A Billion Wicked Thoughts

"A Billion Wicked Thoughts covers a topic everybody likes to talk about, sexual behaviour, and yet very few people want to talk to researchers about. Think about it, would you talk to a scientist who came to you and asked about your sexual preferences or the websites that you browse for these purposes on the internet? We know that people have a difficult time giving these kinds of details. So what these researchers did was they looked at data that was collected — internet data. Instead of asking people to provide it explicitly, you could take the data from a very large population of people and analyse it to get at their preferences and their behaviours. So it’s a similar type of research not applied to medicine, but to human behaviour. Yes, well, if you think about it, what are you likely to get at if you’re not very careful about the kinds of surveys you do? You’re likely to get to people who are happy to contribute their data and they may not necessarily be representative of the population. Or you are likely get people who will not tell you the truth or maybe not the entire truth. Whereas if you passively look at what people are doing, you are likely to get a more accurate picture. The next book is perhaps an even better example of that."