don't think they're dangerous, just partisan, and the website means no oversight or challenge to the contents.  In addition to journal sources, I'd also be fine with newspapers and similar mainstream media reliable sources.  However, the LC site seems to be scientific, legal, empirical, data-based criticisms, not societal observations or criticisms.  Placing it as an external link also gives it a lot of weight, it stands out that way.  WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules: simple/complex 01:29, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Dallam herself is an executive member of this group. And there are others that have published but I will add them when I have time. Frankly I have no idea why the FMSF would have anything to say about this article and I was under the impression this isn't what they are about. This study has nothing to do with confabulated memories. As a matter of fact, it was actually pro pedophile websites that tended to take the other "side" in this article, and they were removed some time ago. At present there does not seem to be a compelling danger to the inclusion of the leadership council for at least a small role. Granted, there of course is no need for material to be used as the primary sources, but there is also no need to exclude them completely.
 * Is there a problem here? I'm starting to hear the sound of metal on stone.Legitimus (talk) 02:02, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
 * There's two issues for me. For actual comments that are sourced solely to the LC I see it as an application of WP:RS - scholarly publications should have scholarly sources for criticisms.  I dislike the use of websites for organizations as comments, particularly in these areas, since the topic lends itself to strong emotions and accordingly less and less justified opinions that stray further and further from the actual information in the source they are criticizing (for instance, many of the criticisms of the biological basis of homosexuality ignored the authors' own comments on lack of generalizability and the source of the brains they were dissecting).  I have no problem with both APAs, the AMA or other notable organizations with recognized expertise and a national-level mandate presenting opinions.  Leadership Council I don't know much about but I did see it a lot, and AbuseTruth really liked to cite it (which makes me nervous - fruit of the poisoned tree).  If it can be demonstrated that it's a notable organization with a good reputation rather than some regional organization with good contacts, I'd be more OK with it.  It's very easy to use web pages to get opinions of all sorts on things (they're just a step up from blogs) and since this isn't a fringe theory then it's my feeling that web pages are inappropriate.  I only referenced the FMSF as an example because it was an organization that we've both had contact with that is notably strongly-opinioned.
 * The second issue is of convenience links. I dislike them in general, and Leadership Council was used as a convenience link in many articles.  Its links were used in several cases instead of actual journal citations and urls to the publishing organization, which is a bad practice.  Jack-A-Roe and I went through a round of edits with the Canadian Children's Rights Council a while back that heightened the problems with convenience links.  I'd much rather use a pubmed link than a webpage reprint of an article.  However, Jack-A-Roe also stated the links were reprints with permission so they are probably a step up from the CCRC.  WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules: simple/complex 11:54, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
 * There's no reason not to use bona-fide convenience links when there is no question about their accuracy and the pages are posted with permission of the copyright owners. That's routinely acceptable. The Canadian Children's Rights Council was completely different.  They cherry-picked and modified the content of the articles they posted, and posted them without permission.    The  Leadership Council pages include include in-line references to the page numbers as they appeared in the original publications to make it easy to verify and cite directly to the actual journal pages.  --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 03:22, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

POV discussion
The article currently reads a bit too much like it's saying Rind et al was wrong, and they're a bunch of pedophiles. It was a huge controversy and lots of people disagree, but it's still cited as reasonable science by other articles. The extensive criticism section is quite heavy-handed, particularly considering it's mostly from a single journal (Journal of Child Sexual Abuse) and Rind et al responded to all of the points with "Um, you're kinda criticizing our methods by ignoring the parts that justify our methodological choices." The "assertion of bias" section in particular ends with a bit too much "oh, and they're child-raping pedophiles" which is really, really ad hominen. The "however" makes me cringe, because it looks like "however, what they are really trying to do is make it acceptable for a father to rape his daughter". I've removed the lead-in sentence and I'm not sure of Paidika actually promoted pedophilia (I've asked JAR for a clarification). Was the conference Rind and Bauserman attended really a pedophile advocacy conference, or is that Salter's description of it? WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules: simple/complex 02:34, 21 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Paidika's mission statement:
 * "The starting point of Paidika is necessarily our consciousness of ourselves as paedophiles. . . . But to speak today of paedophilia, which we understand to be consensual intergenerational sexual relationships, is to speak of the politics of oppression. . . . This is the milieu in which we are enmeshed, the fabric of our daily life and struggle. . . . Through publication of scholarly studies, thoroughly documented and carefully reasoned, we intend to demonstrate that paedophilia has been, and remains, a legitimate and productive part of the totality of human experience. ('Statement of Purpose,' pp. 2-3)"


 * Information about the conference that Salter mentioned:
 * After the publication of their meta-analysis in Psychological Bulletin, Rind, Tromovitch and Bauserman were the keynote speakers for an advocacy conference in the Netherlands . According to an announcement in the International Pedophile and Child Emancipation (IPCE) Newsletter, [10] the conference was being convened "expressly to throw light on the more positive side" of "adult-nonadult sexual contacts" ("The Other Side of the Coin," September 1998). The conference was hosted by the Foundation for Church Social Work in Paulus Kerk, Rotterdam , an organization headed by outspoken pedophile advocate Rev. Hans Visser. [11] An overview of the conference appeared in an article in the local Rotterdam newspaper titled: "Dominee Visser Pleit voor het [*page 125*] Aanvaarden van Pedofilie [Reverend Visser Pleads for the Acceptance of Pedophilia]" ("Dominee Visser," December 18, 1998). The conference also featured talks by two members of Paidika's editorial board, Drs. Gert Hekma and Alex van Naerssen.


 * ...both of the above, as cited in Dallam, S. J. (2002). Science or Propaganda? "An examination of Rind, Tromovitch and Bauserman" (1998). Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, 9 (3/4), 109-134. Excerpts of the Paidika mission statement can also be found in Salter and elsewhere.  --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 06:04, 21 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Well I wasn't quite trying to go that far. I too cringe at the political reactions ("Dr." Laura, NARTH), Laura in particular making very poorly-thought-out statements.  Yes, I am no fan of hers, believe you me.  But it is of importance to note these background characteristics of the authors.  If Rind himself is going to accuse people of bias in his own papers, then it is only fair to air evidence of his own bias.  It doesn't make him a pedophile, just biased.
 * But there were plenty of reputable criticisms from other sources, some that I have not yet added. For example, while much was made of the fact that this paper passed peer-review, it actually was rejected in full the first time around, and they were told not to submit it again.  It was then resubmitted when the editor changed.
 * I have several sources I plan on adding (or at least offering here) that are from the general world of psychology to illustrate the prevailing view of this study: Some of it is ok, but much of it is useless (non-generalizable).  I'll give you an example.  Characteristics of Sexual Abuse in Childhood and Adolescence Influence Sexual Risk Behavior in Adulthood by Teresa E. Senn et al., 2007 Archives of Sexual Behavior.  This is a general, fairly mundane paper on the subject of CSA.  Rind is quoted twice in this study, however the major contentious findings are tossed aside, and only a few specific findings are used.  Namely a)"force was associated with more negative reactions" and b)gender differences in male victims vs. female.Legitimus (talk) 12:05, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
 * That was Paidika's mission statement? Holy shit.  I was under the impression it was more like "we're trying to analyze the issues from a neutral position".  That certainly changes my perspective on things and I'm amazed anyone ever talked to them.  Thank you for the clarification.
 * Dr. Laura's statement that a meta-analysis was junk science was rather amusing to me. I'd still rather an outright statement by Rind et al. about their attitudes towards CSA than a guilt-by-association statement made by Salter, but given Paidika's own rather clear mission statement, the current version is pretty mild and I don't have any objections (I've added a quote to the section, Jack do you have a citation that could be used?)  I was contemplating separating the paragraph into its own section, but the only title I could think of was "Involvement of the authors with pro-pedophilia organizations" and though accurate, it somehow didn't seem appropriate.  If you have further sources criticizing, I'd be intrigued to read them.  Where was it discussed that the study was initially rejected, then accepted later on?  That seems like an important point to include on the page as well as probably containing a very interesting reason.  Thanks for the clarifications.  WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules: simple/complex 13:10, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Sounds ok so far. Regarding the other material I had planned on adding, I have not read some of them (such as Tice or Whittenburg) yet because they are physical copies from an archive, and I must go retrieve them.  My only edits right now use the abstracts.  There is also this one  as well as two papers by a psychiatrist at Stanford that I still need to read.
 * The discussion of the paper being rejected is both in Salter and Dallam. It is interesting to note that Fowler got all gung ho about it being peer-reviewed yet had not looked into it.  Dallam says in her (mind you, peer-reviewed) paper that
 * "Rind et al. was thoroughly rejected by its first set of peer-reviewers for the Psychological Bulletin; the authors were asked not to resubmit the paper (personal communication with original reviewer who wishes to remain anonymous). Apparently, Rind et al. resubmitted the paper after a change in editors, and the paper was given to a new set of reviewers. At least one of these reviewers also rejected the article. It remains unclear what portion (if any) of the second set of reviewers recommended the paper for publication."
 * Legitimus (talk) 16:25, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Salter and Dallam make me a bit nervous - they're both cited approvingly by Leadership Council, which (as it says in Lilienfeld, p. 179) is an organization that is very strongly pro-recovered memories and dissociative identity disorder and accordingly very anti- anything that is skeptical of CSA. I may also have encountered them in different venues where their opinions were pretty strong.  I'd like to know where they found out the info that it was initially rejected - there's a lot of ways to arrive at "rejected", it could be that revisions were requested, or clarifications, or the rejecting editor did it for the reasons Dr. Laura and Congress wanted (they didn't like the conclusion).  If it's personal communications, then it's a straight citation but if it's another article I'd rather review that source.
 * Thanks by the way, for the ongoing dialogue on a controversial topic. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules: simple/complex 23:15, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks too. I actually was not aware Salter was associated with the Leadership Council.  Regardless, her various bios state she primarily works in jails with sex offenders rather than as a therapist to children or victims.  I also note that Lilienfeld does not disparage the published literature by Dallam or others associated with LS; in fact he seems to say this is a good thing (p. 184, right side).  He just is critical of the non-journal commentary by LS itself.  In fact there seem to be signs Lilienfeld is associated with the FSMF and this may have been a cheap shot for... oh geez let's please not go there again.  Separate topics.
 * I have not found any deeper source on the matter of the paper's initial rejection from material I have read so far. I took from Dallam's wording that she collected this information directly from the APA staff.   Note Dallam's papers were peer-reviewed itself and were published, and I would think the APA would have raised some serious hell if it was false.Legitimus (talk) 00:24, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * For perspective on the Leadership Council - they're quite mainstream - its founder is Paul J. Fink, MD, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Temple University School of Medicine; Chairman of the American Psychiatric Association's Task Force on Psychiatric Aspects of Violence; Past President of the American Psychiatric Association, and of the American College of Psychiatrists.  --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 02:50, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Logical fallacies
I'm reading through Lilienfeld, 2002 and a big part of the discussion is the numerous errors made by "Dr" Laura and other public representatives. I wonder if it's worth reviewing them either briefly or at length, and in what section they would go. I was originally thinking of the first section, but perhaps in a "Public reception" section of Criticisms? It's from pages 183-4 of Lilienfeld. It may be a bit too far towards the "educating the public" side of things. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules: simple/complex 16:56, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

"When the study entered public debate due to the efforts of Schlessinger and others' attempts to disparage its results and conclusions, a large number of common fallacies were made. By criticizing the study due to its perceived potential to cause the normalization of pedophilia, Schlessinger applied the argument from adverse consequences, in which the validity of the study due to its possible consequences. By criticizing one of the study's authors, Schlessinger applied the genetic fallacy, in which the study's validity was questioned due to its source.  The argument that the study should not have been published due to its contradiction of conventional wisdom, Schlessinger used an argumentum ad populum, in which the acceptance of a proposition within the general public is given more prominence than the reasoning behind it.  The study was also subject to biased assimilation, in which the degree of criticism applied was greater due to it contradicting a pre-existing belief. These errors were made repeatedly while the study was discussed in public and only corrected through the announcement by the AAAS. (Lilienfeld, 2002)"


 * Eh, I don't know. Much as I don't like her, this seems a bit tangential to give so much spotlight to it.  Truth be told, most people I know who were not in mental health remained largely unaware this was going on and to this day have never heard of it. Is it just me or does Lilienfeld's paper sound just a bit mean-spirited?Legitimus (talk) 18:19, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Doesn't read that way to me, I think it's a great paper. The problem with the above is that Lilienfeld points out that Schlessinger is the primary party making these errors, but everyone else falls into the "everyone else" category.  I could probably just mention who made the errors in an umbrella statement ("Popular critics of the paper...", "Schelssinger, her audience and various members of Congress..." or something similar) and avoid the constant naming.  What's important in my opinon, obviously biased because of where I'm getting the information, is the common set of errors made by the lay populace criticizing the paper.  I can see why this paragraph isn't ideal, I'm more asking if anyone can see some way of turning it into something more useable.  WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules: simple/complex 19:10, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

NARTH
The citation needed tag I added to the description of NARTH was removed with the edit summary, "it's in the heavily referenced wikipedia page. Period". That was clearly inappropriate, as Wikipedia cannot use itself as a source, so I have readded the tag. In addition, though it's not of great importance, I note that the edit summary used to revert me was somewhat rude: "Period" implies a refusal to engage in further argument, which is generally not an option on Wikipedia. I hope that is not the actual position of the user who performed the revert. BG 21:48, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

In addition: the NARTH article does not contain any sourced information to the effect that this organization "advocates eliminating homosexuality using psychotherapy." Probably NARTH as an organization does aim at this, but it's not their official position so far as I know. They would be more likely to say that they advocate conversion therapy for gay people who want to change, which is not, obviously, the same thing as using conversion therapy to eliminate homosexuality completely. BG 21:54, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The "Period" referred to the punctuation mark I added. The NARTH page is also very well referenced and unambiguous.  Unless there is a reason to mistrust the information (and I think it's pretty banal, since that appears to be the intent of the organization), there's no need for a reference.  But as you like.  WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules: simple/complex 22:08, 22 September 2009 (UTC)


 * I looked again at the NARTH article, and really there is nothing there that unambiguously states that they want to eliminate homosexuality totally through therapy. The link to the source you added does not work, so I cannot check it directly. Unless it specifically states that NARTH want to totally eliminate homosexuality through therapy, the source should not be used in that way. BG 22:27, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * My citation wasn't to NARTH. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules: simple/complex 22:29, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I can see that. I never said it was. My point was, the source you used has to state exactly what appears in the article - that NARTH wants to totally eradicate homosexuality through therapy - or it is not being used correctly. BG 22:32, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The source is freely available as a PDF, and searching for NARTH will get you to the appropriate section, feel free to adjust. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules: simple/complex 22:41, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Pro-pedophilia
The lead mentions pro-pedophilia activism using the paper but the body doesn't. Any extra info to expand on this in the body? WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules: simple/complex 22:13, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Alright I've added a section on the matter. It's a little crude but it's a start.Legitimus (talk) 22:27, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Sacred feces
There appear to be a lot of missing sources, criticsms and rebuttals to Rind et al, particularly when including replies by authors and replies to replies. I'm going to start a table here for future reference and inclusion. I've also commented out the criticisms by Holmes and Slap - I don't think it's the original article I've added a citation to, and I can't tell if the original pubmed url was to the initial article or an author reply by Holmes and Slap or by Rind et al commenting (the original link appeared to be Rind et al commenting, which makes it a citation of a citation, meaning the original statement by Holmes and Slap wasn't acutally there). If anyone knows or can sort it out (I can't find the fulltexts for most of the issues), please uncomment it with the appropriate citation. I'd also like to include DOIs if possible, but they appear rather hard to track down. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules: simple/complex 13:34, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

The table as created by me was from as search of the three authors' names between 1998 and 2003. One issue to be concerned about is those that cite rather than discuss. Another is that there's obviously much more to the criticisms and discussion than the public reaction and Dallam et al.'s criticisms. The third is the difference between the controversy and the study - arguably the controversy is a separate issue from the study; if the pages are split, then the criticisms would go on one page and the controversy on another. On the other hand, it also makes sense to simply have a section on public response to the study. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules: simple/complex 14:29, 23 September 2009 (UTC)


 * First comment: Section title, ew.  Second comment:  I found the original Holmes and Slap.
 * This is a study done by these two researchers and is not directly related to Rind et al. It is an independent study with this conclusion:
 * Sexual abuse of boys appears to be common, underreported, underrecognized, and undertreated. Future study requires clearer definitions of abuse, improved sampling, more rigorous data collection, more sophisticated data analyses, and better assessment of management and treatment strategies. Regardless, health care professionals should be more aware of and sensitive to the possibility of sexual abuse in their male patients.
 * That other paper from 1999 is actually this one:
 * On reading it, it appears to be a clump of Letters to the Editor rather than a formal paper. The aforementioned is the title of a letter in there from Rind et al that criticizes Holmes and Slap, echoing many of the material from Rind's formal paper (such as that they didn't distinguish "consensual" sex from unwanted encounters).  This is immediately followed by responses from Holmes and Slap who point all the problems with Rind et al's criticism, including their flawed model of consent.Legitimus (talk) 14:50, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
 * To the matter at hand, I agree that controversy part would be more of a general public matter, while criticism is a scientific one. I can think of many other studies where there is intense scientific criticism, but didn't involve huge public debate that labeled it "controversial."  I would say let's keep it in one article though, because all this effects is for a relatively low-traffic article if you think about it.Legitimus (talk) 14:56, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Does the H&S reply criticize Rind et al.'s original study or Rind's consent criticism of H&S' study? If it's not specifically addressing Rind et al 1998, I don't think it's useable here.  I'd much rather fill out the page with the far-more-specific citations discussing Rind et al. 1998 in detail than replies based on criticisms based on an unrelated study but if it does echo Dallam's criticism of 1998 specifically, I've no objection to its use as a second citation (strictly speaking letters to the editor aren't MEDRS but this isn't strictly speaking a medical topic).  My ability to comment, summarize or discuss is hamstrung by a lack of full-text sources.  I'll try asking around for them, and working through the whole page and all 20-odd sources.  That'll give us the best context for a decision on whether to split or reformat the page to be about the article specifically (I'm also leaning heavily towards keeping it as is for now).  WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules: simple/complex 15:11, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Neither of the H&S parts have anything directly to do with the Rind paper in 1998, other than they are one of many studies that found results that disagree with it.Legitimus (talk) 15:57, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Does the H&S reply criticize Rind et al.'s original study or Rind's consent criticism of H&S' study? If it's not specifically addressing Rind et al 1998, I don't think it's useable here.  I'd much rather fill out the page with the far-more-specific citations discussing Rind et al. 1998 in detail than replies based on criticisms based on an unrelated study but if it does echo Dallam's criticism of 1998 specifically, I've no objection to its use as a second citation (strictly speaking letters to the editor aren't MEDRS but this isn't strictly speaking a medical topic).  My ability to comment, summarize or discuss is hamstrung by a lack of full-text sources.  I'll try asking around for them, and working through the whole page and all 20-odd sources.  That'll give us the best context for a decision on whether to split or reformat the page to be about the article specifically (I'm also leaning heavily towards keeping it as is for now).  WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules: simple/complex 15:11, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Neither of the H&S parts have anything directly to do with the Rind paper in 1998, other than they are one of many studies that found results that disagree with it.Legitimus (talk) 15:57, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Reversion of my edit

 * Legitimus, in the process of supplying the needed reference in the last section, you reverted a couple of my edits. You put the word 'trumpeted' back in place of 'cited'. Maybe the source does use that word, but it doesn't follow that we have to. Don't you think that 'cited' is more neutral and so more in line with Wikipedia's policies? More importantly, why do you prefer the very biased original wording of the first sentence to my more neutral version?The Relativist (talk) 22:45, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * The word used by the source, "trumpeted", is an appropriate description of how the pro-pedophile advocacy groups have used that paper. They've gone far beyond "citing" it, as  would be done in an academic or journalistic context, and have loudly encouraged its use as a propaganda tool.  And your change, using the word "cited" instead, misinterprets the source.  NPOV is about editors' neutrality in reporting the content of the sources, it does not tell editors to modify information from sources to impose an artificial idea of neutrality that does not exist in the source.  That is particularly important when that supposed neutrality disguises what is really a widely discredited fringe theory that has no support in the mainstream at all. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 05:32, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * "Trumpeted" is an unusual and very strong word. If it's used at all here, it should be in quotation marks. Your phrase "modify information from sources to impose an artificial idea of neutrality that does not exist in the source" seems to involve a confusion. The statement in the article is not presented as being about the source. It is a wikipedia statement that is supposedly backed up by the source. So it is not required to reproduce the latter's bias. If you want to do that, you ought to introduce it with something like: "According to so-and-so" and then quote it. But I think it is better to simply paraphrase it in a more neutral way.
 * You haven't addressed the issue of my version of the first sentence. Maybe Legitimus would like to comment on this as he was the one who reverted it.The Relativist (talk) 10:08, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, you haven't given me any good arguments for your version, so I've restored mine.The Relativist (talk) 10:41, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

MHAMIC
I looked at this website: Male Homosexual Attraction to Minors information center (MHAMIC) and it looked like honest research to me with high standards for inclusion. Why are people trying to say it's advocating anything? Can someone provide a genuine reference to this effect or any clear information on that site that refers to itself this way? If people are out there trying to provide the best possible info on a topic, and it doesn't meet someone's "poltically correct" criteria, it just gets dismissed as "advocacy". This seems to be the term people apply to any scientific discussion, such as the Rind et al. study itself.

I could be wrong, but "advocacy" is a term now being used to dismiss something that people don't agree with. I DO NOT dispute the legitimate usage of the term as applied to harmful organizations like NAMBLA though. Don't get me wrong. But what is the definition of "advocacy" being used here? Can we see some criteria? --70.112.54.22 (talk) 04:05, 27 December 2010 (UTC)


 * A quick search with Google shows that the site is included in at least one list of sites, the rest of which appear to be advocacy sites. I didn't add the sentence in question, but I don't think it should be altered without a clear reason.   Will Beback    talk    04:30, 27 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I still think that's merely an opinion, but I won't alter it again unless I can prove it. --70.112.54.22 (talk) 15:58, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Arreola study
Legitimus,

Regarding your deletion of the Arreola study:

(1) What exactly did you mean by 'over-inclusive CSA measurement'?

(2) Since Rind's main conclusion was that positive or neutral outcomes exist in the population as a whole (which is unaffected by the nature of the sample), why would this other study and the particular quote I made from it, which seems to back up that conclusion, be irrelevant? Researcher1000 (talk) 05:27, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
 * The measurements of that study classify CSA as any sexual contact before the age of 18, without any mention of whether this is with an adult or another minor. That's absurdly over inclusive, and clearly was influenced by the fact that the researchers were based in California.  California has unique statutory rape laws that make any sexual contact before age 18 illegal, even if the partner is also under 18 (which creates a double-offense).  Such a law is rare and practically unheard of outside that state.  Most places have an age of consent of 16 and have very clear exceptions when the situation is two underage people together.  I do not know of any source claiming that consensual sex at age 16 or 17 would be tantamount to sexual abuse, meaning that if Rind were truly referring to such a thing, it would be a blatant straw-man.  I should also point out the study appears to exclude contact before age 14, the common age that makes the distinction between child sexual abuse and statutory rape.
 * I also feel the quotation and material as presented with the edit were misleading as to the primary findings and intent of Arreola's paper. The paper is specifically about gay and bisexual men (which comprise 3.5% of the population, even less since the study is males only).  Furthermore, the quotation refers to a self-report measure of well-being (notoriously inaccurate in sex abuse survivors) and ignores the sentence from the paper's abstract:  "The consensual- and forced-sex groups had higher rates of substance use and transmission risk than the no-sex group."
 * So a more honest and complete disclosure would be "consensual" homosexual sex before 18 makes one think one is better off in life, but also leads to increased drug use and HIV. The edit appeared to give the impression that sex for anyone under 18 was good for that person overall.Legitimus (talk) 14:53, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

redaction of "The Study's Findings in Brief" section
I reverted the addition of this section, for a couple of reasons.

First of all, the article is not really about the study per se. I think that years ago the article was named "Rind et al (1998)" or something, but it was decided (rightly, I'd say) that the study itself is not particularly notable. It was just a paper in a journal, not a especially notable journal such as Nature or whtever, and just a meta-study at that, a kind of review of existing literature.

What is (slightly) notable is that it became controversial and there was some stuff written and said about the study. Fine, but drilling down in great depth on the study itself in probably not really called for. We can talk about including a little more info if it seems helpful, though. Also, the material itself is not really ideal, with some speculation on Rind et al's motivations, and is basically an unsourced analysis of the paper, which may be correct in part but is unsourced, and also seems a little bit more on the cheerleady side than I'd like to see ("The researchers were criticized for...suggesting that [other] researchers use more scientifically valid definitions of CSA" for instance), which brings me to the second point.

There's the meta-issue of, this article and this subject has a history here, and we want to be real careful here, and there are some red flags. These were the editors first edits here, and this is a pretty fraught subject, and so that sets off a little buzzer in my head. (Actually, the editor had one previous edit, in 2009, and it was to the article Adult where he added a quite long unsourced essay the gist of which that persons who have begun puberty are adults and that other uses of the term are mistakes, which is probably not true and which sets off another little buzzer in my head.) The editor's name is "Truthinwriting", and given the subject matter this sets off another little buzzer in my head. I've covered this subject a long time here and my experience is that, when we have a user with a username with with Truth or Freedom or so forth in it, on this subject, it just doesn't usually end well. So not to say there's anything wrong with any of this, but that's a couple buzzers too many, and I think this probably a path we don't want to be going down. Herostratus (talk) 06:36, 1 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Herostratus,


 * I assume I should write to the broader community of readers, rather than addressing you directly. Please pardon my writing style if this is not culturally correct, and let me know so I can adjust my writing style for future posts/responses.


 * Herostratus removed/reverted the section I added titled "The Study's Findings in Brief". Here I go over Herostratus' objections and concerns, and request that the section be put back as written.  I'll number, summarize, and address the concerns one-by-one as well as address a few comments Herostratus made that are not directly related to editing the page, but are relevant to understanding the Rind et al. study and the controversy.


 * Concern #1: The section may not be needed since the topic of the page is the controversy rather than the findings; Herostratus wrote "drilling down in great depth on the study itself is probably not really called for".


 * Response to Concern #1: I agree that this page should focus on the controversy rather than the study's findings, however, I do not believe one can objectively understand the controversy without a basic understanding of the study's findings.  That is why I added this section.  To keep it short, I tried to limit myself to about 500 words (I think it was 499 according to Microsoft).  To keep it highly relevant to the page, I focused on facts that appear to be highly relevant to the controversy/criticisms as presented on the page.  I did not go into great detail about the study or the hundreds (?) of analyses presented in it.  I still believe a brief summary is needed if the page is to provide readers with unbiased information, and I believe my summary is a good, objective contribution.


 * Aside #1: Although not of great editing relevance, Herostratus stated the Rind et al. study "...was just a paper in a journal, not a especially notable journal such as Nature or whatever...".


 * Response: Actually, it was published in "Psychological Bulletin", which I believe is generally very highly regarded among psychologists. I have heard (but have no citation or confirmation) that it was tied for the most respected journal in the field of psychology (the other top one being "The Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology", if I remember correctly).  Indeed, I doubt there would have been much controversy if the authors had published in a lesser journal.  But this is not relevant to the edit, just an FYI.


 * Aside #2: Herostratus also stated "and just a meta-study at that,..."


 * Actually, a properly conducted meta-analysis is far more important in science than any single primary study on the same topic. Its findings will be broader, more informative, and much more likely to be accurate than any individual study.  That is why meta-analyses are so important.  Although I do not think my credentials should be used as proof that I am correct, let me mention that I am a full professor and have taught both introductory research methods and statistics.  We can talk more about the power and import of meta-analysis, but it does not seem relevant to the edits or the page, hence I'll stop here for now.


 * Concern #2: Herostratus wrote that the section I added "is not really ideal, with some speculation on Rind et al's motivations, and is basically an unsourced analysis of the paper...".


 * Response to Concern #2: I'm not certain what is meant by "unsourced", but I will proceed under the assumption that Herostratus means I did not provide enough citations. If that is the case, then I can add them.  Perhaps my sense of what needs to be cited and what does not, differs from the Wikipedia community.  Most of the facts I presented come from the Rind et al. report itself, which was cited.  But if adding references with specific pages references is desired, I can certainly try to do so.  However, although I played in the sandbox, I don't see how one goes about adding the same basic citation (e.g., Rind et al.) with a specific page reference.  Can someone point me to that information?  If not, I can just put the page references in parentheses as part of the main text itself.  Regarding Herostratus' assertion that I speculated on Rind et al.'s motivations, I don't see anywhere that I did that.  For example, I wrote "The researchers conducted the college meta-analysis in part because the college studies provided data regarding causality which was lacking in the national studies."  If that is what Herostratus is referring to, perhaps the problem is that I need to keep re-citing the Rind et al. study with specific page references.  That information comes from page 25 (bottom right paragraph).  Please advise on what level of citation detail is desired in these pages, and technically how to best insert that information.


 * Concern #3: Herostratus thought that some of my writing seemed to be "a little bit more on the cheerleady side..." and gave a partial quotation of one sentence I wrote.


 * Response to Concern #3: The sentence in question merely presented two facts, without opinion or, I believe, cheering, hence I don't think it needs to be removed or modified. The facts were (1) that Rind et al. were criticized for reporting the small findings & (2) that Rind et al. were criticized for suggesting that researchers use more scientifically valid definitions of CSA.  The sentence I wrote was: "The researchers were criticized for reporting the small findings and were additionally criticized for suggesting that researchers use more scientifically valid definitions of CSA."  I don't see any cheerleading there, and believe it presents relevant facts to understanding the type of controversy that occurred.  I could expand upon that sentence, but I wanted to keep the section brief.


 * Concern and Response #4: Herostratus referred to there being a history about this page, but I am not familiar with it and it does not seem to display on this Discussion page which only has about 3 posts.  Herostratus correctly points out that I have little experience with Wiki editing, but I don't see how that is relevant (feel free to educate me!).  Herostratus is concerned about my user name, but I wanted something meaningful and that's what I chose, again, it's not relevant to editing the page.


 * I request guidance on the level of detail wanted in citations, and that the section be put back. If someone wants to go to the trouble of putting it back then editing it to include "[citation needed]" everywhere one is desired, I will try to monitor the page and add the citations within a few days.  I'm just worried that it will be hard to read the page if every line has a citation, and almost all of them are to the same source (the Rind et al. study). Truthinwriting (talk) 15:04, 1 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for responding Truthinwriting. Yes this is right place to discuss this. I will read and address all your remarks as soon as possible, there's a lot there so it might be a couple of days (of course, as goes without saying, other editors are encouraged to participate also). I reformatted your post so as to keep it all in the same section. Herostratus (talk) 18:45, 1 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Hello. I may be able to address a few of these, but not all necessarily.  I was watching these edits as they happened, and admitted they made me nervous in the same way as Herostratus mentioned.  I refrained from acting as I was not sure what I wanted to say and I wanted to see how they would play out.
 * What I can hopefully do is fill TruthinWriting in on a few things. First is a general idea about citations.  The requirement for citations actually varies and has to do with the relative controversiality of an article and also with specific assertions.  For example Sesame Street has very few citations in its introduction section, because none of it is in dispute and it's all rather straight forward.  Article about a high profile politician on the other hand tends to have every sentence in the entire article cited.  This article in particular we are talking about is about a controversy, making it subject to a fairly rigorous policy of citations.  While I cannot address a lot of the specifics of your responses at this time, it is possible to cite the same source multiple times using page numbers.  How this is done is the main bibliographic source is noted at the bottom of the article, and each individual cite is placed after the appropriate sentence with a ref indicate the last name, title, and page number.  For an example of this style, see Rodney King and note how Lou Cannon's book Official Negligence is cited in that article.
 * Another thing I can fill you in on is the "history" Herostratus is talking about. It is not necessarily specific to this article, but was an issue with all articles related to the sexual abuse of children.  At one point in Wikipedia's history, there were editors who were actual pedophiles.  This in and of itself was not an issue, but rather the behavior of these editors.  They attempted to use Wikipedia as propaganda platform, editing articles in a biased manner in order to further their views and present them as  "fact" and prevailing scientific opinion on this encyclopedia.  It was a severe test of Wikipedia's grand philosophies of non-censorship and being "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit."  Ultimately though, this behavior became out of control, with regular editors have little to no power to combat these fringe views taking over articles as though they were the majority.  So the policy changed.  Users who were pedophiles were banned permanently.  Some of them were noticed by the FBI, who tracked down and arrested a few (some were wanted criminals, others because they had child pornography).  It's been quiet now for a few years.  Why is this relevant here?  As the article mentions, Rind et al is a very popular study among pedophiles.  It is frequently quoted by them as "proof" doing sex acts to little children is ok (yes I know that isn't what Rind says, but that is how they interpret it).  They even used it in legal defenses for a time so they could achieve leniency by minimizing the harm they caused.  Any why is this relevant now?  Well, every so often, a pedophile user comes on here and starts making subtle changes, all the while pretending they're just adding scientific information and swearing up and down that they are not trying to push an agenda.  There's a handful of us users (myself and Herostratus included) who have been here since those old times, and we know all the warning signs; little tiny red flags we've seen so many times.  Sometimes it's a false alarm. That's why I didn't do anything with your edits.  But when a user crosses a certain line, we know it.Legitimus (talk) 21:54, 1 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I would have had the same "ref flag" reaction as Herostratus and Legitimus, and they've summed up why. That said, I can understand what Truthinwriting is saying about reporting the study in part if we are going to have criticism on it. Truthinwriting's edits to the Adult article about, in the past, adulthood primarily being determined by the start of puberty and people usually moving from the status of child directly to the status of adult (skipping the socially-constructed stage of adolescence), isn't "off" (although there seems to have been some type of recognized in-between stage for most cultures for many years). We (myself and others) are discussing that now at Talk:Adolescence. But he (I assume Truthinwriting is a "he") should have added a source for it. I added a source for it back in February, though not the best, which was taken from the Adolescence article.


 * Truthinwriting, for what Herostratus means about "unsourced," see WP:Sourcing. And for how to go about sourcing, see WP:Citing sources. Flyer22 (talk) 04:40, 2 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Truthinwriting, responding to some of your points. The archived talk page posts can be accessed by clicking the "1" where it says "Archives: 1" in the box at the top of this page.


 * Regarding point #1, that the article, if it's to exist, ought to describe the study in more detail. This is arguable but reasonable. The problem is, how to do this? We can't put in our own (yours, or mine, or any other editor's) take on the paper. It'd have to be from notable, reliable, and neutral expert, using short quotations or text that very closely tracks their statements. Even then there's the problem of possible cherry-picking of material, and that's assuming that we can agree that a given source is a notable, reliable, and neutral expert. All in all I'd prefer keeping it as succinct as possible, and letting readers interested in deep details of what's in the paper read the paper itself.


 * Re Aside #1, yes, I understand that Psychological Bulletin is highly notable in its field. What I meant was, even most full-length books, scholarly or not, don't qualify as being notable enough to have Wikipedia articles. We generally don't have Wikipedia articles on individual articles that appear in a scholarly journal, even ones that are more notable than Psychological Bulletin (such as Nature etc.), and very few qualify as being notable enough. Re Aside #2, OK, I stand corrected regarding the value of meta-studies.


 * Re Concern #2, right, by sources I mean citations, but as I said above it's kind of fraught how, exactly, these are to be used. For one thing, for each statement -- that is, for each statement describing some passage or element of the paper -- I'd want to be assured that it was incontrovertible and there weren't alternative ways of describing that passage or element  anywhere, from good sources. This is pretty hard to show absent exhaustive research, which I'm not sure who we could get to do that. I get that "Most of the facts I presented come from the Rind et al. report itself", but again there is also the issue of interpretation in presentation, possible, cherry-picking, and so forth.


 * Re Concern #3, well, what I was thinking was, if Rind et al said, in the paper, something to effect of "We suggest that, in future, critics of our methodology use scientifically valid definitions..." I'm not an academic, but that seems pretty inflammatory for a academic paper. But if there's a direct quote, I guess it is what it is. But if it's just you using the term "scientifically valid" as an interpretation of what Rind et al said, that's a huge problem. Also, did Rind et al really say "Western public"? I wonder why they'd do that, are there likely notably different reactions to this material in China? Again, if these are your words, it's a problem -- "Western public" is actually a red-flag term, as it's often used by editors implicitly postulating and appealing to a Golden Age-type "otherwhere/otherwhen" to contrast to an (implicitly benighted) here-and-now. So, if "scientifically valid" and "Western public" are direct quotes from Rind et al, OK, but if not, we're probably done here. Are they?


 * Re Concern #4, right, I pointed you to the talk page archive, although that's not a complete picture as discussions about the use or misuse of the study are scattered throughout a number of different article talk pages (many now also archived). And right, there's nothing wrong with your username, it's fine, I didn't mean to demean it, it's just, well... see WP:Truth (or WP:TRUTH if you don't mind sophomoric sarcasm), I'm just saying, and basing this on my experience, particularly on this subject. Cheers, Herostratus (talk) 05:31, 3 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Response to Truthwriting and the redaction of his first post to this topic.


 * This is my first post to Wikipedia.


 * I liked your new section to this topic entitled "The Study's Findings in Brief." I also very much liked, and agreed with, your other various small improvements to the topic, made about the same time.


 * Herostratus asserts that "the [Rind] study itself is not particularly notable. It was just a paper in a journal, not a especially notable journal such asNature or whatever, and just a meta-study at that, a kind of review of existing literature." "Drilling down in great depth on the study itself in probably not really called for." This remarkable shift in attitude from shock and condemnation to "not particularly notable" is classic in Thomas S. Kuhn's book The Structure of Scientific Revolution.


 * IMHO, the mathematics in the Rind et al. meta-analysis are brilliant, and the results of the mathematical calculations of both the original study and the 2005 Ulrich replication are startling. Not only is this Wikipedia topic about the controversy, but it perpetuates and recreates the controversy, as seen in the discussions here and in the archives -- even 13 years after the article's publication. It is better, in my humble opinion, to get the results stated in simple mathematical terms, take care not to overreach, and make clear the concepts of averages and normal distribution.


 * I was appalled that everything that you contributed to this topic was summarily removed, in apparent violation of spirit of the Wikipedia policy to be welcoming to new users. I appreciate how polite and cooperative you remain after this. I guess you really want to contribute to this.


 * I read the archives for this topic. Over the years, a number of editors asked for a summary of the Rind et al. results, something like yours. Take a look at the Archive. Like other editors before, you saw the need for a summary, but you also contributed one. Thank you very much for your contribution.


 * By the way, how you might find the Archive: Near the top of the Discussion page, there is a long rectangular search box. Right above that search box there is the word "Archive," in small type, with a number "1" to the right of it. Mouse click on the "1", and you have all the discussion from the past years. Some of the posters who have made contributions to this topic have then been banned, but the reasons for being banned were not documented. There are a number of unsettled matters for discussion in the Archives.


 * IMHO that TALK material contributed to improve this topic. Let a consensus develop about how brief or how long the summary of Rind's findings might be.


 * I just now see the last Herostratus response, as I want to post this. I feel a lot better about his response now.


 * Re: the first part of Concern # 3: To Herostratus: This business is not my strength, but I will quickly add this. The issue of the construct validity of CSA is well developed in the Rind article, and in later discussions of the controversy they wrote. This recommendation to improve the construct validity of CSA came after the study was finished, as a result of a request from one of the paper's peer reviewers. Not everyone has had college courses in statistics and social science research methods, so the language used may be strange. The word "validity" has a specific meaning in science and may have predictive qualities. One problem might be with the public's perception of these ideas when one translates the mathematical outcomes into English. Radvo (talk) 11:08, 3 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I would like to take a moment to remind all users on this thread that "sock-puppeting" is expressly prohibited. Registering and posting under more than one username on the same page, or registering a new name when a previously one has been banned, is not permitted on any part of Wikipedia.  See link for more details.  Be advised administrators do have the ability to trace usernames using IP address and other methods in the course of investigating sock-puppet usage.  In addition, so called "meat-puppet" behavior (the intentional recruiting of new users to join in-progress discussions) is also prohibited.Legitimus (talk) 13:12, 3 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Just a note re "the reasons for being banned were not documented". I think it goes something like this. If an editor falls into either of the categories ""pedophile" or "sex-with-children normalization advocate", they will be summarily banned with no discussion or appeal. There are various reasons for this (good reasons in my opinion), some political, some moral, and some functional (that is, to facilitate the functioning of the project). An editor's membership in these categories may be determined by any method, including self-avowal, attachment of an account to a known person with these qualities in real life, or analysis of editing patterns. This is entirely a Star Chamber-type process and necessarily so, partly to avoid possible libel issues, but also for other reasons. Hope this clarifies. Herostratus (talk) 16:48, 3 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the clarification of the reasons for former editors being banned from this topic. As noted before, I researched a number of former editors to this topic, and noticed quite a number had been banished, and I was wondering the reasons. "Advocacy of normalization" is not specifically forbidden/mentioned in the recent revision of the Wikipedia Child Protection Policy. So may I assume that forbidding "sex-with-children normalization advocacy" is something you or the Pedophilia Article Watch added unofficially to this policy. I assume "sex-with-children normalization advocacy" is political advocacy you have no tolerance for here. Would you care to provide a definition, and some examples of what might get an editor banned? I assume from Legitimus' post that sock puppeting and meat puppeting were also a problem, and might merit banishing, too. One way people learn the rules is to observe other people being specifically cited and publicly punished for violating the rules. Open punishment has a desirable deterrent effect on others. If the banning is done in "Star Chambers", then fairness requires that editors should be informed in advance about what the Wikipedia rules are and the consequences for violating them. I appreciate Legitimus's post about sock puppeting, as this raises our consciousness. I can appreciate this rule, and would not like the old timers here to break that rule and "gang up" on me. I am joking. It's good to have the rules in writing in these Talk pages, and how the rules may be enforced differently by different administrators.  I like to think that if editors know what the rules are, most will chose to live within them. Several editors were banned here over a handful of years. I wonder if maybe the banned editors did not know the rules in advance. If I have the time and interest, I may put all of these rules together some day for another TALK section: === What are the rules for editors here? ===.


 * It's like this: If I have racist or bullying thoughts or attitudes, we don't have rules against "thought crimes;" and they are hard to enforce. It is good to know that I may not express those thoughts or attitudes even once, if they are rules, because I might be banned as punishment. In Stalinist Russia, a comrade who said, "I love capitalism, and I am a capitalist." would quickly learn she should not have said that. And those who observed the punishment would learn that as well. That is an integration experience; and editors can help each other to behave within the stated rules over time. I don't have a big problem with reasonable and well-reasoned rules, and would encourage all editors to follow them faithfully.


 * Something else now: Regarding a brief statement that summarizes the 1998 Rind at al. report: Dr Rind et al. originally wrote for academic peers. Years later he wanted the public to understand what he had shared with his peers, too, and in simple language they could understand. He proposed a one sentence summary that went something like this:  Rind et al. (1998) found that 3 out of every 100 individuals in a CSA population had clinically significant problems (compared to 2 out of every 100 in a general population). This is found in Rind and Tromovitch (2007). "National Samples, Sexual Abuse in Childhood, and Adjustment in Adulthood: A Commentary on Najman, Dunne, Purdie, Boyle, and Coxeter (2005)," Archives of Sexual Behavior, 36, 101-106.  The families of CSA persons, on average, tend to have more problems, and problem families, in turn, may cause additional clinically significant problems for the child. So there is this confounding family variable, that may make the two groups (the CSA and general population group) almost similar in clinically significant problems. This summary sentence by Rind was discussed and rejected on the TALK page here in 2008. It's item # 20, "Odd reference" in Archive 1. I ask all editors to reconsider the value of Rind's short summary. You don't have to believe it's true, only that Dr. Rind claims this is one way to succinctly summarize the result of his 1998 calculations on thousands of self reports. Dr. Rind has to stick with the data from the 35,703 people who completed self-reports in the 59 studies in the meta-analysis. The U.S. Congress, the public, and most of you obviously feel very differently about the facts. That's one of the reasons why there is a controversy about the results, and this page.  Radvo (talk) 21:44, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Thank you to all for your comments. I am gaining a better understanding of Wikipedia, procedures, and concerns. After reading the above comments, I have edited my contribution with an eye toward avoiding things that might be seen as opinion or disputable, and adding a lot of citations/sources to specific pages and tables. The new version is less than 600 words (I think it grew in size because it takes more words to spell out facts than to summarize them in a way that might be challenged as opinion). I also removed some useful information, but I hope in the future to add it elsewhere in the page where it will be more appropriate.

The issue of "cherry-picking" was raised. I suspect a major point of the open-edit policy of Wikipedia is to ensure that cherry-picking will be quickly noticed and balancing information will be added. Indeed, one can always point to a fact one does not like and say it was cherry-picked; the test though is whether or not balancing facts can be presented. I do not believe I cherry-picked anything, but if anything in my summary seems out of balance, please let me know and I'll try to address the concerns or explain why I think it should be included in the brief summary.

Regarding citation style, I understand I should use "short citations". I have searched the PsycInfo bibliographic database and it seems there is only one Rind et al. 1998 (the college meta-analysis) and only one Rind & Tromovitch 1997 (the national meta-analysis), thus I suggest short citations without titles, since the titles appear in the full citations and should not be ambiguous now or in the future.

Following is my proposed new version, without properly formatted citations (lower page numbers are referring to Rind et al. 1998; higher page numbers are to Rind & Tromovitch 1997):

Findings in Brief

Prior to publishing the 1998 Rind et al. meta-analysis that was based on college samples[re-cite], Rind and Tromovitch published a meta-analysis based on national samples[re-cite]. The 1998 manuscript replicated the overall, nationally representative findings regarding the association between experiencing one or more episodes categorized as CSA and later psychological adjustment.[p. 42] Both the national studies and the college studies showed only a small overall average association between CSA and impairment (on a scale of 0 to 100, the association was less than 1.0; separated by gender it was approximately 0.5 for males and 1.0 for females; correlation rs=.07 and .10, respectively).[p. 31, 33, Table 4 & p. 248, Table 6] Most social science research is designed so that on average, 1 out of 20 findings will be statistical outliers if the research is perfectly conducted. The 10 national samples contained 1 statistical outlier; the 54 college samples contained 3 statistical outliers, as expected in social science research; after removing these outliers, the findings across both male and female samples (both within the national samples and the college samples) were highly consistent (i.e., homogeneous), thus the small averages are not the result of mixing studies with markedly different findings.[p. 31, 33, Table 4 and see p. 248-249] Even when the researchers included the statistical outliers, the overall result was small.[p. 31] In addition to the overall analyses, in the college study the researchers examined the 18 most studied, alleged symptoms of having experienced CSA (e.g., self-esteem problems, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, sexual problems, etc.). Fifteen out of eighteen of these data sets were homogeneous after outlier removal, and all 18 average associations were small both before and after outlier removal.[p. 32 Table 3]

The researchers conducted the college meta-analysis in part because the college studies provided data regarding causality which was lacking in the national studies.[pp. 25, 42] The analyses of these data showed that CSA was unlikely to be the major causal variable, if it is a causal variable at all.[p. 39-40, Table 12] In studies that controlled for any confounding variables, less than 1 in 5 attempts to find a statistically significant finding between CSA and harm did so.[p. 40] Poor family environments and other confounding variables were found to be 9-fold better explanations for the small associations that were found in the main analyses, suggesting that the causal association between CSA and harm is small at most, but perhaps zero in the typical case.[p. 39-40]

In addition to the meta-analyses that compared people who experienced CSA with controls, the researchers also summarized the available data on peoples' reactions to the experiences that were labeled as CSA by researchers. They found that nearly one-third of females and two-thirds of males who had an experience that was labeled as CSA, reported that the experience was neutral or positive.[p. 36, Table 7]

The researchers pointed out that a likely reason their findings were counter to expectations that CSA causes prevalent, intense harm, regardless of gender,[p. 238-239; see also p. 23-26] was at least in part due to the use of definitions of CSA that are of questionable scientific validity.[p. 46] The authors then suggested that researchers label willing sexual encounters that were experienced positively as "adult-child sex" and that other experiences such as unwanted and negative experiences be labeled as "child sexual abuse" so that researchers would be more likely to achieve a valid understanding of the heterogeneous behaviors currently grouped under the CSA label.[p. 46-47] The authors then closed their article pointing out that although scientists should use definitions that produce better scientific validity, this did not mean that "moral or legal definitions of or views on ... CSA should be abandoned or even altered."[p. 47] Truthinwriting (talk) 13:16, 4 December 2011 (UTC)


 * [Herostratus commented ,but his remarks have since been archived] i.e., before elsewhere "I [Herostratus] am also not qualified to vet the [Rind] paper, but I have some familiarity with the paper. I wish I could say it's a piece of junk since its conclusions are (in part) pretty unsavory, but it's not."


 * It's great to read that Truthinwriting does NOT have to deal with Dr. Laura's accusation that the Rind et al. study is "junk science"! So Rind's math and science are not junk. But Herostratus may speak for many when he says that he is not qualified to vet the science or math but Rind's conclusions are nevertheless "(in part) pretty unsavory". IMHO, Rind is a mathematical genius, but any one with a name like Herostratus may be excellent in identifying the unsavory aspect of the conclusions. (BTW, swooping down on guys with "Truth" in their names and redacting their entire contribution is in harmony with the meaning of Herostratus name. So, now I hope Herostratus will work with Truthinwriting to make the summary of the Rind study better.) I would like to draw out Herostratus "unsavory" impression and to have it discussed openly. I ask Herostratus to share, if he can remember, what is the "unsavory" part of Rind's study? I'd like to hear Herostratus' view; he is very good with words, and has been around the Rind article here for a long time. I ask other long time editors here the same. Has Truthinwriting included the "unsavory" part of Rind's conclusions? Or has the second version of the summary omitted that? If there is something "unsavory" about the scientific conclusion, it should be included in the article somehow in a sensitive and integrated way. Dr. Spiegel was able to do that, in his fine critique. The honest inclusion of excellent critique will give Truthinwriting's summary of the science more credibility with the public. This is not only science; this is about children, taboo, and common sense. "Usavory" may arise from the deeply archetypal, instinctual, spiritual, or religious. Is the failing, in the statement of the Rind conclusion, something about morality that is lacking? Some have already stated things like this in comments elsewhere in the controversy. Mmmm Or "unsavory" may go something like this: "So, if in the typical case, CSA may NOT be psychologically harmful to the child, I don't want to know this, and I don't need to know this. Why would anyone need to know this? Or maybe it is good news for the involved child, too, but I am confused, suspicious, hostile about these findings." Are there good sources that capture these unsavory aspects of the Rind controversy? If already published, that may be part of the controversy about this study, too. I have seen such commentary from credible sources, and will eventually get to posting that. Unfortunately, no original research. But if the final Wikipedia article is excellent, it will be well received by many here. It's up to you who are willing to contribute.


 * On another matter for Truthinwriting: A suggestion for rewording the small section in parentheses in your first paragraph of your summary: Do these two sentences seem more accurate and more understandable to the public? "The proportion of later personal adjustment variance associated with the early experience of CSA is 1/2 of 1% for males, and 1% for females. Therefore, in this analysis, the early CSA experience(s) failed to explain, for the typical person, 99% or 99.5% of the person's personal adjustment later in life." [end]


 * These numbers were calculated after working with thousands of cases, and these percentages do not explain any individual case.


 * Would this be a good idea? Is there a volunteer editor, who watches here, who could take the short proposed summary and rewrite it, just a little bit, to make it less technical and more understandable to the average non-college graduate? Of course, precision is more important than readability, and Truthinwriting puts his name to it, so it's up to him. Also small edits to make the final text easier to read may be added by any editor later on.


 * Is there anyone here who strongly objects to the idea of a summary or to this version of the summary, and who will redact or undo it entirely as soon as it is posted? If this summary needs small edits, maybe they can be more easily done on the Wikipedia article site; the software is made for this. Radvo (talk) 05:42, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

It has been a few days since I posted my revised and sourced version of the "Findings in Brief" here on the talk page. I'll wait a few more days so people have more time to comment, if they wish. If there seems to be no serious problem, I'll then format the citations and edit it into the article page, probably in about 3 days. FYI. Truthinwriting (talk) 05:55, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Repetition & neutral point of view; activation of external web-links
How can the controversy, caused by the Rind et al. article, best be described, using reliable sources? Not by repeating the same ideas and same advocate sources in two different parts of the article!

The third paragraph from the top (starting with the words "Rind et al. concluded") and the entire section further down entitled "Usage outside of scholarly discussions" cover the same ideas with different detail. This repetition, in two different parts of this article, give these ideas, and their advocacy sources, undue weight. By repeating the two ideas (the mention by tiny, fringe, advocacy groups that have almost no followers and the article's use for the defense in a few legal cases), misrepresent the views of the Rind article by the high-quality, reliable academic sources that commented on, and added to, the controversy. Besides Dr. Dallam and Dr. Ondersma, who are given a lot of space in this Wikipedia article, much of the voluminous published commentary (see the two websites mentioned below in this Section), after the first year, ignored these two aspects of the early controversy. So that observation sets off a little buzzer in my head. Why are the pedoactivist and court aspects so important to Dr. Dallam and Dr. Ondersma. I speculate on this more in the next section. Radvo (talk) 06:27, 7 December 2011 (UTC)



In the Rind article's section entitled ==Usage outside of scholarly discussions==, there are 4 websites listed; three were inserted by other editors. The fourth evolved out of one of the original three, and is devoted solely to the Rind controversy. These websites belong to the kinds of activist groups that Dallam asserts use the Rind et al. report. This section of the Wikipedia article claims that web-sites like these use the Rind report "outside of scholarly discussion." Two of these websites are devoted to the controversy in greater detail than this website. But I was today unable to verify on these websites any use of the Rind results to specifically advocate any lowering of age in age-of-consent laws in any state legislature. This part of Dahlam's 2001 claim is probably outdated. So, I note this in the text of the article. This accusation sets off another little buzzer in my head.

(Editorial: Foreigners who live under different laws should know that in the United States of America, we have a viable democracy and a wonderful Constitution that allows any of its citizens to advocate a change in the age-of-consent law. Citizens can form a flat earth society, become Communists, and read Mao's Little Red Book. Parts of this Wikipedia Rind et al. article may give foreigners the impression that advocacy of legal reform by citizens here is not permitted or illegal. This is not true. In Stalanist Russia, these activists would probably have been executed or banished to Siberia long ago. But if Justin Bieber, who I believe is 17 years old, was a U.S. citizen, and lived in a state that had an age of consent set at 18, he could organize, with his girlfriend and his millions of fans, to have the age of consent law reset at 17. It is wrong IMHO to give foreigners the impression that, if Justin Bieber did this in the USA, his age of consent reform activism would be taboo, illegal, an attempt to normalize pedophilia, or an advocacy of inappropriate relationships with children. The tiny number of pedophile activists in the USA are covered in their political activism, by the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. I have always been a proud member of the ACLU.)

For future verification purposes, the four websites, included in this "Usage outside of scholarly discussions" Section, should be easily accessible to the reader, to show that Dallam is no longer relevant regarding the association of the Rind report with specific age-of-consent reform advocacy. I did not remove from the Wikipedia article the assertion that Dallam made in 2001, as her claim about the websites' usage may have been verifiable then.

The Wikipedia reader of the Rind article/page can get to the NAMbLA web-site with two mouse clicks, via the Wikipedia article on NAMbLA, which in turn gives the functioning web-link to the organizational website. I could not see on the NAMbLA site how any description of the results of the Rind study were used to advocate age of consent reform. Can anyone here find what Dr. Dallam claims? (BTW, Susan Clancy's book, The Abuse Myth, has not been condemned by the U.S. Congress because Peter Herman from NAMbLA reviews it on NAMbLA's website. This sets off another little buzzer in my head. Why was the Rind report condemned for being reviewed by the NAMbLA web-site and Clancy and others who books were reviewed were not.) Age-of-consent organizations "that have not dissolved have only minimal membership and have ceased their activities other than through a few websites." See [age of consent reform].

If functional outside web-links were added to the three other websites in that Section (i.e., to Ipce, MHAMic, Everything you wanted...), the Wikipedia reader of this article might, with the click of the mouse, verify the current web use of the Rind Report, viz. its "use outside of scholarly discussions". The Wikipedia articles on two of these groups have been deleted, so the links are broken.

Of particular interest to those who contribute to this Rind controversy article might be these two websites (below), which also deal with the Rind controversy:

[Everything you wanted to know about The Rind Controversy MHAMic]

The text describing the controversy is interesting, and provides IMHO a much more rich and complex version of the controversy than provided here on Wikipedia. It would be great if Wikipeida editors got some additional quality sources for the Wikipedia article from this website.

The other web-link is:

[The RBT Files at Ipce]

This Dutch web-site holds scores of articles directly related to the controversy, distributed in a confusing collection of "Libraries" that are not immediately apparant. I've read that the Netherlands is country where sharing files without profit is legal.[See Section entitled 'Countries where sharing files in legal'] There are still more articles on associated web-pages than are listed on the Introductory page. This website can be used for further private research by editors and interested readers here. There is at least one original article there about the Rind controversy, and some math education for people who want to understand meta-analysis. I believe the web site was maintained from the start by Dr. Frans Gieles, with what may be a tiny group of Dutch and German volunteers. Besides English, there are Dutch, French, Spanish and German language articles about the Rind Report. I once saw a foreign language article in Latvia, where the author claimed something like America had lost its place as the champion of democracy because the Rind report was condemned by the Congress. Herostratus may think there was a little controversy about the Rind article, and its condemnation by the Congress, but he may be poorly informed about how foreigners were watching this with dismay.

I would like to fix the web-links in the article to these external websites, but want to first get feedback about the permissibility from the editors or administrators here who know the copyright and other rules. The NAMbLA web-link in the article works, so I assume this link is not in violation of Wiki-pedia's Child Protection Policy. Since the Section is about the use of these 4 websites for verification purposes of claims by a third party, it may be acceptable under Wikipedia's rules to link to them. Radvo (talk) 01:00, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

NPOV
The introductory paragraphs of the Rind et al. article currently contains this sentence, which I would like to remove, I bring this matter up here to first get feedback.

Here's the sentence I wish to remove, from near the beginning of the article.

"Numerous age of consent reform organizations have quoted the [Rind et al.] paper in support of their efforts to lower or rescind age of consent laws, and defense attorneys have used the study to argue for minimizing harm in child sexual abuse cases.[4][5]"

The 2 sources (footnoted in 4 and 5) that support this statement are professionals but IMHO are not neutral observers; they are advocates for two different alternative views that have done much to sustain the controversy.

(1) Dr. Ondersma is associated with the advocacy group APSAAC, a professional group of CSA counselors. I was told that this advocacy group was formed, in part, to resist and counter the public and professional skepticism that questioned the mindless professional support of the ridiculous claims of preschool children in the McMartin Preschool case in California, et al.. The Ondersma group may be the guardians of the rhetoric, methods, and techniques that caused the moral panic around the preschool cases for a number of years. The counselors in this group made some people pretty mad, and IMHO they had to circle the wagons to protect themselves.

(2) Dr. Stephanie Dallam was with The Leadership Council. Those professionals organized, in part, to defend member therapists against malpractice lawsuits, These therapists (allegedly fraudulently, according to the lawsuits) diagnosed their patients with so called "recovered memories' of incest, and multiple personality disorder. This was another moral panic, that included the controversial recovered memories phenomenon. The Leadership Council has considerable professional interest in who controls the rhetoric about incest and CSA, especially in Congress, among judges, and in juries. This professional interest of The Leadership Council to control the rhetoric that gets to the legislatures and the courts sets off another buzzer in my head. These are not professionals with a neutral point of view; they have an agenda and want to protect their professional members from malpractice suites when things go wrong. It's a free country, and I support their right to organize,too. But I oppose the use of their rhetoric as a neutral and unbiased source.

The therapists associated with these two groups IMHO are not mainstream; the science associated with these therapists is not regarded, by their mainstream professional peers, as the strongest in the field. I hae no problem with developing alternative therapies, unless the professional members of these groups are getting a lot of malpractice suites filed against them. Then it is time for these professionals to get out and control the rhetoric. That sets off another buzzer in my head.

The sentence quoted above suggests there are "numerous" organizations that support age of consent reform. "Numerous" in nonsense if you read the Wikipedia article on Age of Consent reform organizations. Associating these tiny fringe groups with the Rind study is also nonsense. (The NAMbLA website now features a long review of Susan Clancy's book, The Abuse Myth . Is that reason for her book to now be condemned by the Congress, and by these two advocacy groups?)

Then the sentence in the Introduction of the Rind article mentions the Rind study being used in court. Now the alarm buzzer is loud and steady. For the people in The Leadership Council this controversy is about who controls the discourse in the legislatures and in the courts. If the Rind study gains any credibility or following in the public, then the professionals from The Leadership Council, who are being sued in court over repressed memories, will have more difficulty defending themselves against juries that may give huge damage awards in civil suits. I suspect this is what these groups are about.

These two advocacy groups have considerable interest in discrediting the Rind et al. studies by successfully associating the Rind research with controversy, with the condemnation by Congress, with "numerous" fringe pedophile advocacy organizations and to so-called pedophile activists. And with the use of the Rind study in courts of law. And with the current Wikipedia article that further destroys the credibility of the Rind research. (Except that Heather Ulrich duplicated the Rind study in 2005, and came up with the identical results. Go figure.) If the rhetoric of this Wikipedia article is transformed into an article with a more neutral point of view, this article will be probably nominated for deletion by the same people who put it up here originally.

The buzzer is quite loud and steady now.

I want to work to make this article a fair and balanced one. But then I expect that it will be taken down from Wikipeida, and have to exist in an independent site. Let's see how this comes out.

I speculate that some of the claims made by the advocates for these professionals, who may rightly fear lawsuits, to damage the credibility of the Rind study as valid court evidence. These two groups may be protecting members who were being sued (or might be sued in the future) and want their views in court to go unchallenged by the controversial Rind studies. These two groups see the Rind studies as a professional threat and thus a rival to be discredited. I see the earlier versions of the Wikipeida article as good public relations for these advocates. Some of the sources this article uses as neutral and quality sources are not IMHO disinterested, they are part of the kind of non-mainstream professional groups that created and maintain the controversy.

The reason I bring this up is the Wikipeida editors need reliable sources. The Wikipedia editors incorrectly IMHO regard Dallam and Ondersma as neutral sources. I don't think they are neutral sources for the purpose of sourcing this article. I think they are part of the reason these is a controversy; they weigh in heavily against the Rind study.

The views of Dr. Dallam and Dr. Ondersma are very much part of The Rind et al. controversy. I see them as protagonists, and they should not be Sources for the neutral introduction of the controversy.

So I want that biased sentence in the introduction to be deleted.

Please advise.

Radvo (talk) 23:23, 10 December 2011 (UTC) Revised and expanded Radvo (talk) 00:15, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Question for an Administrator: Is activating the dead web-links in the "Usage outside of scholarly discussions" section allowed by Wikepedia policy?
I want to bring the dead external web-links in the ['Usage outside of scholarly discussion' Section] to the attention of a Wikipedia administrator within the next week, unless this matter can reach some strong consensus here on the TALK page. I am not so familiar with the rules and policies and how they are implemented, but eager to learn the rules and operate within them.

To the appropriate Wikipedia authority or Administrator:

I am a new editor, as of the beginning of December. I need an authoritative answer from an administrator (or similar). I asked about this on the TALK page, and I now raise this matter with an administrator.

In the section ['Usage outside of scholarly discussion' in Wikipedia's Rind et al. Controversy article], three websites are named; one link is active; two links are dead, one link should be upgraded to a different section of the website.

All four websites are active here, so editors may see the active links that might be placed into the article: [NAMbLA] [The RBT Files at Ipce], [The Male Homosexual Attraction to Minors Information Center MHAMic] [Everything you wanted to know about The Rind Controversy MHAMic] This last is a different section of the previous website; the latter deals only with the Rind et al controversy. If by posting these links here I have violated any rule or policy, please delete only the active links immediately.

The question I have is about the permissibility of making these web-links active in the article itself.

According to Dr. Dallam, a highly esteemed, anti-Rind advocate, often used as a reliable source to explain the controversy in this article, these websites were allegedly and inappropriately misusing Rind's scholarly article for political advantage, and these websites are identified in the Wikipedia article for verification purposes. The NAMbLA link in the article works thru another Wikipedia article; with just two clicks of the mouse, one is on the NAMbLA website. The other external links do not work in the article. Since these are links to the work of unknowns, they are NOT referred to in the article as reliable sources. The three links are named, so the Wikipedia reader can verify for him-herself the alleged misuse of the Rind scholarly article on these fringe and non-mainstream websites. The links are associated by Dr. Dallam with tiny fringe organizations that advocate age-of-consent reform. The web-links are external to, and heatedly controversial within, Wikipedia.

Here's my question that needs an authoritative answer: Assuming the consensus of editors of this article is to keep this section of the article as it is, would fixing these dead external links violate any Wikipedia rule, viz. regarding Copyright, using quality sources for verification, or the Wikipedia Policy on Child Protection? Or would active external links be too controversial, and therefore unwanted? I just what to know. If the consensus is to not make these links active, I will obviously have to yield to the consensus.

An alternative view of the editing might go like this: Naming and activating these links might be like placing active external links to variations of the Flat Earth Society, clearly a fringe group, within which nested web-sites are links to many articles from mainstream sources that are allegedly being cited "inappropriately" for the political purposes of the 'Belief in the Earth is Flat Revival'. The purpose of associating the study with favorable reviews and citations by variations of the Flat Earth Society is solely to discredit the study's authors, especially, as noted twice in the article, in court (i.e., with judges and juries). The Wikipedia article and the controversy are maybe saying: "The Rind et al. 1998 meta-analysis must be discredited and trashed because it is 'trumpeted' by the Flat Earth Society on its website."

The first Wikipedia paragraph in the 'Usage outside...' Section is IMHO a "guilt by association" fallacy, a kind of ad hominem attack on Rind et al., a claim that a former Wikipedia editor feels is necessary to repeat in Wikipeida's voice in this Wikipedia article to give the fallacious argument additional weight. The argument goes like this: The mathematical research produced by the Rind et al trio was reviewed or cited favorably on the website of these 3 despicable fringe groups. Therefore, the Wikipedia must also come, by implication, to guilt by association, that Rind et al (and Heather Ulrich et al.) must be morally wrong and despicable like those tiny fringe groups." I edited an alternative version of this section that may be mostly reinstated.

I am considering an alternative edit: The entire "Usage outside of scholarly discussion" section should be dropped from the Wikipedia article entirely. That may not reach consensus either. If the article is rewritten in a NPOV to avoid sullying the reputation of the esteemed Wikepedia with the ad hominem and "guilt by association" attack on Rind et al., and, by implication, on Heather Ulrich et al. (who did a replication of the calculations in 2005, and arrived at identical results) (all six authors are covered by relevant [BLP policies]), then I want to know if the dead external links must remain inactive to comply with one or more Wikipedia rules or policies.

There is another aspect to this: I bookmarked [Everything you wanted to know about The Rind Controversy MHAMic] on my personal page so I could easily find that link again, and was attacked for that, and all my contributions to this article were cherry picked out of the article by two anonymous editors. I have since removed that link from my user page, and have no intention of putting it back there. I speculate that its the source of the text, and the link to a controversial bibliography that is most protested. But I like the quality source links in the article. Radvo (talk) 01:01, 18 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Woah woah woah woah. What the Sam Hill is going on here? These are not good links. You linked to MHAMic on your userpage and you were called on that and you find this surprising? We do not link to MHAMic any more than we link to Storm Front or whatever. Please use some basic common sense, thanks!


 * As the rest, could you try to be a little more succinct? There's a heck of a lot to read here. Anyway, we do not want to link to the NAMBLA web site and similar sites from the Wikipedia for any reason, I would say, period. These are primary sources for the material you want to cite anyway, which is usually discouraged. Find a reputable secondary source. Herostratus (talk) 04:05, 18 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for response and your advise: Be succinct. I'll try that.
 * YES, I FOUND "BEING CALLED ON THAT" COMPLETELY SURPRISING! Cross my heart & hope to die! Talk more about "common sense". The author of that website lacked some common or political sense by not posting it independently, but it's wrong to reject ideas solely based on their origins.
 * "WE do not link to" the Storm Front or the NAMbLA. Well, SURPRISE! Wikipedia does link to both.
 * Correction # 1: [Stormfront] has functioning link to www.stormfront.org /forum/ Stormfront's external link Fun to point out the facts. (Thanks; I feel like a argumentative teenager again!)
 * Correction # 2: The Wikipedia Rind topic has an active link to [NAMbLA], and that Wikipedia page, in turn, links directly to NAMbLA's external website. Please, check it out: NAMbLA is two mouse clicks away from the Rind article. Really! I wrote that already twice above; sorry you missed it because I was not succinct. My fault.
 * Correction # 3: I bookmarked [Everything you wanted to know about The Rind Controversy MHAMic]. Please give me basic common courtesy and please do not confuse the public with the two different sections of MHAMic. Look! The page I bookmarked is something like [Wikipedia's Rind et al. Controversy article], but less focus on the Dallam criticisms (which Rind et al. fully refuted already in 2001 and which Ulrich et al. already corrected for in the 2005 replication. In [Everything you wanted to know about The Rind Controversy MHAMic], one can learn something: the Rind controversy was more than what Wikipedia has to say about it so far.
 * Correction # 4: The 3 primary web-sources, with active links, were inserted in the article by other editor(s). Two links now broken. The burden to find "secondary sources" was the other editors'. Period?
 * BTW, the allies already beat the original Storm Front 66 years ago; Storm Front lost. Irrelevant? You injected the White Supremacists/Neo-Nazi's into this. Sorry, it's late, and I feel prickly. Enough.
 * "A little more succinct" was fun. Please, no offense intended. If this retort was not polite or respectful enough, it was 'The Sam Hill' who made me do it. I'll be extra nice next time, after I get some sleep. Promise. Cheers. Radvo (talk) 09:08, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

NPOV
The introductory paragraphs of the Rind et al. article currently contains this sentence, which I would like to remove, I bring this matter up here to first get feedback.

Here's the sentence I wish to remove, from near the beginning of the article.

"Numerous age of consent reform organizations have quoted the [Rind et al.] paper in support of their efforts to lower or rescind age of consent laws, and defense attorneys have used the study to argue for minimizing harm in child sexual abuse cases.[4][5]"

The 2 sources (footnoted in 4 and 5) that support this statement are professionals but IMHO are not neutral observers; they are advocates for two different alternative views that have done much to sustain the controversy.

(1) Dr. Ondersma is associated with the advocacy group APSAAC, a professional group of CSA counselors. I was told that this advocacy group was formed, in part, to resist and counter the public and professional skepticism that questioned the mindless professional support of the ridiculous claims of preschool children in the McMartin Preschool case in California, et al.. The Ondersma group may be the guardians of the rhetoric, methods, and techniques that caused the moral panic around the preschool cases for a number of years. The counselors in this group made some people pretty mad, and IMHO they had to circle the wagons to protect themselves.

(2) Dr. Stephanie Dallam was with The Leadership Council. Those professionals organized, in part, to defend member therapists against malpractice lawsuits, These therapists (allegedly fraudulently, according to the lawsuits) diagnosed their patients with so called "recovered memories' of incest, and multiple personality disorder. This was another moral panic, that included the controversial recovered memories phenomenon. The Leadership Council has considerable professional interest in who controls the rhetoric about incest and CSA, especially in Congress, among judges, and in juries. This professional interest of The Leadership Council to control the rhetoric that gets to the legislatures and the courts sets off another buzzer in my head. These are not professionals with a neutral point of view; they have an agenda and want to protect their professional members from malpractice suites when things go wrong. It's a free country, and I support their right to organize,too. But I oppose the use of their rhetoric as a neutral and unbiased source.

The therapists associated with these two groups IMHO are not mainstream; the science associated with these therapists is not regarded, by their mainstream professional peers, as the strongest in the field. I hae no problem with developing alternative therapies, unless the professional members of these groups are getting a lot of malpractice suites filed against them. Then it is time for these professionals to get out and control the rhetoric. That sets off another buzzer in my head.

The sentence quoted above suggests there are "numerous" organizations that support age of consent reform. "Numerous" in nonsense if you read the Wikipedia article on Age of Consent reform organizations. Associating these tiny fringe groups with the Rind study is also nonsense. (The NAMbLA website now features a long review of Susan Clancy's book, The Abuse Myth . Is that reason for her book to now be condemned by the Congress, and by these two advocacy groups?)

Then the sentence in the Introduction of the Rind article mentions the Rind study being used in court. Now the alarm buzzer is loud and steady. For the people in The Leadership Council this controversy is about who controls the discourse in the legislatures and in the courts. If the Rind study gains any credibility or following in the public, then the professionals from The Leadership Council, who are being sued in court over repressed memories, will have more difficulty defending themselves against juries that may give huge damage awards in civil suits. I suspect this is what these groups are about.

These two advocacy groups have considerable interest in discrediting the Rind et al. studies by successfully associating the Rind research with controversy, with the condemnation by Congress, with "numerous" fringe pedophile advocacy organizations and to so-called pedophile activists. And with the use of the Rind study in courts of law. And with the current Wikipedia article that further destroys the credibility of the Rind research. (Except that Heather Ulrich duplicated the Rind study in 2005, and came up with the identical results. Go figure.) If the rhetoric of this Wikipedia article is transformed into an article with a more neutral point of view, this article will be probably nominated for deletion by the same people who put it up here originally.

The buzzer is quite loud and steady now.

I want to work to make this article a fair and balanced one. But then I expect that it will be taken down from Wikipeida, and have to exist in an independent site. Let's see how this comes out.

I speculate that some of the claims made by the advocates for these professionals, who may rightly fear lawsuits, to damage the credibility of the Rind study as valid court evidence. These two groups may be protecting members who were being sued (or might be sued in the future) and want their views in court to go unchallenged by the controversial Rind studies. These two groups see the Rind studies as a professional threat and thus a rival to be discredited. I see the earlier versions of the Wikipeida article as good public relations for these advocates. Some of the sources this article uses as neutral and quality sources are not IMHO disinterested, they are part of the kind of non-mainstream professional groups that created and maintain the controversy.

The reason I bring this up is the Wikipeida editors need reliable sources. The Wikipedia editors incorrectly IMHO regard Dallam and Ondersma as neutral sources. I don't think they are neutral sources for the purpose of sourcing this article. I think they are part of the reason these is a controversy; they weigh in heavily against the Rind study.

The views of Dr. Dallam and Dr. Ondersma are very much part of The Rind et al. controversy. I see them as protagonists, and they should not be Sources for the neutral introduction of the controversy.

So I want that biased sentence in the introduction to be deleted.

Please advise.

Radvo (talk) 23:23, 10 December 2011 (UTC) Revised and expanded Radvo (talk) 00:15, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

The removal of my contributions on December 12th by two anonymous users, 193.169.145.61 and 193.169.145.48
All my contributions to this article were removed on December 12th. Here is the edit showing what was edited out. A reason given for these many removals was that I was allegedly "adding tags to things that are already cited or cited lower in the article."

I am confused and bewildered by the reasons for the drastic edit by the first anonymous editor. This was not a revert, redaction or "undo" of one particular post, but the first anonymous editor cherry picked each edit I made since my first post and removed them all.

If the "Citation Tag" or Tags were allegedly inappropriate, the specific tags themselves could have been challenged by the first anonymous editor with a credible explanation for the challenge. So, a more parsimonious and appropriate solution, IMHO, would have been for the anonymous editor to simply remove the erroneous "Citation Tag(s)" with a clear explanation, like e.g., "The footnote was already cited, or cited lower in the article." I could have checked that out, silently conceded my error and not contested the removal of the tag, or responded to the objection to my placement of the particular "Citation Tag." If that is too much for a new editor on this topic to ask, I make another suggestion below.

Most of the text that was removed by the two anonymous users, had nothing to do with "Citation Tags."

The restoration of the non-contested text involves a lot of unnecessary work -- for a second time. I seek this partial remedy: I ask that the anonymous editor at least identify the specific "Citation Tag(s)" in contest. All editors here and I have a right to know which "Citation Tag" or Tags provoked such an inappropriate response.

If any other editors here, who are "fit" and in good standing, wish to volunteer to do any part of that restoration work, please feel free to do so. Please do not restore any contested "Citation Tags" to the article; it would help to know which of the "Citation Tags" are contested. If the restoration or the requested assistance by volunteer editors to do the restoration is against a Wikipedia rule or policy that I don't know about, please follow the rules.

There is a discussion of my fitness to be an editor on this article at the very end of Flyer22's talk page The arguments do not focus on the quality of my contributions, but are abusive ad hominem attacks (also called personal abuse or personal attacks); "these usually involve insulting or belittling one's opponent in order to attack his claim or invalidate his argument, but can also involve pointing out true character flaws or actions that are irrelevant to the opponent's argument. This tactic is logically fallacious because insults and negative facts about the opponent's personal character have nothing to do with the logical merits of the opponent's arguments or assertions." See (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem_attack) An ad hominem attack violates the rules. An Edit War based on an Ad hominem attack cannot be justified, and, INHO, all removals should be reversed for this reason.

The discussion at Flyer22's{www.mhamic.org/rind/) talk page includes this sentence by the second anonymous editor: "the other anon is wrong! i just gave my response on the discussion page. i was edit warring, but i was justified." 107.20.1.111 (talk) 22:45, 12 December 2011 (UTC)" I wonder from the last sentence in this quote here whether the two different anonymous editors are the same person using two different computers (with very similar IP addresses). Would an investigation of this suspicion be in order? If someone is violating the rules and policies, we want to know about that. We all expect that the rules are enforced in an even-handed way. See also (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_personal_attacks)

How do I raise the issue about the fitness of the two anonymous editors, for the two reasons cited above? Please advise. I don't see the anonymous's "response on the discussion page." I would like to read the "response on the discussion page," so I could better understand if I erred in placing any or all of the "Citations Tags", Since I am new here, and those were my first experiments with using "Citation Tags", I am willing to make this concession for now: just remove all the contested "citation tags" without any reason. I would go along with that to reduce the controversy, to build confidence in my good will, and to give me time and experience to understand what is possible here.

The discussion at the very end of Flyer22's talk pageconfuses two very different web-sites: Everything you wanted to know about the Rind Controversy is confused with a controversial bibliographic list of academic resources (mhamic.org). I had nothing to do with the creation and maintenance of either of those websites, but Everything you wanted to know about the Rind Controversy deals in depth with some aspects of the same Rind controversy as this Wikipedia article. So I bookmarked that link on, what I thought was, my private user page for further reference. I did not imagine that bookmarking that page in that way was against any Wikipedia policy here, or would motivate someone to cherry pick ALL of my past edits for removal. I have already removed that link from my user page and will not restore it. I hope this remedy helps to create a better climate for my future editing here.

I wish to make further quality contributions to this article, and I wish to learn and follow all Wikipedia rules and policies. I understand this article is a controversial issue; The word "controversy" appears in the article's title. I do not wish to be confrontational or make some editors here nervous. I wish to build confidence in my knowledge about this topic, in my good will, and in my willingness to work within Wikipedia's rules and policies. Radvo (talk) 02:33, 16 December 2011 (UTC)


 * IP 107.20.1.111 wasn't talking about this article. He or she was responding to a dispute going on at Sexual fetishism. Click on that IP and you'll see the user's contributions.


 * Confuses two very different web sites? Nuh-uh. www.mhamic.org/rind/ is www.mhamic.org/. It's just a different section of the same web site. I was right to revert you. Plus, you complain about cherry picking, but you were cherry picking at already sourced lines and skewing things. Leave me be. 193.169.145.59 (talk) 03:56, 16 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I accept your correction about IP 107.20.1.111. You are right. I was confused, and I made a mistake, I apologize, and I will try to be more careful with anon IP addresses in the future.
 * And yes, You are absolutely right. (http://www.mhamic.org/rind/) is part of (http://www.mhamic.org/). I have removed the offending web-link from my User page. Would you allow the acceptability of a link to (http://www.mhamic.org/rind/) to go so some kind of arbitration? And we'll both live with the decision of the arbiter?
 * And yes, cherry picking is wrong. I want to be fair and not cherry pick. I was picking at already sourced lines, and skewing things up that were long ago settled on this page. Those were stupid moves on my part. You want me to leave you be, Okay... So I won't discuss my particular reservations with you. I'll drop the "Citation Tags," and I'll leave you be. I'll guess which Citation Tags you are referring to, and I will not put those "Citation Tags" back. I'll leave you be.
 * I'd like to put most of my other contributions back into the article's page, except for the specific "Citation Tags" that offend you. How about a deal? I leave you be, and you leave me be? I don't want to edit war with you. If there are particular posts I make (or citation tags that I insert) that you don't like, I will listen to you and try to respond sensitively.
 * I want to leave you be. Do we have a deal? Radvo (talk) 06:34, 16 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I can only agree to you reinserting your edits with the following exceptions:


 * Leave out your citation tags. You already appear open to that.


 * Leave the POV-check out of the intro.


 * Do not change "The paper was posted on numerous of advocacy websites such as International Pedophile and Child Emancipation (IPCE), the Male Homosexual Attraction to Minors information center (MHAMIC) and North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), and has been used to argue that the age of consent should be lowered or abolished."... to "...the study was, nevertheless, also used by a relatively small number of individuals and by fringe groups, referred to collectively here as advocates for pedophilia. The Rind et al. Report was posted, or its journal reference was cited, on advocacy websites, such as the extensive 'The RBT Files' Section of the International Pedophile and Child Emancipation (IPCE, now Ipce), the Male Homosexual Attraction to Minors information center (MHAMic) (website expanded to 'Everything You Wanted to Know about the Rind Controversy MHAMic'), and the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMbLA).


 * Relatively small number of individuals? No, what is there is more specific and precise. Referred to collectively here as advocates for pedophilia? No, it's not just here at Wikipedia that they are referred to that way. They are advocates for pedophilia, period. And I don't know why you added all those dead link tags. There are no dead links in that paragraph and the information is supported by the Dallam2001 source.


 * Do not add "The current usage of the Rind et al. Report outside of scholarly discussions by these named websites can be Googled. The 'Net, and its use by activist individuals and fringe groups, is always changing. Inspection of these four websites in December 2012 does not find the results of the Rind et al. Report are used to specifically advocate lowering of age of consent laws. No specific ages are mentioned on these cited websites."


 * Even if true, this information is irrelevant and is WP:OR. What are you trying to do? Make it seem as though these websites no longer support the Rind study and that we don't know how low they are asking for the age of consent to be lowered? Just because the Rind study may not be highly discussed on these websites anymore doesn't mean that they no longer support it. Pedophiles will always support this study and skew it toward their POV.


 * When you change "It has also been used in several court cases by child sexual offenders as a defense." to "The Rind et al. study has also been used in several court cases by child sexual offenders as a defense.", you do not have to place a citation tag there just because no recent source is placed beside it. You can change "has also been" to "was," since you are so concerned with the fact that the line gives the implication that this is still going on.


 * Those are my requests. 193.169.145.43 (talk) 23:37, 18 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your thoughtful and reasonable request. I read your message. What a relief! I can work with you. I agree with your requests. You have a deal.
 * Maybe I might quibble about a word or two. Give me a tiny bit of room to wiggle as I get back into returning this material to the article. Sometimes I think I like to improve what I wrote before. Make a careful read of what I put back up, and if you don't like what I do, just change the word or few words to what you like, and I'll consider your suggestion and probably yield to you for harmony's sake and let it stick. Or I'll send you a message on your user page to discuss. There was another anonymous user who also worked with you. Do I have requests from that other person, too? Radvo (talk) 05:30, 19 December 2011 (UTC)