[...] and, well, men we just don’t buy it. Our friends over at our less-slutty sister site Babble agree: The authors of the article say that “the intention was not to advocate withdrawal, but to [...]

I’ve got 2 kids who say it doesn’t work. ;)

I’d hate to think of people reading this and forgetting about the fact that condoms prevent things other than pregnancy- withdrawal’s not going to prevent the spread of disease.

“Even if its only 1 percent more effective, that’s enough to wear the glove.”

Apparently you’ve never gotten you’re freak on in the raw…
Rawnoob

well the only reason condoms don’t work is… people put them on wrong, that and the occasional manufacturers mistake (exceedingly uncommon) what they’re saying is that pulling out early is only as effective as condoms because retards use condoms wrong, if they didn’t pulling out would be LESS effective…and oh yeah STD’s.

there’s a magazine dedicated to contraception?!? who reads this??!!

i’m a professional sexuality educator with some comments on this.
1. while it is scary to open up the withdrawal method as a reliable means, an educator’s responsibility is to be honest. this is what differentiates us from ideologues who think they know better.
2. for withdrawal to be effective, there must not have been an ejaculation recently and the man has to have very consistent, reliable timing- a difficult trait to master and the reason it ever fails.
3. withdrawal is only suggested for monogamous, STI-free partners as it does nothing to protect against spreading infection.
4. i’m delighted condom use is the norm, ecstatic even. this does not mean, however, that we stop being scientists and wanting to know the truth.

A guy wrote that study.

Ali – LOL! Surprisingly, the study was written by 4 women.

There’s a reason why it’s known as “pull and pray.”

I love it when some blogger without a science background encounters scientific research bolstered with statistical analyses and simply decides “bullshit.” It’s no different than denial of evolution or climate change: data and statistics be damned, this doesn’t fit with my naive understanding of the world so I’ll deny it.

To the scientists in the thread: I agree that there’s a responsibility to report data, but there’s also a responsibility on behalf of the media (bloggers like Brett included) to point out flaws in data!

Jeanneasager: I understand your point but I don’t see Brett pointing out any legitimate flaws about the study in his post. All he said is that the results of the study defy his own common sense understanding, which is interesting but in itself is ot a good reason for dismissing data.

Knitty: What the hell? What an ignorant statement! Don’t you realize that scientific researchers are supposed to disclose any affiliations and funding precisely so that their level of objectivity can be taken into consideration? Those few scientists who don’t are breaking a serious ethical code, but are you going to dismiss the whole process of scientific investigation just because of a few bad people? Do you have a better system for gathering knowledge about the word? Or are you just anti-science and like to use the excuse of “well, they are getting their money from somebody” to dismiss any evidence that doesn’t fit the way you like to see the world?

As someone who has been involved in many clinical trials, I can completely understand Knitty’s frustration. The issue is that of lot of these “studies” that are reported in the media are done retrospectively – that is, they look at past information, and often survey people to get this information. This is a notoriously poor way of reaching a conclusion for many reasons, including the fact that people can have poor memory recall, not be honest, and this is not a way to get a randomized population. (Meaning that the groups self-sort themselves – maybe a person who practices withdrawal is a different age than a person who uses condoms, which affects how many people will get pregnant in a year, etc.) A true clinical study needs to be randomized, and should be double-blind – meaning neither the doctor nor the patient knows which medication, device, etc. they are getting. This is obviously impossible in the condom/withdrawal scenario.

And you talk about medications that are safe for pregnant mothers. Since it is unethical to perform a true clinical trial on pregnant women, this is something we will never know for sure.

The biggest problem with this is that when true, rigorous clinical trial is performed, people doubt the results because of all these “studies” we constantly read about that give conflicting information. Science is not 100%, but when performed rigorously will give a result that is much more reliable.

I was under the impression that pre-ejaculate could contain more than enough sperm to cause pregnancy. Which would equate condoms to pulling out, only if one had sex without a condom, then pulled out and put one on right before ejaculation. I mean, I get the statistics are what they are quoting, but it does seem like if you’re going to use these you might point out that this is only true because condoms aren’t always used correctly. Correctly used, I’m sure the statistics wouldn’t be so close. Also, one might want to point out that pulling out doesn’t protect against any STDs.

I pull out & I have no kids. :-D