Talk:Rind et al. controversy

Dallam et al

I'm looking over Rind's rebuttal to Dallam et al. The response is so eviscerating that it's almost illegitimate to include Dallam's original criticisms at all. I'm almost inclined to simply state that Dallam et al. published a critique which turned out to be almost completely unfounded. Including all the details when they're so wrong seems like undue weight. Any thoughts? WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 23:02, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

I trust your judgment. Be bold. If there's blowback, I'll read the rebuttal. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 02:58, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Tremendous improvements to the Rind et al. Controvesy article! What has been done with the article in two days is truely amazing! A whole new tone! Much more NPOV. Great perspective and information.

I saw the changes to my Bold edits in the first two sections of the main article. No problem. Is it that WLU is unaware of the State condemnations of Rind's study, or you do not want to include information about the state level condemnations in the Lead becasue State condemnations are not mentioned and sourced in the body of the article?

WLU: The NARTH, the Family Research Council, the Learership Council (Dr. Fink, Stephanie Dallam et al.) were quietly, behind the scenes, lobbying and feeding their research to popular radio show host Dr. Laura (March 1999), the media, the State Legislatures, the U.S. House of Representatives (spring and summer 1999) before that research was published in a professional journal. The U.S. Congress did not have the demanding verification standards of Wikipedia, and has no problem with 'guilt by association' if it brings in the votes. So Congress and the State legislatures (Alaska, Oklahoma, Califonia, et al. I posted the condemnations from state websites above) took what was fed to them privately by lobbists, and may have thought to themselves: "This Rind study must be stamped on hard." "We'll get publicity showing Congress is taking the high moral road, and that brings in the votes." Some of that can be sourced. It was only after the Leadership Council got Stephanie Dallam to put her name on that research and publish it in a scholarly journal, that Rind et al. (and others) responded. For years, Wikipedia had undue weight

If you want to cover the controversy, however, you should include the Dallam arguments and critique in historic context and NPOV. The unanswered Dallam critique was what created the moral panic before the arguments were published and rebutted. If Congress had the current version of the Wikipedia article on Rind on line, there would never been the Congressional condemnation. (No Source; drop that!) Congress lacked the balance that comes with the patience and time of the scientific process. The scientific process should be pointed out. The Galileo history is also slightly relevant. Science is methodical, patient, non-hysterical.

BTW Rind et al. used the Library of Congress to track down some of the harder to find studies, but that was all the funding they received from any source for their meta-analyses. Self funding should be squeezed in the article, too. I'll try to locate my source for that.

It is important to cover the detail of the controvesy, even though we may see Dallam's critique differently now that we have read Rind's response, then the participants saw it then It occurred historically and we understand it now differently from reliable sources. The ideas in the Dallam critique and all that misinformed stuff that Dr. Laura said were all part of the creation of moral panic by the advocacy organizations. The public is well served if all of that critique is summarized and well sourced and published in the encyclopedia. The more NPOV these ideas are sourced and understood, the better the public is prepared to deal with the next advocacy group who figures it is in their interest to create and fan moral panic. Penn State's Philip Jenkin's books tie this tendency in American culture well together and Jenkins should be cited, so the public is much better informed about moral panic. More when I find the time.

I may have additional and a different point of view tomorrow.

Suggestion: Develop the new Spiegel arguments carefully, precisely, and source that Spiegel well with some juicy quotes. If Spiegel is about the Landis study, Truthinwriting will give you the Rind rebuttal to that. It's a wonderful story, when you get both sides and both sides should be told. The whole historic controversy will not make Spiegel look good unless you handle this as NPOV as you can. When the Galileo story is told, the Catholic Church is not insulted today. Radvo (talk) 11:32 pm, Today (UTC−5) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Radvo (talk • contribs) 05:52, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I'd really like some feedback from more people before doing anything bold, this is more than a bit of a loaded question. There's a pretty readable overview from Rind's perspective here which spares reading the full 30-odd pages. There just doesn't seem to be much point to include such a voluminous discussion of erroneous criticisms, but it's both a large volume of text and a significant part of the controversy. Whether it's best dealt with via mere mention or deeper summary is an open question, I'll flag this discussion for other editors' comment.

I can't recall a mention of individual states condemning the study, please provide or point to sources that verify this. Also, while Rind et al. did suggest not all abuse is harmful, it is still not consensual by definition and is still illegal - care must be taken not to word the article in such a way that the abuse as portrayed as innocuous or harmless.

I see no reason to include information on self-funding at this point. Depending on what the source discussing this actually says, it might be worth including. The mere fact of financial source doesn't strike me as noteworthy. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 12:47, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Incidentally, I'm genuinely looking for lengthy-ish comments on this section as well as suggestions - I haven't made an actual decision yet and as much as I enjoy Anthony's blanket-style endorsement, I do feed off of detailed input. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 12:51, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

This is really quite fascinating. I just read that book chapter WLU pointed to, and will do more reading over the next few days. It's important we get this right. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 16:26, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Ok re-read the Criticism and Response section to get a fresh idea and am approaching this as though I am a new reader. I noticed some parts are unattributed and in a few, there is no counter argument by Rind. Sample bias accusation seems a fair "give and take" because it offers both Dallam's side and Rind's in a way where the reader can decide which argument they buy. Dallam's assertions are also bolstered by Spiegel, so its clearly not some mad fringe view. Non-standardization of variables might be problematic. Rind's counterarguments are not attributed. In addition, does Rind have a counter/explanation for the last two studies, which include respondents over the age of 17? Statistical Errors is outside my expertise; people who get that sort of thing can edit that how they want, but one caution I have is that if I have trouble following it, a lay reader is going to skip it completely. The last mention of Dallam is under "Assertions of bias" though her remarks are unattributed to a source. However, she is not the sole source of those accusations. Anna Salter's book goes into even greater detail and provides sourcing for them.

So to sum up, Dallam doesn't appear to be wrong on all counts, but the paper perhaps doesn't have to be incorporated so prominently as the primary source of criticism. Regarding the stat issue, if Rind's counter sounds rock solid to you, perhaps we don't even need that sub-section.Legitimus (talk) 02:17, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

The Dallam and Ondersma critiques imply that if Rind et al. (1998) had conducted the research without all those statistical and methodological flaws, the Rind results would have come out differently. That turned out to be a hoax. Rind responded convincingly (to those who understand statistics), and in great detail, that none of the criticisms were credible or valid. Rind is, IMHO, a mathematical genius, and his graduate advisor, Dr. Ralph Rosnow, was a highly regarded expert in meta-analysis. Ralph Rosnow served as the expert meta-analyst on the 1998 study. Most people have no clue about these mathematical things, and learn little from these sections of the Wikipedia article. These sections are layed out too expansively, revealing bias in favor of the discredited Dallam. Heather Ulrich (2005) accepted the criticisms and replicated the Rind study as best she could; she confirmed Rind's main findings. People understand that better. Rind and Ulrich both say CSA does not necessarily cause long term problems. Dallam's and Ondersma's criticisms are discredited. Ask Anthoneyhcole if he knows statistics, and whether he would comment in greater detail. Radvo (talk) 07:51, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Nope. I'm at the mercy of experts there. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 08:49, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

I have to say, I've read Rind's rebuttal in the book and he pretty much demolishes Dallam's criticisms. Ondersma's criticisms I haven't read through, or any rebuttal by Rind. It's a considerable amount of highly technical reading to read Dallam's original critique along with Rind's reply, but I'll try to get through it. The "sample bias" section is I believe the only one I've read through and reworked, which might be why it reads a bit more smoothly. I'll have to do more reading and try to rework the rest. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 11:55, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

IMHO, all parts of the controversy should be reported, even if, with hindsight, the criticism seems unfair or fully responded to. We are not engaged in Historical revisionism (negationism), nor should we be refining section after section of [contemporary criticism of the Rind Report] in violation of Wikipedia policy. All of this criticism should be presented as the history of the controversy. [Or consider revising] all this "criticism" with a proportional amount of "praise." There are a number of good sources that offer the Rind Report solid praise, and none of it has yet been included here. NPOV and WP:POVSTRUCTURE].

Regarding Legitimus's request about Rind's response to the criticism that, in the Meta-analysis, he included other researchers' studies that included college students reporting sexual experiences when they were 17 year old+. So what? What difference does that make?

Twenty of the 59 studies classified adolescents as old as 16 or 17 [years old] as "children" confusing the legal definition of the child (or the definition of the legal "minor") with the biological definition of the child. See footnote 1, Rind et al. (1998), column three of the Appendix.

There was a Rind response in the main article here at one time. The edit is quite specific. Legitumus deleted the unsourced response and the tag on August 8, 2008. See Legitimus's delete. Does Dallam claim that if Rind had omitted those 20 studies, the results and findings would tip over to her side? They wanted the Landis study taken out. And the results tipped away from what they expected. Why didn't Dallam do the calculation then herself to prove her point? She would have contributed something constructive to the literature instead of just being against what others had done. Why didn't Heather Ulrich omit these studies in her 2005 replication? Why is this 17 year old question important now?

The child abuse establishment sometimes and inconsistently defines "a child" up to age 19. Most readers of the article think "a child" is a person who has not yet reached puberty. An 8 year old, a 4 year old is a child. bzzzzz! WRONG! Not for the CSA crowd!

The failure to define the terms child, adolescent and CSA consistently "reflects the slippage of legal and moral constructs into scientific definitions (Okami, 1990, 1994). Basing scientific classifications of sexual behavior on legal and moral criteria ... has been confined to ... CSA." page 23 Rind et al. (1998)

"The term child sexual abuse has been used in the psychological literature to describe virtually all sexual interactions between children or adolescents and significantly older persons, as well as between same-age children or adolescents when coercion is involved. Quoted from Page 22, Footnote 1, (Rind et al. 1998)

"we have nevertheless retained it [the term CSA] for use in the current article because of its pervasive use in the scientific literature and because many researchers, as well as lay persons, view all types of sociolegally defined CSA as harmful. ...CSA is generally defined as a sexual interaction involving either physical contact or no contact (e.g., exhibitionism) between either a child or adolescent and someone significantly older, or between two peers who are children or adolescents when coercion is used." Rind et al. (1998) page 22. The authors clearly state that the term CSA included all forms of adolescent sexual abuse.

Rind's initial N = 35,703 college students. (Effect size data for psychological correlates were based on 15,824 participants [3,254 men from 18 samples and 12,570 women from 40 samples]) If Rind could have dropped 18 and 19 year old "children," maybe the final results would be a little different. Who knows? But the N of 35,703 is large; you'd have to drop a lot of subjects to get some kind of significant difference in the results. Dr. Dallam made the same mistake in her rebuttal to Rind; she cherrypicked other people's research studies with 19 year olds to make her points. This failure to define child and adolescent, in a consistent and scientifically valid way, and the confusion with moral and legal terms, reflects IMHO more on the imprecise standards in that area of scientific research.

What about the bias of the authors of the 59 studies? The 59 studies that Rind et al. meta-analysed were made with the intention of identifying and measuring harm. If these 59 studies were biased, the bias would be in the direction of identifying and measuring the harm. There is little evidence that any of these 59 studies were written by researchers who approached the research like a James Mathew Barrie (author of Peter Pan) or [Lewis Carroll] (author of Alice in Wonderland). How does one balance the contempt, disdain, scorn and disrespect for the Report and its 3 authors. without entertaining the possibility that there was bias in the authors of the 59 studies? Is this confirmation bias? Heather Ulrich et al. replicated the study and came up with the same results. Was she also biased? It's 59 researchers on the one side, and 6 on the other. Whose going to win? Not the 59, in this case. It is puzzling, isn't it!?

(Aside to graduate students looking for a dissertation idea: Do a Rind-like meta-analysis for studies from 1996 to the present, but eliminate all studies that include sexual experiences in persons over 12 years of age. Publish the dissertation in Aramaic and for Pete's sake, don't file a copy with the Library of Congress :-) -- Radvo (talk) 07:55, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Consensual, willing, harmless. Reporting this accurately and NPOV

WLU: We are reporting the Rind results. You removed from the article something about willing and consensual. There are two separate phenomena: (1) harm and (2) willingness. Rind found them to be statistically correlated. Maybe you would use words like: they are "inherently related" to each other. Rind is impossible to understand if you insist that CSA (as variably defined) is not consensual by definition. Some things you already are convinced of causes a lot of cognitive dissonance for you. The problem may be, in part, with the definition of willing, consensual, CSA, but let's just accept the Rind results as they are. The critique comes later. A made-up example: a 21 year old has a sexual relationship with a 15 year old. The 15 year old experiences the sex as consensual, willing, harmless. There are no measures showing the 15 year old is harmed, traumatized. When the 15 year old gets to college, the individual completes a questionnaire and reports things as experienced. The experience was, in some places, not "consensual" by law; it was immoral by many accepted and respected standards. But it may very well have been willing if the person reports it that way on a questionnaire. The researcher, nevertheless, says, because of the ages involved, this is CSA. The researcher and Rind think of a case like this as consensual CSA. You resist that idea very stongly, but if you want to understand Rind, you cannot reject what he reports because of some definition you have. Rind gets the data of that experience with the study from the professional literature, and puts that study in his "mixed" category; these studies have samples that included both consenting and non-consenting subjects. You are fighting the source if you don't accept these mixed samples (of consensual and non-consensual CSA). Accept the Source, as is. Critique later. You wrote above:

"while Rind et al. did suggest not all abuse is harmful, it is still not consensual by definition ... - care must be taken not to word the article in such a way that the abuse as portrayed as innocuous or harmless".

That's non-sense! You don't know or understand the study. I don't know how to tell you this without your getting upset: In Rind's study, some CSA, as it is sometimes and variably defined by the authors of the 59 studies, is harmless, not harmful. In the example I gave above, you can imagine that some college student, included in some CSA study, was at one time the 15 year old, (These were self reports by college students.) Your prior definitions are irrelevant to reporting what the Source (and the authors of the 59 studies) report. The definition of CSA is not up to you. The variable definition of CSA was up to the researchers who completed the 59 studies. (This poor construct of CSA gets discussed as a problem later.) This goes farther: Rind suggested that one reason CSA is not harmful has to do with "willingness". If you refuse to permit that a relationship between a 21 year old and a 15 year old might be perceived by both participants as willing and harmless, you cannot understand and accept what Rind reports. If simply accepting and understanding what Rind wrote is a problem for you, maybe you should be editing another topic. Rind has to go with the data from the 15,000 subjects. You resist and interfere with what the source reports. It would also be easier if you stopped trying to critique the results and the CSA construct. Save that for later after you understand what Rind did. Can you understand and accept this? Rind wrote:

"These finding indicated that inclusion of willingness eliminated the relationship [between CSA and malajustment] in the mixed category (that is, studies by other researchers that included consenting and non-consenting subjects), implying that willingness itself was not [statistically] associated with psychological maladjustment in the case of males." Source: http://books.google.ca/books?lr=&id=NqT0GCxUDJsC&q=willingness#v=snippet&q=willingness&f=false Advances in social & organizational psychology: a tribute to Ralph Rosnow By Donald A. Hantula January 4, 2006 Routledge Taylor and Francis Group ISBN 10 0805855904 page 172. Radvo (talk) 9:22 pm, Today (UTC−5) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Radvo (talk • contribs) 02:30, 13 January 2012 (UTC) Radvo (talk) 02:48, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Fine, but WLU is an experienced editor who knows that personal opinions are not adequate for writing an article at Wikipedia (and there is no need to worry about causing upset—that only occurs when somone repeatedly posts long passages that are not focused on what can be done to improve the article). What text in the article has a problem? What source provides what information that shows there is a problem? Johnuniq (talk) 03:59, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Force and coercion, the words I chose, remove the word consent - children by definition can not consent to sex with adults. Force and coercion contain the idea that the child is unwilling without giving any impression that they are making informed choices. We are not bound to stick exactly to the wording of the source text, and I think this wording includes the appropriate nuances while avoiding the politically and popularly loaded idea of a child being able to give consent to sex with an adult. I'm sticking by it. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 11:51, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH Juice Leskinen (talk) 23:11, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Neutrality disputed

The third paragraph of the Controversy Section begins with this sentence:

"On July 12, 1999, the United States House of Representatives passed HRC resolution 107 by a vote of 355 - 0, (with 13 Members voting "Present", the latter all members of the Democratic Party) declaring sexual relations between children and adults are abusive and harmful, and condemned the study on the basis that it was being used by pro-pedophilia activists and organizations to promote and justify child sexual abuse."

The casual reader may get the false impression that this was the most important, or the only reason. The last reason on the list in the Congressional original reads:

"Whereas pedophiles and organizations, such as the North American Man-Boy Love Association, that advocate laws to permit sex between adults and children are exploiting the study to promote and justify child sexual abuse...."

The reason the Rind et al. (1998) Report was condemned by Congress was cherry picked from the 17 reasons given by Congress. Cherry picking here violates giving due weight.

(This is the text of the entire Congressional condemnation, with all 17 reasons: http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=106_cong_bills&docid=f:hc107enr.txt.pdf)

The primary Congressional source is cited for this text, as above.WP:VERIFY An exact quote from some part of the government source might have been a better choice WP:FULLCITE, as this puts the onus for the attack on the scholarly paper squarely on Congress, where it belongs, not on the Wikipedia volunteer editor. No secondary or tertiary source is offered to justify the selection of this one particular reason given for the condemnation. This edit reinforces the 'Guilt by Association' fallacy, initiated by the U.S. Congress, in violation of the Wikipedia policy for NPOV. The Congress is publicly linking the Rind et al.(1998) paper with NAMbLA et al. Dr. Rind, Dr. Bauserman, and Dr. Tromovitch are responsible for their scholarship, mathematics and their integrity. They are not responsible for the short reviews that were posted on line and in the NAMbLa Bulletin 14 years ago. They are not responsible if the Ipce documentation service provides the full text of their study to many, so it is linked from the Ipce by The Leadership Council on Child Abuse and Interpersonal Violence and the Prevent abuse now child advocacy site. Rearders have full access to the study at those websites. Is that something to shame the study's author's for? The authors are not responsible or to be blamed if individuals read and understand their report. The Report readers might do something most U.S. Congressmen and radio talk show hosts refused to do before condemning it.

I hope a revision will be discussed among the active editors. --Radvo (talk) 05:04, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Please pretend you are addressing intelligent adults, nearly all of whom are very experienced Wikipedia editors. There is no need for irrelevant images, and there is no need for pointless links. There is no need to say "Neutrality disputed" without first having a discussion about whatever point you are trying to make. After other editors disagree with something, then there may be a neutrality dispute. I think you are suggesting that some wording in the article should be changed. Please start again. Johnuniq (talk) 07:14, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

So...all that to say you think the wording should be changed? To what? You seem to have the impression that we are congress - it's not that formal, just change the page and see what the reaction is. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 21:40, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

That was a calm reaction. Thank you. Now we are getting somewhere, you actually asked me a question. In a few words I will give you my current but incomplete answer. It is much easier to work with people who are receptive.

I want to work with consensus and need to work my ideas out with other editors here on the TALK page, too. I would change the text to include something internal to the Report itself. We should look at all 17 Congressional objections and pick something(s) Rind et al. are directly responsible for reporting. They are not responsible for what NAMbLA and the Ipce do with the results of their study. This is just a brainstormed idea I had since writing all that above, and the idea also comes from our <Bold redact discuss> experience earlier this week. (The BRD exchange was very productive.) We could say that Congress condemned Rind et al. for reporting that willing boys were not harmed, or something else very controversial within the report. Rind did report that, and Congress did condemn them for something like that. I will have to study this more carefully and make some proposals. So the idea of "willing" gets introduced into the article, which you refused to allow before, and it is something that gets people genuinely upset. They think Rind deserved to be condemned for reporting that. From my perspective, this is like condemning the messenger for reporting what the math showed. So we don't shoot the messenger any more; big improvement. We just condemn them. I need to do my homework and look at the Condemnation to see if there are other juicy, but internal items, but will not do any more work on this today. I have to go out now. Let's let others contribute to this. I'll develop some various proposals and want feedback from others here. This, IMHO, is too controversial for BRD.

Note that when you respond to me reasonably, and ask for my opinion or suggestion, I need no wall of words to respond. I am very pleased with how this TALK is now going.Radvo (talk) 00:56, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

I have highlighted text in the above which experienced editors would not use because it raises unnecessary issues and is not relevant to improving the article. I am happy for my edit to be undone (including removing this comment), but it may be useful to at least briefly see my suggestion. Johnuniq (talk) 03:37, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

No, we shouldn't pick something Rind et al. are directly responsible for reporting. The article is titled "Controversy" and it's about the controversy. We're really not in a position to say "Well, there was a notable controversy over XYZ, but it was over something the person didn't really do, so we're not going to report on it."

That "[Rind et al] are not responsible for what NAMbLA and the Ipce do with the results of their study" is arguably not true. Everyone is potentially responsible for results following from their actions, depending on the action. If I leave a paper bag on my front porch and somebody takes it and suffocates a person with it, I'm not responsible because a reasonable person wouldn't foresee that. If I leave a loaded gun on my front porch and somebody takes it and shoots a person with it, I am responsible because a reasonable person would foresee that. If Rind et al were completely blindsided by NAMBLA etc. picking up on their work, this would show a remarkable lack of foresight and intelligence. This is not usually considered a mitigating circumstance. "Yes I left a loaded gun on my front porch, but I'm just stupid and careless by nature, so this should be forgiven" would probably not be a successful defense.

As far as the Congressional document, the material cited in the article is the 17th of the 17 points, and the previous points are partly in the nature of leading up to it, and it's a reasonable description of their primary objection, if you don't want to quote the entire document which we don't. "Whereas the spiritual, mental, and physical well-being of children are parents' sacred duty" and so forth are points that Congress wanted to make, but aren't the main point of this document. Politically speaking, that NAMBLA etc. was, or was believe to be, using the document was certainly a prime motivation for the resolution. If it was just gathering dust on a shelf unread and unremarked on, the resolution would not have been proposed. Herostratus (talk) 05:11, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

OK, I don't really want to read a bunch of unnecessary text so perhaps this doesn't reflect the full discussion but...I think it's fair to note congress' condemnation, as well as any reply from the author or other involved party that rebuts it (briefly, i.e. "Rind replied that their position was misrepresented). WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 15:32, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

WLU wrote: "it's fair to note Congress' condemnation"... I'm puzzled by the word "fair". Please elaborate. I was not suggesting that all mention of the Congressional condemnation be removed just because Rind et al. have not had their response to Congress acknowledged in the article. The Congressional condemnation was very much part of the controversy, and it would be "unfair" to the reader NOT to mention it.

WLU: Are you suggesting that the main article not cite ANY of the 17 reason's" (Whereas's) for the Congressional condemnation? Does your response imply a possible solution: the removal of the words:

"and condemned the study on the basis that it was being used by pro-pedophilia activists and organizations to promote and justify child sexual abuse."?

If that is what WLU is proposing, I would go along with WLU's suggestion (at least for now). If that is what WLU is suggesting, that suggestion is an improvement because it removes the 'Guilt by Association' fallacy from Wikipedia's article. See Herostratus argumentation about liability of Rind above. He seems to be suggesting that it is Rind's fault that the advocates for pedophiles have used the Rind report. Maybe it would be very interesting to know what Rind would say in his defense. I guess he would say that more high-quality research is needed, but there is no funding for more research.

IF what WLU is proposing is indeed that we remove the text I object to, do other editors agree to WLU's suggestion that no specific reasons (Whereas's) from the condemnation be quoted or reworded in the main article? Let's reach a WK:consensus on this matter here on the TALK page, before WLU removes those words, and before the “ Dubious Tag” is removed from the main article. I'd like to hear the opinion of others.

I do not recall reading any public or private response from Rind et al. to Congress itself. (Aside: That would be disrespectful and fool-hardy for the researchers . The Congress had already abused its position of power, it would do it again, esp. if provoked by a researcher who "spoke back" to them.) Do any editors here know of a response from any of the three researcher to Congress? If not, WLU's suggestion that we offer the researchers' response to Congress is not going to work--because there was none. Researchers who talk back to Congress get no free lunch! The 1998 paper was not government funded; it was self-funded.

Dr. Rind et al. did respond in detail to their professional peers, Dr. Dallam and Dr. Ondersma.

"Congressional members are well aware of the control they can exert over research, since much of the funding comes from governmental grants. Scientists are at the mercy of those in power and, at least for now, those in power are often at the mercy of the [moral panic reflected in the] public press."

Source of this quote: "Congressional censure of a research paper: Return of the inquisition?" Kenneth K Berry; Jason Berry Skeptical Inquirer November December, 1999 (Citation not certain; needs further research)

Here is the citation for one article which those interested here should read to understand this controversy from Rind et al.'s side:

Rind, Bruce, Tromovitch, Philip, & Bauserman, Robert, 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, volume 127, number 6, pages 734-758, 2001.

The full text of this article in available on the web, but I an unable by law to provide readers a link to it. I do not know if the article has been posted to the web in violation of U.S. copyright law. Linking in the United States, to a page that may be illegally distributing the full text of a journal article sheds a bad light on Wikipedia and its editors. (Aside) The relevant WP:policy is in the second paragraph here: [Linking to copyrighted works]

Start quote from the WP:policy:

"If you know or reasonably suspect that an external Web site is carrying a work in violation of the creator's copyright, do not link to that copy of the work....Knowingly and intentionally directing others to a site that violates copyright has been considered a form of contributory infringement in the United States."

However, foreign translators, whose countries have different copyright laws regarding “contributary infringement,” should check with the laws of their countries before linking to the full text of this scholarly article on line. (I have been informed, by some gossip, that these pages are being translated into foreign languages, one language does not use our alphabet. The Internet gives people in foreign countries more power to get access to information and entertainment via the web.

Regarding the removal of the Template:Dubious tag. That Tag alert editors that the phrase has been verified with a primary source (the Congressional Record) but a secondary source needs to be found, to ascertain which of the 17 whereas's is more authoritative and serious. This is not for the editor to cherrypick. The previous editor chose Whereas # 17, and I labeled this a Wikipedia:Disputed statement. The neutrality of choosing that phrase over the 16 others is also in question, please look at Wikipedia:NPOV dispute. I feel my work has again been disrespected by the removal of that TAG without first resolving the matter here on the TALK by consensus. The matter is not resolved to my satisfaction. Also, if the consensus here is that there is no problem, then the message can be removed. Does anyone object to my placing the DUBIOUS TAG back up? Radvo (talk) 02:55, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Why post here? Did you see the comments at the bottom?

Please stop quoting policies to experienced editors—we know what they say! For a link problem, just say something like "there is a site with X, but I can't link to a copyvio" (much shorter and more understandable).

Do not place tags and stuff until a reasonable amount of discussion has occurred. How would it look if editors A and B spent several days editing an article, and A tagged B's edits, and B tagged A's edits? It's absurd. There is an active discussion here, so proceed with the discussion and stop worrying about tags. If there is some text to be disputed, note it here. Thinks about tags if the discussion stops for a few days without a clear consensus.

Perhaps you are not reading the comments on this page? For example, there is an unanswered question dated "06:59, 15 January 2012", and I have previously mentioned some of the points I have just had to repeat. Johnuniq (talk) 03:13, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Brevity, please, brevity. In my quick skim I thought Herostratus and Johnuniq were advocating the removal of the condemnation. Looks like I was wrong. Rind and Bauserman's association with Paidika should remain, I'd like to expand it to include any comment by Rind or others on his side of things. We can use primary sources to essentially verify what the person or entity (in this case, Congress) actually said. I have a copy of Rind et al's response. Congress's 17 points lead up to the conclusion, and I think a fair summary of that conclusion is that Congress condemned it for, among other things, being used to promote Nambla's hideous agenda. There's other stuff in the resolution, but I think those are the important points. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 03:20, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

WLU: Thanks for sharing your view. What secondary source can you cite to confirm your view, and Herostratus' view, that "Congress's 17 points lead up to the conclusion." As an experienced editor you know: It does not matter what your view is, It doesn't matter that I think: No way do the 16 earlier points lead up to #17. It doesn't matter if it's true. What matters is whether you have a secondary source that claims that Congress's 16 points all lead up to the conclusion in #17! If you don't have a secondary source, if you only have a primary source, you may not WP:cherrypick one.

Here's another argument for this discussion: You feel strongly that "Wikipedia is sullied by association if any of those child rape advocacy sites are ever included on our pages - including talk pages." In harmony with that view, you removed these words from the main article on January 15: "such as the International Pedophile and Child Emancipation documentation service (Ipce), the Male Homosexual Attraction to Minors information center (MHAMic), the Danish Pedophile Association (D.P.A. Gruppe 04), and the North American Man/Boy Love Association."

Your edit comment, to justify the removal of those words, was "I don't think we need to list them" Again you imply that what you think comes out of the article is the criteria here. This is what has been happening here since early December. Who owns this board, anyway? I happened to strongly agree with your deletion, so I didn't mention that until now. I ask you to go still further. To be consistent, you should remove these words, too: "and condemned the study on the basis that it was being used by pro-pedophilia activists and organizations." Just because Congress "sullied" itself in associating that esteemed institution by naming that organization in its #17, this article does not have "sully itself" even a little to call attention to those group's existence. This Rind article is about a jargon-ladened meta-analysis that few have read and even fewer understand.

But my main point is: You have no secondary source to justify your WP:cherrypicking # 17.Radvo (talk) 09:02, 17 January 2012 (UTC) --Radvo (talk) 06:22, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

re NAMBLA

Radvo, what's your reason for changing "NAMBLA" to "NAMbLA" in the article? Herostratus (talk) 06:59, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Making a section heading like that must be deeply offensive to WLU. A message on my talk page would have been more respectful of WLU's sensitivities. "Wikipedia is sullied by association if any of those child rape advocacy sites are ever included on our pages - including talk pages."

Even after WLU deleted the word with that formatting on January 15, Herostratus and Johnuniq want me to explain some formating on text that was already removed. Give me a break! I guess you weren't paying attention to WLU's deleting.

We've been playing BRDDDDDDDDD for a month now! I'm clearly enjoying the game, but WLU wants to stop all this dddddddddd and get some editing done here, and I am eager to engage him and learn from him. He had done a fantastic job last week. He did a great job on the Carol Tavris edit before he messed it up. I should have left it the way it was. BTW, I know you are very experienced editors, but a little reminder now and then never hurt anyone. Because tensions are high and this is a controversial topic, please discuss your ideas on how to improve the article here on this TALK page -- before you post them and before you redact anything. I highly recommend Anthonyhcole's method described above. Take a look at it and tell me what you think.

Okay. I'm a nice guy. I assume you are intelligent if I give you a good hint: I observed recently that MHAMIC is correctly formated MHAMic. IPCE is correctly formated Ipce. When I was a boy, we called them "Negros", and that word was not a pejorative word then. Now we call them "Black"s because that's what they prefer. People prefer to name themselves. We don't call them "gypsies" any more either. My mother taught me that people have a right to name themselves. I respected her, and let her teach me this. I guess I extend her teaching a bit: organizations use whatever letter formatting they choose. Since this is the authoritative Wikipedia, I thought we'd better get the letter formatting (upper case; lower case) right for the esteemed readers of this fantastic encyclopedia.

I trust the hint will help a lot. Good luck in figuring out the reason! I not only assume good faith, I assume high intelligence. Here's hoping you won't disappoint.

Johnuniq: You wrote above: "I have previously mentioned some of the points I have just had to repeat." Darn. I've forgotten. Remind me: I don't recall asking you to repeat anything for me. What about my writing gives you the impression that repetition makes me more receptive to you the second time around? I don't feel respected by you, so I don't attend closely to what you write. I learned this from WLU: if you don't like someone, you don't read carefully what she writes. "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." Good teachers know that a receptive student is a lot easier to teach. What can you do to make me want to rise to your high standards? What can I do to make you more receptive to what I write? I am feeling like I am being stalked by you, and would rather you just leave me alone and focus on the editing. You and I are co-editors. Let's see what you can do for Wikipedia. After I see some of your work for Wikipedia here, I'll have a better picture. Radvo (talk) 09:02, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

We don't follow the logo typography of organizations. Our article on Macy's for instance is not titled Macy*s notwithstanding that that's how they style it. Acronyms are given in full upper case. As it says at top of the NAMBLA article "The capital M and lowercase b symbolize a man and a boy", which you likely know. That you'd override the typography rules used by Wikipedia (or most any other publication) to render the name of the organization in this way is idiosyncratic... and instructive. Herostratus (talk) 15:48, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

The title of this section is wrong and misleading. This discussion is mostly about typography.

The argument would not need much discussion if you had researched a WP:Soucre. This is BRDDDDDDiscuss ad nauseum, too. Even after the word has been deleted from the text.

The Ohio State University capitalizes the first letter in "The", even though this capitalization of "The" is not standard. See university usage here in [in second paragraph]. The linguistics department decides this.

[CLAiT] is what the group calls itself, with a lower case "i" among the capital letters. Something distinctive.

The Macy's example is not an example of mixed upper and lower case letters. Macy*s is a substitution of an * for an '. If "we" were were to respect Macy*s wishes about how it wants to name itself, "we" would use Macy*s. No big deal for me, but apparently a big deal for Macy*s. I lean towards allowing groups to name themselves, but this is not that important to dicsuss this longer. Why these groups do this (and why you named yourself Herostratus) is irrelevant to getting the typography and the name right on Wikipedia.

About the title of this section.

Associating this mathematically brilliant research study with despised advocacy groups is a weapon of psychological warfare, domination, degradation and humiliation. This is not NPOV. WLU has gotten some of the message and has now removed the organization names from the article. That is a big step in the neutral direction. Publicly associating the Rind et al. study with advocacy organizations is a form of "degradation ceremony." (Scholarly Source: Garfinkel J. (1956) "Conditions of successful degradation ceremonies" American Journal of Sociology Volume 61, pp. 420-424) A degradation ceremony is assigning stigma to this research study because of the organizations that support the controversial research (the weak, tiny advocacy groups) and those institutions that despise it (the powerful U.S. Congress), A scientist or researcher who is publicly associated, by Wikipedia, with despised advocacy organizations and Congressional condemnation is stigmatized, and by definition, researchers with a stigma are not quite human, and need not be respected as such. So the Dr. Laura libel can be rephrased in the editor's words in violation of BLP. Everything else about the stigmatized researcher is viewed thru that dark lens. It's something like urinating on the dead body of the enemy soldier you just killed. Dehumanizing the enemy is how the military conditions soldiers in basic training to kill the enemy and destroy property. It is also a way to survive in battle. The opposition must be de-graded, and they are fundamentally flawed as human beings. They now have "a spoiled identity." This is all relevant IMHO to the experience of the Rind controversy. Editors here might to take great care to report the controversy NPOV and not be part of the "degradation ceremony" of psychological warfare against the study. Radvo (talk) 19:25, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

First Paragraph of the Controversies Section

I integrated the content of two sections that were sourced by Carol Tavris's article in Society. I made a complex edit, and put that edit into the first paragraph of the Controversies section.

WLU reverted it because of too much analysis and too much verbiage.

I moved a photo, and was beginning to edit to make things more concise as requested. Before I could even begin to post by work to reduce the verbiage, I was reverted a second time. Dontbite I will file a complaint if this continues.

Johnuniq objected to wording in the second sentence. I immediately removed the entire sentence. I was following BRD.

I then made a number of edits to remove analysis and verbage to meet WLU's objection.

I would like to discuss the paragraph, as it now exits after my series of edits to make this more concise. How can we work to improve this paragraph?

Please discuss the issues you have with the edit here on this talk page and work things out. Please be specific. I will consider and negotiate future changes. Please do not revert this again until you discuss. I prefer to make the discussed changes myself. If you don't like what I have done the next time, we can continue the discussion here.

I am using WLU's preferred mode of working. He refuses Anthonhcole's suggestion that we discuss things first, as I would prefer. I believe we should all follow the same rules. See my previous attempts to get some discussion going about how editors work on this topic.

I am using what I understand to be BRD..

Radvo (talk) 05:24, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Could we agree here that before an editor reverts another editor's work, the editor who plans to revert should open a new section and explain the revert in detail BEFORE the revert is made. Then if an editor gets reverted, he/she can go immediately to the talk page and find out the problem. After I was twice reverted today, I looked on the TALK page,and saw no detail for the reason for the reverts, so I assumed I was being reverted for the reasons in the edit summaries, and that was all the feedback I was going to get. So, I used the information in the edit summary to make the requested changes. And I was reverted a second time as I was making the changes. I had get back to my work to make the changes requested. That is why I twice reverted to get back to my work to make it more concise, and to removed the sentence that was objected to. What do editors here think of this proposal? Radvo (talk) 06:05, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

If you have a proposal to change the way that Wikipedia works, please present it at WP:VPR. Until such a proposal is accepted, the correct procedure is that an editor who makes a change that is contested (such as being reverted with any kind of reason) needs to justify their change on the article talk page. Other editors may choose to join that discussion. There is nothing in the above two posts that actually belongs on this talk page: just explain why a change is required and respond to any comments. Johnuniq (talk) 06:29, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

I reverted again because there is a lot wrong with the changes to the controversy section. BRD stands for Bold, Revert, Discuss. After two reverts by two separate people, it's time to discuss - not force in more changes. Keep in mind Radvo, that you are not the only editor on the page, you do not own it and there are other editors with much, much more experience than you. We don't revert idly, and if two are reverting you, that's an indication your edits aren't appropriate. However, I at least bear some culpability for the problems as I did make the first revert. I think an experienced editor would have immediately seen the changes as problematic and why the edit summary was sufficient explanation and my apologies for not giving a more detailed rationale for the revert. It's a shit response to give "I'm an experienced editor" as a reason for a revert, but there's not a lot of specific policies on exact page contents; hopefully this explanation will be sufficiently convincing, or other editors will agree with me. Here are my objections to the changes, in no particular order:

• Carol Tavris is completely tangential to the controversy section. Her paper was already used to verify that NARTH objected to the study. Her opinion should not be included in the controversy section as she was not a significant player as it unfolded. Her attributed opinion is appropriate somewhere else in the page, but I admit the "usage outside" section is not ideal. Her picture shouldn't appear anywhere on the page.
• The words "The provocative information in the jargon-laden meta-analysis did not languish for long unnoticed in the professional journal (circulation 6,000)" are far to editorial to be appropriate, in addition to being extraordinarily purple.
• Calling NARTH's response an "attack" is also inappropriately editorial and not neutral; while 'criticize' is inherently nonpejorative, 'attack' is. The inclusion of their opinion on what causes homosexuality (seduction by a man) is also wrong for this section - controversy should be a more-or-less chronological discussion of Rind et al's publication and the public reaction.
• The inclusion of the repressed memory reaction in the controversy section looks inappropriate, I have yet to see a source that includes them as part of the original controversy; Tavris does not. Remember, we are bound by what we can verify, not what is true. The repressed memory groups may have reacted strongly and immediately, but until we can attribute this to a source, it should not be included in the controversy section.
• Attributions of why people reacted to the controversy, specifically the fear of malpractice lawsuits, is also too much detial for what is essentially a minor, and from what I can tell, late-coming group in the debate.

Overall, way, way, way too much analysis of one social psychologist, much I as liked Mistakes were Made. This diff shows a comparison of the before-and-after text made on one of my subpages. The changes are essentially what I summarized above, a bunch of out-of-order opinion from Tavris with way too much emphasis on the recovered-memory crowd. This is particularly a bad choice since I haven't seen any other sources that associate the recovered memory/DID movement so strongly with the initial or even subsequent reaction. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 14:45, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

You have some of this wrong. [Spokesperson Stephanie Dallam = Leadership Council] = Repressed Memory Crowd = Fear of malpractice suits. They are all tied together behind spokesperson Stephanie Dallam who then took the arguments that were not shot down and wrote her propaganda paper in 2002, (which you like so well here). Everyone of her co-authors was from the repressed memory crowd at the advocacy group, Or is my memory failing me here? The Leadership Council. They all failed to disclose their ties and connection to this advocacy group in their "research paper". If a half dozen Nxxxxa members published a paper in a scholarly journal, it would be important for readers to know that all the co-authors were members of that advocacy group, so readers might be alert for biases. I suspect from what you wrote above that you did not know much of this before I told you. Somewhere in the Wikipedia article that references the Dallam article, Wikipedia should disclose that all of Dallam's co-authors were members of the repressed memory crowd (The Leadership Council). These were the advocate "consultants" to Dr. Laura in the Spring 1999 and lobbyists thru the summer 1999 with the State legislatures and U.S. Congress. They were hiding their biases behind their degrees, and IMHO neurotically projecting this out to Rind et al. No Source. No original research. Drop that. These groups and their allies orchestrated the moral panic with their non-peer-reviewed garbage. Caraol Tavris was in Los Angeles and didn't have names of people and organizations out there when she first published the earlier version of her article in the Los Angeles Times. I'll respond more with good Sources if I can easily find them. Do you want to do this in chronological order? Can you make a flow chart in another section from December 1998 thru September 1999? We can put the events of the chronology on the flow chart in the correct order.

I agree on the chronology mix up in the article here. Otherwise, however, I have a response for all your other points. It will be long. Will you read it?

Wikipedia is sullied, by association, if moral panic advocacy sites are linked from our pages - including talk pages. Moral panic is immoral.

pas de touché Radvo (talk) 22:41, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Dallam isn't specifically mentioned by Tavris, making your observation a synthesis.

Where the hell do you get the idea that I "like" Dallam's paper? Did you not post a comment in the section I started above that discussed removing Dallam outright? I think it's a biased piece of shit that's thoroughly rebutted by Rind.

And I still don't think it's worth including Tavris' specific commentary in the controversy section. Leadership council isn't the kind of major player that the religious fundamentalists or Congress are. Not worth a mention and no specific attributions can be made to any actions they took. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 23:23, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Sloppy wording about "you". I think I was referring to the collective "you" of editors who put all that Dallam material into the article in the more distant past. I am very pleased that you write this way about Dallam. If we can get this cleaned up I can die and go to heaven. The question now is how to get the Dallam stuff cleaned up without all hell breaking loose. The point you make about synthesis is one to ponder more. Radvo (talk) 03:34, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Explain the study. Or break this topic up into 2 separate topics?

The second post to this TALK page, more that 3 years ago, asked for an explanation of the study. Too much controversy and negativity was a problem here from the very start. This negativity chases new editors away. Bite

That old post reads:

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 criticism of the study. That, if anything, is not very scientific and least of all encyclopedic. 84.253.253.245 ([index.php?title=User_talk:84.253.253.245&action=edit&redlink=1 talk]) 12:00 pm, 29 August 2008, Friday (3 years, 4 months, 20 days ago) (UTC−4)

Lots of progress has been made in three years, but I am not satisfied with the removal of most of Truthinwriting's 'Findings in brief' section by an editor who probably has not read the study, refuses to read it, and is not qualified to write a short summary of the findings or results. He doesn't know that he doesn't know the material and he doesn't know that I know he doesn't know the material. Telling how many participants were included in the study and how many studies were meta-analyzed is good, but we had to discuss that at great length to even get that in the article. What about the Rind results? There is little about the results in the current page.

Truthinwriting has read the study, and even understands it. I alerted Dr. Rind to this "Findings in Brief' summary, he read it, and said it was a good summary of the results of the 32 page jargon laden study. What is the problem with including it here? The 'Finding in brief' section was removed without Truthinwriting's consent or mine. We are lectured about consensus, and then Herostratus and WLU work without consensus, or even asking for consensus.

How about an appendix summarizing the entire study, not just the study itself.

Or start an entirely new topic starting with the Findings in brief section and a very professional tone. And then dealing only with the methodological and statistical problems on that page. Why should editors who have read and understood the study have to educate editors about the very basics of the study because the inexperienced editors refusal to do their homework? We can't do their homework for others. If the Pedophile Article Watch sends someone over to oversee things, we editors of the new page will demand from the appropriate Adminstration authority that the PAW representative must have read and understood the 1997 and 1998 papers. Otherwise that PAW representative is unwelcome to edit content of the paper and certainly not redact what editors who read the study may write. The new page would avoid discussing the controversy outside the scholarly circles. (The current article could deal more thoroughly with The Family Research Council, The Leadership Council, Radio Talk show hosts Dr. Laura and Dom Giordano, the state and Congressional condemnation, the lobbying, the fear of malpractice suites, etc.

Should we split this article in two and start a new page with just the Rindings in Brief section, and only editors who have read and understood the study may participate and edit. Others will be redacted unless they make unusually talented posts based on good secondary sources. Maybe in a year or two, the two articles might be merged together again.

The "controversy part" can stay here, and editors here need to read only the dozens of secondary sources, not the original Rind material? They can continue with The Leadership Council's fetish of linking the Rind article with advocacy organizations,, etc. as they have for years. The professionals I am looking to work with may not want to sully their professional experience and credentials with this biased crap, and the BRDDDDD.. I would rather work with peers and professionals above my pay grade, psychologists, sexologists, and statisticians who can handle the complexity and the significance of this powerful material.

BRD is not appropriate for people who have not read the study. There is just too much to explain. The Anthonyhcole method is superior, but we have no consensun on using it.

I would especially like to read Truthinwriting's response to this, if he is still watching these ideas. Radvo (talk) 21:04, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

I need to ask something important at this juncture. Do you have any personal association with Bruce Rind, Philip Tromovitch, or Robert Bauserman? Are you one of those three, or were you ever a colleague of any of them? Did you have anything to do with the work of these three related to this paper? The reason I ask is not a condemnation, but rather a matter of policy on conflicts of interest. You would not be blocked or punished in any way if you are, nor barred from editing this article, but rather it simply creates the necessity for proper disclosure and consideration for due weight. I highly recommend you read this specific section of the COI policy as it reads almost exactly like our interactions with you thus far on this article. And for pete's sake, try to keep your reply under 1000 characters.Legitimus (talk) 22:13, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

I tried to post this before, and it seems not to have saved. So I am posting this a second time. If this is a duplicate, this was not intentional.

Legitimus: I read conflicts of interest and liked: [Everyone] acts with love and neutrality to write a good article which is acceptable to both reasonable critics and reasonable supporters ... [where] reliance on solid sources, neutral language, etc., carries the day." You're right, my situation is a little like that. And I consider myself a reasonable Rind supporter outraged at the hatchet job that has been done on Rind et al.

To answer: I am not Rind, Bauserman, or Tromovitch. I am not now and never was a colleague of any of them. I have already disclosed in my posts to this TALK page several times, that I have contacted Bruce Rind about this article in the past month. I asked Dr. Rind if he would read the "Findings in Brief" section that was written by Truthinwriting.

I told Dr. Rind that the Wikipedia article about his paper was a hatchet job, and I was interested in making it more NPOV. I do not represent the views of Robert Bauserman or Philip Tromovitch, and have never discussed Wikipedia with either of them. Dr. Tromovitch has emigrated permanently to Japan, and I have heard rumors that he claimed to have been troubled by the mistreatment around the controversy. Rumor has it that Dr. Fowler, president of the APA at that time, also had a reaction after the controversy. Dr. Rind wasn't well aware of the Wikipedia article, and I had to coax him to read it. He felt the WP:article had so many serious errors that he wasn't interested in working on it. But I am! He says his responses are available in published sources for good faith editors. I asked him for some sources for the issue of "consent" and "willingness", and he e-mailed some scholarly articles. Particularly relevant discussion, he said, was found in: Rind, B., Tromovitch, Ph., & Bauserman, R., 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

I do not have a conflict of interest, but I do have access to Dr. Rind by telephone and e-mail. I want to use this access to ask him, from time to time, if he could refer me to reliable secondary sources (he has a great memory). He tolerates my work on Wikipedia as long as I don't drain him about the Wikipedia article with lots of requests and time. It is good that editors know of my contact with Dr. Rind, as we will both go to BLP with complaints about this article if this doesn't get cleaned up eventually in harmony with Wikipedia BLP policies.

As far as specific edits go, Dr. Rind focused on the December 1998 meeting at the Pauluskirk (St. Paul's Church) in Rotterdam. All the rest of this edit is from talking with him, and you can monitor me via the TALK page on these matters. We think Salter/Dallam based their claim that Dr. Rind attended that meeting on an unreliable e-mail newsletter that was dated before the conference date. That email newsletter (I think it is still on line) was inviting people to the conference, & the conference planners were expecting Dr. Rind to come, since the major focus of the conference was his 1998 paper that was condemned by Congress. This seems to be of considerable interest in Northern Europe. (Der Spiegel, the German equivalent of Time magazine, ran a large article on the Congressional condemnation at the time.) Dr. Rind himself, in fact, did not attend the Rotterdam conference, and Wikipedia has been wrong on this fact for years. The conference was just another one of those things that this unusual pastor did, based on his understanding of his religion. The December 1998 Rotterdam conference was open to the public but attended mostly by clinicians and academics who wanted hear a talk about that jargon laden 1998 paper. Native English speakers can't understand it, and these were native Dutch speakers, some of whom learned enough English in school to understand the spoken English word. People who were not well educated in English or statistics would not be attracted to attend, and would not understand much if they did. The pastor (Name like Visser if I remember correctly) of that church reached out to outcasts: pedophiles, AIDs patients, drug addicts, illegal aliens, the homeless particularly those who were not being well cared for by the Dutch safety net. I believe this conference and the speakers are documented in Dutch newspaper articles published after the conference, I do not imagine that they would have said after the conference that Dr. Rind attended, when in fact he was not physically there. I believe both Dallam and Salter quoted the Dutch papers, but did not correct their error. The conference was about the Rind paper, not about Pedophilia, and was not for a pedophile audience. The citation for the paper presented at the conference is listed on this TALK page, and I believe it has all three authors' names on it. The citation was in WLU's chart, and may be in the archives2 as of today. If you read the paper, you may find that the word pedophilia does not appear once. You can assume you have the consent of the authors regarding to access that paper, if you want it and need formal permission, Dr. Rind may arrange this for you. It is available on line. The authors will give Wikipedia full access to it, if desired. I have not been too interested in working on this Rotterdam conference error, but may get around researching it if I get access to the sources. Dutch newspapers are not easily accessible here, and I don't read Dutch.

Dr. Rind acknowledges that Dr. Laura libeled her on her radio show, but he would prefer that Wikipedia quoted her libel directly rather have some editor summarize the libel Dr. Laura spoke. Does someone still have the libel that Dr. Laura offered on her radio show? Dr. Rind feels that if you don't have the direct quote from Dr. Laura, you should drop it. I will work on this some other time, too. When we get to that part. I feel Dr. Rind should work to clean the BLP stuff up, but he is busy.

Full disclosure: I do NOT know personally know who Truthinwriting is, and Dr. Rind does not know him either. I had been lurking, off and on, at the Rind et al. stie, and when I saw Truthinwriting's post at the beginning of December/end of November, I decided to join him and clean this article up. Radvo (talk) 04:01, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately, without a source discussing Dr. Rind's involvement or lack thereof with the conference, the point remains up. However, if there has ever been any discussion of this in a reliable source, I would be very, very happy to include it. An attributed statement by Dr. Rind rebutting Dallam's statement about his alleged attendence at the conference would be adequate in my mind - this would include a posting he made on a personal website or blog if he has one (unlikely, particularly given the controersy itself is over a decade old). This is one of those rare cases where WP:V may be a disadvantage.

You may want to look into the WP:OTRS, it's possible an e-mail to the wikimedia foundation may be acceptable. It's a bit of a long shot, and I've never seen anything like it happen in my experience, but you never know. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 18:24, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Sadly, Radvo seem to have read the actual study and thus almost anything he contributes here will be based on that, rather than popular opinion which is what Wikipedia should represent. Juice Leskinen (talk) 23:17, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Good lord! Somebody basing an article on a peer reviewed source! What will we dooooooooooo!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 01:03, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

I would encourage anyone connected with Radvo to explain that posting long screeds is unhelpful—really unhelpful, as it makes it too difficult to see any substantive point. Yes, this is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, but there are many hundreds of contentious topics here which all go through the phase evident recently in this article: new editors arrive to right great wrongs but they seldom take the time to listen to experienced editors, and eventually find themselves blocked as being unable to collaborate. Johnuniq (talk) 03:39, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Yeah I don't believe Radvo for a second he's not Dr. Rind. He posts the same way he lectures when I had his class at Temple back in '07 or '08, with the rambling topics and lack of structure. I used to fall asleep in that class. Plus, Radvo talks to Dr. Rind on the phone and has his personal e-mail? That's mighty convenient. And his obvious fervor for painting Rind and this paper as "brilliant"... given Rind's entire publication history for the past 15 years has been nothing but responses and counter-claim pieces on this paper, with a few on restaurant tipping for flavor. I mean who do you think you're fooling? Not that there's anything wrong with it if you are Dr. Rind. The COI policy isn't like the pedo policy; you can still edit. But the other users deserve to know who they are dealing with when someone so vehemently tries to defend this factually accurate but sociologically moronic paper.

BLP NPF

The Controversy Section contains this clause:

"Laura Schlessinger ... questioned the motives of the authors, WP:NPF asserting the purpose of the study was to allow the homosexual rape of children." WP:AVOIDVICTIM

Dr. Rind, Dr. Tromovitch, and Dr. Bauserman are not public figures and are relatively unknown. This statement is an insult, inflammatory and offensive, and repeating this in the Wikipedia article prejudices the reader from judging the Rind Report on its scientific merit.

Dr. Rind asks the editors here to please delete this repetition of Dr. Laura's libelous statement.

If this cannot be settled with the editors directly, the discussion here, and this appeal, will be taken to the BLP noticeboard.

--Radvo (talk) 23:20, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

It would be much more effective to use simple English with no drama when explaining concerns (and a simple, neutral heading). Do you have a proposal? Use impressive links and BIG fonts and mentions of noticeboards after an inappropriate response occurs. I have no motivation to even try to work out what you are getting at. Johnuniq (talk) 01:12, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Hmmmm. It does look libelous and unjustified. And I would question Schlessinger's standing to make a statement like that. Did she offer any proof or supporting evidence? On the other hand, I don't think it's a WP:BLP issue (I could be wrong about that, and the passage might not be good for other reasons), because 1) while Schlessinger isn't an expert on the subject (I don't think) and is kind of an _____, she is a well-known social commentator so (for better or worse) what she says about stuff is generally notable, and 2) while Rind is not exactly a major public figure, he was kind of made a public figure by this event; while he may not want to be a public figure, sometimes we don't get a choice in these things. It's not like Schlessinger was picking a random citizen and making fun of his hat. She's entitled to respond to publicly published material, I guess, including second-guessing motivation, I suppose.

However, the BLP noticeboard may feel differently and it'd be justified to bring this up there and see what they say. If the subject is personally distressed that's an important point. Herostratus (talk) 01:35, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Laura claimed many things, but the most unfounded and insulting is being used. I replaced it with another claim from the same source that does not have the same level of personal attack. Juice Leskinen (talk) 08:08, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Rind, Tromovitch, & Bauserman concluded...

We ask the question: "How can this controversial article, its results, the views of its 3 authors, best be described?" It is not the editors' job to edit Wikipedia so that it reflects our own, or the majority, view and then defend those edits against all comers. This article, about the controversial Rind Report, will ideally describe the study, the results, and the 3 authors' views, no matter how misguided or repugnant they are to some readers.

Because this topic is controversial and likely to be WP:CHALLENGED, an editor will remove material that is WP:UNSOURCED. Opinions must be WP:SUBSTANTIATED And editors are limited in the extent they may present their own point of view. Wikipedia pages may not be used for any form of advocacy.

The earlier contested sentence reads, in part:

The authors Rind et al. (1998) concluded that... this does not mean it is not wrong or morally repugnant behavior.

What did Rind et al. (1998) conclude? This is settled by quoting, or paraphrasing, as accurately and as fairly as possible, what Dr. Rind, Dr. Tromovitch, and Dr. Bauserman concluded in Rind et al. (1998). Those who have not read the study may not insert their own words. They will be challenged.

Take care to WP:NOTADVOCATE a particular view as the view of the authors if it is not found in the source.

Here is the citation: Rind, B; Tromovitch P, Bauserman R (1998). "A Meta-Analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Using College Samples". Psychological Bulletin 124 (1): 22–53. doi:doi:10.1037%2F0033-2909.124.1.22. PMID 9670820. No link of the full text of the study is offered because such a link might create a contributory copyright problem for Wikipedia.

"Morally repugnant" is not substantiated in Rind et al. (1998), but it is easy to substantiate that majority viewpoint with reference to commonly accepted reference texts. Instead of edit waring, does anyone have the beginnings of a proposal for including this idea of "morally repugnant"? Just don't attribute them to Rind, Bauserman, or Tromovitch; they wrote the source and they didn't use the term. That "morally repugnant" has to be attributed to another secondary source.

Here are, IMHO, three relevant quotes from Rind et al. (1998).

Quote from Page 47, the last page.

If it is true that wrongfulness in sexual matters does not imply harmfulness ( Money, 1979 ), then it is also true that lack of harmfulness does not imply lack of wrongfulness. Moral codes of a society with respect to sexual behavior need not be, and often have not been, based on considerations of psychological harmfulness or health (cf. Finkelhor, 1984 ). Similarly, legal codes may be, and have often been, unconnected to such considerations (Kinsey et al., 1948).

Two quotes from page 45:

"In science, abuse implies that particular actions or inactions of an intentional nature are likely to cause [scientifically measureable] harm to an individual (cf. Kilpatrick, 1987 ; Money & Weinrich, 1983 ). Classifying a behavior as abuse simply because it is generally viewed as immoral, or defined as illegal, is problematic."

"This history of conflating morality and law with science in the area of human sexuality, by psychologists and others, indicates a strong need for caution."

End

(Aside #1)

I would like include somehow in the main article, Rind et al's, Kilpatrick's, Money's & Weinrich's scientific definition "abuse." See the middle quote above. We accept how "abuse" is defined morally and in the law. How to define "abuse" for the scientists who measure its effects and want to predict its effects? By definition, the scientist cannot measure moral or spiritual harm, so if CSA is defined only morally or legally, it has no predictive value. The scientist has to come up with a definition that she can measure.

(Aside #2)

-- Something different --

Males and females (on average) view CSA differently.

Quote form Page 43

"Schultz and Jones (1983) noted that men tended to see these [CSA] sexual experiences as an adventure and as curiosity-satisfying, whereas most women saw it [CSA] as an invasion of their body or a moral wrong. ... These gender differences in reactions to CSA experiences are consistent with more general gender differences in response to sex among young persons. ... These differences are likely due to an interaction between biologically based gender differences and social learning of traditional sex roles ( Fischer & Lazerson, 1984 ). Researchers (e.g., Kinsey et al., 1948 ; Sorensen, 1973 ) have repeatedly reported that boys are more sexually active than girls .... Social norms tend to encourage sexual expression in adolescent boys but have traditionally emphasized romance and nurturance in girls ( Fischer & Lazerson, 1984 ). Thus, it is unsurprising that men and women should show similar differences in their reactions to CSA." --Radvo (talk) 00:24, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

What is your point? Do you want to remove the sentence "The authors Rind et al. (1998) concluded that... this does not mean it is not wrong or morally repugnant behavior"? That's reasonable I suppose. Herostratus (talk) 02:26, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Also, I'd be leery of relying too much on interpreting the primary source. Is there a not source such a "John Erudite Neutralreporter noted that Rind had said such-and-such" or something? That'd be better. (Granted, this applies also to extracting from the Congressional Motion, where we were on "opposite sides" of the issue, so I dunno. But we do want to be real careful re interpreting primary sources.) Herostratus (talk) 02:34, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Radvo, but while this particular example is quite easy and obvious I do believe that some of the things they wrote are simply to controversial to be written about in a NPOV perspective on Wikipedia. Juice Leskinen (talk) 05:41, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Juice: Welcome to Rind et al. Thanks for the new Dr. Laura quote, and your reasons for your edit. I added more to it from another source. You wrote: "Too controversial to be written about in a NPOV?" There is a tremendous amount of verbal skill here. We can work on this together on the TALK page before editing on the main page. WP:GOODFAITH Give us one or two for instances, easy ones for starters, please. Some unsolicited advise: Don't engage in struggles on the main page that you cannot win. They like BRD, but "they" play a hard game around here when you do the Bold. --Radvo (talk) 07:12, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Better leave it be. I think the only thing that can be done here is damage control. Juice Leskinen (talk) 07:40, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Rind et al.'s response to the Congressional Condemnation

Rind et al. did respond to the U.S. Congress. In fact, some of this response should be used to balance the Congressional condemnation in the article. Here is the Rind et al. response:

Claiming among other things that "all credible studies in this area ... condemn child sexual abuse as criminal and harmful to children," and citing a 1982 Supreme Court opinion that expressed this view, House Congressional Resolution 107 proclaimed our study to be "severely flawed." It condemned and denounced "all suggestions in the article ... that indicate that sexual relationships between adults and 'willing' children are less harmful than believed and might be positive for 'willing' children."

[snip]

This [Congressional] resolution was built on the criticisms made by NARTH, "Dr. Laura," the Family Research Council, and The Leadership Council. Its specific comments and wording were heavily drawn from the Alaska resolution, which was itself based on some of these criticisms. Given that we have just shown these criticisms to be without merit [see citation below], the characterization of our study as "severely flawed" must be seen as invalid.

It is not the case that all credible studies have concluded harm, as our review amply demonstrated, unless concluding harm is viewed as a prerequisite to judging a study "credible."

The 1982 Supreme Court opinion was made when CSA research was relatively scant and unsophisticated; in our review, almost all the studies (57 of 59) were published after 1982.

Willingness is in fact relevant to outcome. We neither stated nor implied that CSA might be positive for willing children, as "positive" in this context connotes beneficial. Instead, we accurately summarized what the students themselves reported in terms of perceived reactions and effects, some of which were positive.

Finally, using the best methodology involves being strongly grounded in methodological logic (specifically regarding issues of generalizability and causality) and statistical precision, qualities that characterized our review above most others.

[End]

Source of the above: Rind, B; Tromovitch P; Bauserman R (2000). "Condemnation of a scientific article: A chronology and refutation of the attacks and a discussion of threats to the integrity of science". Sexuality and Culture 4 (2): 1–62. doi:10.1007/s12119-000-1025-5 page 42-3. This article provides a great deal of detail and is highly recommended to other editors here. --Radvo (talk) 05:10, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Replication of Rind et al. (1998) by Heather Ulrich. The sentence, mentioning the replication, is at the end of the lead, but has formatting that makes it invisible to the casual reader.

WLU made one sentence, at the end of the Lead, describing the Ulrich et al. (2005) replication of Rind et al. (1998), invisible to the reader. But that sentence still can be seen when in edit mode. Here is WLU's edit. WLU's edit summary was: "SRMHP not pubmed indexed, which calls for considerable caution."

WLU: Can you point to a WP:policy that states we cannot use, in the Lead, as a reliable secondary source, a scholarly journal that is not "pubmed indexed"? I looked but could not find any Wikipedia guidance on that. I would like to see that policy myself. Do you, or any other editor here, have the WP:URL? If there is no adequate response here, I will seek a neutral third opinion outside this TALK section.

The hidden sentence reads:

Ulrich et al., seven years after the publication of the Rind et al. (1998) meta-analysis, replicated the study in the The Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice and confirmed its main findings. ref: cite journal | url = http://www.srmhp.org/0402/child-abuse.html | title = Child Sexual Abuse: A Replication of the Meta-analytic Examination of Child Sexual Abuse by Rind, Tromovitch, and Bauserman (1998)| date = 2005-06 | volume = 4 | issue = 2 | last = Ulrich | first = Heather | coauthors = Randolph Mickey, Acheson Shawn | journal = The Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice

Some of our previous TALK about SRMHP pasted here:

It is worth noting that the journal that published Ulrich's study (SRMHP) is not a well known one. Without saying too much about myself personally, I have access to arguably the largest scholarly library in the world, yet SRMHP is not carried in regular collections nor available online. I will have to special order it as a hardcopy in order to examine the details.Legitimus (talk) 10:03 pm, 18 December 2011, Sunday (1 month, 5 days ago) (UTC−5)

Radvo interjected: The Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice is edited by Scott O. Lilienfeld, Ph.D., of Emory University. Dr. Lilienfeld is the author of an important related article, cited three [correction: now 7] times in the Wikipedia's 'Rind et al. controversy' topic; it's footnoted ...: "When Worlds Collide: Social Science, Politics, and the Rind et al. (1998) Child Abuse Meta-Analysis" American Psychologist, 2002, Vol. 57, No. 3, 176-188, 2002

The Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice (SRMHP) is the only peer-reviewed journal devoted exclusively to distinguishing scientifically supported claims from scientifically unsupported claims in clinical psychology, psychiatry, social work, and allied disciplines. It applies the best tools of science and reason to objectively evaluate novel, controversial, and untested mental health claims." See [http://www.srmhp.org/0101/raison-detre.html SRMHP: Our Raison d’Être] Radvo (talk) 1:25 am, 31 December 2011, Saturday (23 days ago) (UTC−5)

WLU: This is speculation: SRMHP's editor, Dr. Scott O. Lilienfild, may be widely regarded as a fiercely independent whistle blower, and may have alienated the medical and psychological community with "his" muckraking Journal that aggressively exposes unsupported claims in the medical and social science disciplines. "The establishment", in turn, may refuse his journal a listing on Pubmed. That might be a way for "the establishment" to retaliate against him because of his aggressive whistle-blowing approach to pseudoscience. Or Dr. Lilienfeld may just fiercely guard his independence, and refuses to submit to some Pubmed requirement for listing. He quit the APA when, at first, the organization refused to publish his embarrassing [to the APA] article: Lilienfeld, S O (2002). "When Worlds Collide: Social Science, Politics and the Rind et al. (1998) Child Abuse Meta-Analysis" (PDF). The American Psychologist 57 (3): 177–187. PMID 11905116. Archived from the original on 2003-04-29.

(BTW, Rind et al. controversy quotes this Lilienfeld article 7 times; so there is no "considerable caution" about using him as a source when he writes for the American Psychologist, just "considerable caution" about the journal he edits.) Should I e-mail Dr. Lilienfeld and ask him why his journal is not pubmed listed? On the other hand, I cannot imagine an answer from Dr. Lilienfield that would make your "considerable caution" about SRMHP any less.

I have noticed that, to avoid the controversy, a group of on-line psychiatrists referenced Ulrich et al. (2005-6) with the full citation and abstract -- instead of citing the controversial Rind et al. (1998). Take a look at this psychiatrist's post to an Internet help forum. Here's the link. He/she mentions Rind et al. (1998), but does not give its citation or its abstract. This psychiatrist points out to his client that the Rind study was replicated (without giving a citation to the original) and then gives the full citation and link to the abstract for the Ulrich replication. This psychiatrist argues that the successful replication of Rind et al. (1998) is a strong argument for the validity of the results of the later. This on-line psychiatrist gives me the impression that he/she thinks the non-controversial replication is even more important than the original because it is not tainted with the controversy and Congressional condemnation.

Here's the link again. Please read the text to the bottom; I want all editors here to see that this independent psychiatrist has a very different "attitude" toward Rind et al. (1998) and Heather et al. (2005-6) than the editors here who are sympathetic to the unwarranted aggression I associate with editors, like Herostratus, associated with the Pedophile Article Watch PAW. I would love to have this psychiatrist join Wikipedia and bring his sympathetic attitude here, to counterbalance the disrespectful PAW attitudes, but I will NOT invite him to edit here, as that would be WP:MEAT.

In case the link I gave twice above does not work, here is the relevant part:

[Start quote from Psychforums.com: "Ask a Psychiatrist"]

Rind's meta-analysis was definitive because it collated results of every study extant in the literature up to that time which met criteria for inclusion [1956 to 1994]. Meta-analysis is one of the strongest tools in science. Criticisms of the meta-analysis have been roundly refuted. Furthermore, its results have been confirmed:

[http://www.srmhp.org/0402/child-abuse.html A Replication of the Meta-analytic Examination of Child Sexual Abuse by Rind, Tromovitch, and Bauserman (1998)]

by Heather Ulrich, Mickey Randolph, and Shawn Acheson

Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice, Fall 2005

[End quote]

In the interest of full disclosure: I am not the psychiatrist who wrote that response on line. No COI.

I ask the editors here to comment on my desire to make again visible, in the Lead, the one sentence about Ulrich's replication (This sentence is also pasted into the first indented paragraph above). --Radvo (talk) 18:21, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

It's very simple: The article more than meets Wikipedias criteria for inclusion. A much lower standard is in place here, you could pretty much use a newspaper article as a source here. That being said, if there is anything in the actual study that is dubious then it could be well worth discussing and might in the end lead us to remove it from the article. Until then, it remains a valid source. Juice Leskinen (talk) 20:46, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

That is, go ahead and make your edit unless some spectacular counter-argument comes up in the near future. Juice Leskinen (talk) 20:51, 23 January 2012 (UTC)