Why the media feels the need to make things sexy
A recent study published by the University of Montreal, in association with INRS-Institut Armand Frappier, suggests a link between multiple female partners and a reduced risk for prostate cancer in straight men. According to the study published on Oct. 28, men who have had sex with 20 or more female partners are 28 per cent less likely to develop prostate cancer than those who have not.
The sample consisted of 3,208 men who were asked to fill out a questionnaire about their sex lives, as part of the University of Montreal’s PROtEuS (Prostate Cancer and Environment Study) study.
What’s especially interesting for lead researchers Marie-Elise Parent and Marie-Claude Rousseau is the correlation found for homosexual men. Men who identified as homosexual, who said that they had sex with 20 or more men, were apparently twice more likely to contract prostate cancer than those who did not.
Popular media often desires to give the public “eureka” moments – during the Cold War era, there was a lot of excitement. Is the media of today just trying to fill a void? Photo Courtesy NASA via CC BY-NC 2.0.
If you’re fuming at these results, I should let you know that you shouldn’t be too offended. These correlations make perfect sense given our understanding of human physiology, and Parent and Rousseau’s findings echo similar findings published by Harvard in 2003 and 2004.
Ejaculation is not only pleasurable, it’s incredibly healthy. Orgasm is capable of relieving stress, curing mild headaches, temporarily increasing mental fortitude, and significantly reducing a man’s chances of developing prostate cancer. This is also true for women, though very few women generally need to worry about prostate cancer.
The idea that gay men are twice more likely to develop prostate cancer from 20 or more partners is also an unsurprising finding. I won’t get into the graphic details, but it really comes to a simple matter of give and take – release and storage.
However, you should be fuming at these results, because they are representative of a disappointing trend in our collective desire to know.
Science is founded on the desire to answer “why” and “how” questions. Science has no political agenda. Science is purely interested in figuring out how things work and how things fit within the framework of our grand universe.
Sadly, most people don’t understand the almost child-like pursuit of knowledge associated with science. Indeed, our culture is obsessed with finding reason for events; instead of looking for an answer to a question, we look for solutions to problems.
There’s a meaningful distinction between question and problem that irrevocably changes the research landscape.
In our culture, scientists don’t perform research to suit their curiosities; they perform research to get paid. Only the most interesting, most popular, most hyped, and sexiest stories get any significant airtime, and only the sexiest research gets any meaningful funding. This results in talented oncologists like Marie-Elise Parent wasting time examining the association between cell phone usage and brain tumour generation, in order to gain funding for meaningful lung cancer research. The study examining an almost negligible positively correlated trend gets airtime – and a paycheque – that funds the study that will actually save lives.
Popular media perpetuates the idea that science is only interesting when research offers life-changing implications, and it’s always been like this too. In the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s – during the height of the Cold War – news media reported on scientific discoveries on a daily basis, but coverage was only based on new discoveries that showcased Western advancement over Communist incompetence, or developments that were capable of eradicating life on the planet. Instead of focusing on the positive potential of nuclear power, the news obsessed over how much of North America Russia would be able to destroy if our enemies launched their entire nuclear arsenals against us.
However, the Cold War truly was a special time for scientific achievement. New discoveries really were incredible, so the public came to expect scientific “eureka” moments every time they tuned into the evening news. Today, scientific leaps-and-bounds occur on a daily basis, and lives are constantly changing thanks to the efforts of white-coats, but the public still expects to hear about the “eureka” moments. As a result, the news has tasked itself with only reporting on the biggest, sexiest stories, instead of everything else that’s happening in labs across the world.
Ultimately, the results of Parent and Rousseau’s study are not indicative of an unacceptably sexist moral framework in which it is “better for straight men” to have multiple sexual partners. The manner in which Parent and Rousseau published their findings, and the way that the press presented their results is simply indicative of a jarring social trend in which science is simplified for the lowest common denominator.
Saying that frequent orgasm is necessary for presenting prostate cancer, as was stated in every reputable study since 2004, is no longer an alluring enough concept. Multiple sexual partners – science preying on the notion that men should be having lots of sex with lots of women – is now obviously the way to make science interesting to the public. I shudder to think of what comes next – perhaps prostate cancer can only really be prevented if all the girlfriends and wives in the world let their significant others step out of the bounds of their relationships. Maybe that won’t be enough either; maybe gay men should stop having sex entirely, since they put themselves at risk every time they do.
Proper science writing – proper reporting for that matter – dictates that facts and opinion not be simplified to compensate for a population unaware of the subject matter. Journalists are supposed to explain current events, and put them into context for the people who weren’t even aware of the issues to begin with.
Proper science dictates a separation from philosophy and ideology. Sadly, until scientists are able to get proper funding for the research they want to do – instead of the research that pays the most – we’re going to be hearing a lot more about cells phones and brain cancer.
It is, in every sense of the term, a vicious cycle, and I’m really just calling out for a better class of news report that focuses on scientific discoveries not revolving around our genitals.