The RBT Files: Index
[The original articles]
[Explaining articles] [Discussion]
[Some documents]
Rind, B. (1998). Biased
Use of Cross-Cultural and Historical Perspectives on Male Homosexuality in Human
Sexuality Textbooks. The Journal of Sex Research 35:4, pp. 397-407. A Review
by Adam.
Rind, B., Bauserman, R. & Tromotitch,
Ph.,
An Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Based on
Nonclinical Samples, Paper presented to the symposium sponsored by the
Paulus Kerk, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, on the 18th of December 1998.
"The results of our reviews clearly show that the assumptions of most
mental health professionals, legislators, law enforcement personnel, media
workers, and the lay public that sexual relations defined as CSA cause intense
harm pervasively for both boys and girls are vastly exaggerated."
Rind, B., Tromovitch, Ph. &
Bauserman, R.,
A Meta-Analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual
Abuse Using College Samples, in: Psychological Bulletin 1998, Vol 124, No 1,
pp 22-53.
"Self-reported reactions to and effects from CSA* indicated that negative
effects were neither pervasive nor typically intense, and that men reacted much
less negatively than women. The college data were completely consistent with
data from national samples. Basic beliefs about CSA in the general population
were not supported."
[* Child Sexual Abuse]
Tromovitch, Ph., Rind, B. & Bauserman,
R., Adult Correlates of Child Sexual Abuse: A
meta-analytic review of college student and national probability samples,
SSSS-ER April 18, 1997
About the Meta-Analyse: 1. Explaining
articles
KOINOS, Youthful Sexual Experience
and Well-being, Important Conference in Rotterdam, in: Koinos Magazine #21
(1999/1)
Gieles, F.E.J., Mister
President..., The
USA is shocked by the research of Rind, Bauserman & Tromovitch;
chronological overview of the critical reactions; in: Ipce Newsletter E6, July
1999
Gieles, F.E.J., An Explanation of
the statistics,
used in the Meta-analysis,
in: Ipce Newsletter E7, December 1999
A correction:
F.E.J. Gieles; Forget the four percent - remember the one percent - August 2017
Now and then, I have said that the research of Rind c.s. should prove that a sexual experience during childhood in only four percent should result in lasting harm, and only for girls and only for cases of incest and force. This is not correct.
I discovered this in a shock after someone said that this was only one percent. In my text to correct this into 4%, I wanted to place a link to this cipher in Rind’s meta-analysis. This 4% cannot be found there! ...
The 1% can be found in Rind’s meta=analysis, but this cipher has another meaning.
... Explanation ... Snakes in the grass ... Contemplation ...
G. G., Radical Reconsideration of the
Concept of Child Sexual Abuse, New Findings by Bauserman, Rind and
Tromovitch, in: Koinos Magazine #20 (1998/4)
Harris, C, Prof. Harris replies to a student
Prof. Harris
I really enjoyed today's lecture on divorce. However, I am very intrigued by
your thoughts on abuse. I was extremely concerned when you mentioned that not
everyone who is abused as a child, is scarred for life. [..]
Response:
[...] Rind, Tromovitch and Bauserman found that many other factors predicted
personality and adult adjustment, such as family conflict, parental strife,
chaotic household, low income, parent with a psychiatric disorder, and so on.
These factors are correlated with CSA (just as they are with divorce)!
Once these factors are taken into account, CSA itself has no additional
predictive validity. So we can't attributed poor adult adjustment to
CSA, because the factors which are correlated with CSA are sufficient to cause
poor adult adjustment. [...]
About the Meta-Analyse: 2. Discussion
Berry, Kenneth K. & Berry, Jason, The
Congressional censure of a research paper: Return to the Inquisition? From:
Skeptical Inquirer Electronic Digest, Commentary in the issue dated December 10,
1999
We have taken the first large and frightening step away from scientific freedom
and toward totalitarianism in control of scientific endeavours.
Bullough, Vern, The Pedophilia Smear, in:
Taking Positions,
Self-appointed guardians of American morality like Laura Schlessinger are
targeting sex researchers, including me.
In June 1998, Bruce Rind, Philip Tromovitch, and Robert Bausenman published a
meta-analysis of 59 studies dealing with child sexual abuse based on college
samples in the Psychological Bulletin. [...]
A year earlier Rind and Tromovitch reached similar conclusions about child
sexual abuse using a national probability sample. Their findings should have
encouraged therapists to rethink some of their assumptions since they implied
that, for a significant portion of child sexual abuse victims, the trauma was
not what many believed it was, and that treatment modalities could be adjusted
according to the individual himself or herself.
Instead the two studies led to a firestorm of controversy which eventually
resulted in a congressional resolution condemning them. Why?
Ericksen, Julia A., Sexual
liberation's last frontier, in: Society May-June 2000, 37-4.
It is appropriate to undertake such research if only to wrest the terms of the
debate from conservatives who have used pedophilia as a way to silence all
attempts at sexual tolerance.
Gieles, F.E.J., Science
and Morality or The Rind et al. Controversy, The counter arguments
replied, in: Ipce Newsletter E7, December 1999
Haaken, Janice & Lamb, Sharon, Politics
of CSA research, in: Society, May-June 2000, 37-4
Haaken and Lamb attempt to steer a middle ground between a social
constructionist or culturally relative position on sexuality on the one hand,
and an approach that emphasizes universal principles of justice and care on the
other.
Letter to the Editor, Aug. 2, 2000
Erica Goodes prompt response to the publication of the latest child abuse study
in the Journal of the American Medical Association, (Childhood Abuse and Adult
Stress, p. A22, Aug. 2nd) strikes of a continuation of scientific revisonism
begun after the publication in 1998 of Rind, Bauserman and Tromovitchs
Meta-Analysis of Child Sex Abuse Using College Samples in Psychological
Bulletin, published by the American Psychological Association
Mirkin, Harris, Sex, Science and Sin:
The Rind Report, Sexual Politics and American Scholarship,
Manuscript submitted to Sexuality and Culture, Special Issue on Rind-Tromovitch-Bauserman
Many social scientists and psychologists disagreed with the article, but one
would have expected them to fight back with other articles rather than with a
call for censorship. In fact, the problem with the article wasn't that it was
methodologically weak, but that it was strong. It broke the rules of sexual
politics. [...]
The Rind report attacked the empirical foundation of the moral claims that were
being made, and like the Kinsey Reports it was vehemently attacked and seen as
undermining the moral tradition. The anger was generated against the two reports
not because they were unconvincing but because they, each in their own way, were
too convincing. If their analyses were right it would shake the foundations of
the moral claims that were commonly made and largely accepted. To admit Rind
type arguments into the debate, and to argue shades of gray and issues of
definition, was to lose the major battle. The Rind argument didn't overtly
challenge the moral premise about adult/youth sex, but it did threaten to change
the type of argument. That was the danger.
Oellerich, Thomas D., Rind,
Tromovitch, and Bauserman: Politically Incorrect - Scientifically Correct,
in: Sexuality & Culture, 4(2), 67-81 (2000)
The Rind, Tromovitch, and Bauserman study of the impact of CSA among college
students is politically incorrect but scientifically correct. It has a number of
important implications for the research and practice communities. Among the more
important is the need to stop exaggerating the negative impact of adult/nonadult
sexual behavior, as suggested earlier by both Browne and Finkelhor, and
Seligman. Another important implication is for conducting research that does not
approach the issue of adult/nonadult sexual behavior with a political ideology
as often has been the case thus far. And finally it is time to stop the common
practices of 1)assuming that CSA causes psychological harm, and 2) routinely
recommending psychotherapeutic intervention.
Rainer, Paul, Strident Attack,
translated from Der Spiegel, 2 Aug 1999 with Comment.
Rind, B., Bauserman, R. & Tromovitch, Ph., The
Condemned Meta-Analysis on Child Sexual Abuse; Good Science and Long-Overdue
Skepticism; In: Skeptical Inquirer July/August 20001, 68-72
In July 1999, the prestigious journal Psychological Bulletin published our
review of fifty-nine studies that had examined psychological correlates of child
sexual abuse (CSA) [...] We soon achieved an unexpected honor: our paper was
unanimously condemned by Congress.
In the aftermath, SKEPTICAL INQUIRER has published two commentaries, one
denouncing Congress [...] and the other denouncing our study (Hagen 2001). We
would like to offer our own thoughts about this astonishing story of politics,
pressure, and social hysteria - the antitheses of critical and skeptical
thought.
We conducted our research in the spirit of scientific skepticism, an attitude
sadly missing in the CSA panic that arose throughout much of the 1980s and early
1990s.
Rind, B., Bauserman, R. & Tromovitch, Ph., Science
versus orthodoxy: Anatomy of the congressional
condemnation of a scientific article and reflections on remedies for
future ideological attacks' in: Applied & Preventive
Psychology 9:211-225 (2000).
In this article, we detail the chronology behind the attacks. Then we discuss
the science behind our meta-analysis, showing that the attacks were specious and
that our study employed sound science, advancing the field considerably by close
attention to issues of external, internal, and construct validity, as well as
precision and objectivity.
Next, we discuss orthodoxies and moral panics more generally, arguing that our
article was attacked as vehemently as it was because it collided with a
powerful, but socially constructed orthodoxy that has evolved over the last
quarter century.
Finally, we offer reflections and recommendations for fellow researchers, lest
this kind of event recur. We focus on the need for greater cognizance of
historical attacks on science to anticipate and deflate future attacks. We argue
that our research should stand as another reminder among many that sacred-cow
issues do not belong in science. We discuss nonscientific advocacy in the social
sciences and the need to recognize and counter it. We discuss the failure of
psychology to adequately deal with the study of human sexuality, a problem that
enabled the faulty attacks on our article, and we suggest directions for
becoming more scientific in this area. And last, we raise the issue of how
professional organizations might deal more effectively with such attacks in the
future.
Rind, B., Tromovitch, Ph. & Bauserman, R.,
Condemnation of a scientific article: A
chronology and refutation of the attacks and a discussion of threats to the
integrety of science, in: In: Sexuality & Culture, 4-2, Spring 2000
The current article chronicles this whole affair. First, we provide background,
explaining why an article such as ours was needed. Then we accurately summarize
the article, given that it has been so widely misrepresented. Next we present a
chronology of the events leading up to and following the condemnation. We then
present and refute all the major criticisms of the article, which have included
both methodological and conceptual attacks. Next we discuss the threat to
science that these events portend. We conclude by discussing the need to
separate moral judgments from scientific research, the conflation of which
formed the basis for the distortions and condemnation.
Rind, B., Tromovitch, Ph. & Bauserman,
R.,
The Clash of Media, Politics, and Sexual Science: An examination of the
controversy surrounding the Psychological Bulletin meta-analysis on the assumed
properties of child sexual abuse,
Talk presented at the 1999 Joint Annual meeting of the Society for the
Scientific Study of Sexuality (SSSS) and the American Association of Sex
Educators, Counselors, and Therapists (AASECT) November 6th, 1999 (St. Louis,
Missouri).
Nine months after publication in Psychological Bulletin, our analysis of the
college student data came under intense attack by the radical right with
assistance from traumatologists associated with the left. This controversy
recently culminated with the U.S. House of Representatives condemning the
article in a 355-0 vote. We will briefly summarize the methods and findings of
our analyses, then focus on subsequent events.
Tavris, Carol, , The uproar over sexual abuse and
its findings, in: Society, May-June 2000, 37-4
Congress and clinicians may feel a spasm of righteousness by condemning
scientific findings they dislike, but their actions will do little or nothing to
reduce the actual abuse of children.
Zuriff, G.E., Pedophilia and the culture wars,
in: Public Interest, Winter 2000
The article gives a short summary of the research of the Rind et al. team. Then,
it will explain why the results of this research have upset many groups in the
US society, including the Congress, so that these groups will deny the results
of the research.
The author analyses the remarkable reaction of the APA, who turned 180 degrees
and who published paradoxes. The author analyses the ideological combat that's
going on behind the scene.
The
Congress Resolution 107, July 12, 1999
APA's Statement
Statement dated March 23, 1999 by the American
Psychological Association:
"Childhood Sexual Abuse Causes Serious Harm to its
Victims"
The Author's Response, May 12,
1999
Fowler's Statement
Controversy Regarding APA Journal Article, From: Ray Fowler, Ph.D., 25
May 1999
The other APA's Statement
America Psychiatric Association medical director criticizes other APA's
publication of pedophilia study, June 1, 1999
Top scientific body finds no reason to fault Rind
report, November 17th 1999
Laura Schlessinger, Evil among us
The NARTH's web page:
The Problem of Pedophilia; Adult-Child Sex Is Not Necessarily
"Abuse," Say Some Psychologists
NAMBLA's statement: The Good news About
Man/Boy Love
