Ethics and the interpretation of data: Is Child Sexual abuse okay??

I read a particularly interesting blurb in my developmental psychology text today. It was referring to a controversy once surrounding the psychology journal, "Psychology Bulletin" back in 1998. Researchers (Rind and colleagues (1998) published a meta-analysis they had done looking at the ramifications of childhood sexual abuse in college students who had at one point or another experienced the trauma of childhood sexual abuse.


After analyses of the data was examined, researchers concluded, "Self-reported reactions to and effects from child sexual abuse indicated that negative effects were neither pervasive nor typically intense..."


In basic english, this means that researchers were essentially concluding that: there were few, if any, problems related to childhood sexual abuse. 


Obviously this lead to a huge up roar of rage from the public as well as the US government, and even disapproval from the scientific community. Psychology Bulletin (which is a pretty distinguished an respected scientific journal) and the American Psychological Association (APA) got a lot of heat for publishing the article. And even more horrifying was the plethora of pedophilia websites that cited the article as "proof" that having sex with children was not bad.


The APA did not back down. They continued to defend the research, and "academic freedom." What they did however, was provide a significant amount of space in the Psychology Bulletin for published commentaries that disputed and in many cases, blatantly proved the illegitimacy of the research findings.


Now although I will never deny the importance of academic freedom, there is also something called the ethical code, which states that researchers MUST be cautious with how they present and interpret their research findings. Not only was Rind and colleagues' article abundant with methodological limitations which were not thoroughly addressed (like a biased sample, unstandardized variables, a myriad of statistical errors, ect...), but the authors clearly violated the ethical code stating that research findings must be presented in an accurate manner to prevent misinterpretation by others (particularly laypeople)!!!


Now the simple fact that authors (following the huge negative response by the public and scientific community) began double-talking their asses off to try and regain any legitimacy in their research is clear indication that authors obviously did not present their findings objectively enough, while at the same time keeping in mind the overwhelming methodological and procedural limitations of their study.


From a research standpoint, the title of one of the commentaries sums it up best I think, "Sex with children is Abuse" It's as simple as that. And there are a whole shit load of WELL-DESIGNED longitudinal studies that have demonstrated just this: that early childhood sexual abuse is consistently and reliably associated with later psychological and social problems later on in life.


In my opinion, I think its a complete travesty that the article was even approved for publication, because although I sincerely believe in academic freedom, this is a clear-cut case where the benefits of the findings (in addition to being poorly executed) definitely do not outweigh the harmful outcomes caused by their publication.


Until next time...


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