A recent study conducted by the University of Iowa discovered that couples who are non-romantically involved (friends having sex, basically) are “much more likely” to have multiple partners than romantically involved couples. This from a survey of 783 heterosexual adults in the Chicago area.
The headline announcing the finding read – Study points out risks of nonromantic sexual relationships.
Okay, a couple questions. First, what does “much more likely” mean? A bit of digging and deciphering, and it appears that men non-romantically involved with their sex partner are 25% more likely than romantically involved men to have multiple partners. Women in a “friends with benefits” relationship are 44% more likely to have multiple partners, compared to their romantically involved cohorts. (That gender difference is a bit surprising).
Second question. What does the title mean by “risks of nonromantic sexual behavior”? Are the risks, plural, the fact of more sexual partners alone? And isn’t that something of a moralistic determination, that more partners is worse?
But wait, there was this:
Researchers are interested in the topic because concurrent partnerships speed up the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, said Anthony Paik, a sociologist in the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and author of the study published in the latest issue of the journal Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health.
So did the title mean “health risks”? If so, why didn’t it say so? Why not include that one more word and clarify the meaning?
My guess: some moralizing intentionally or unintentionally slipped into the science reporting. Which means the communication of the scientific finding veered out of the the realm of science. And I give a thumbs down for that.
Sure, having multiply sex partners might be bad in some ways. Like in the possible spread of disease. But if we claim that the behavior is risky, we should be specific about how it is risky, and how we know it is in fact risky in the way(s) specified.
Who knows. Maybe there’s a great big upside to having multiple sex partners that just hasn’t been investigated yet. I don’t know (and I have some difficulty imagining how that might be the case). But still. So communicators of science findings, put down the broad brush, please. Be more scientific.
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