Several excellent descriptive reviews, especially that of Rob Hardy, have already appeared here, so there's no point in my repeating that information. (My general assessment of this book can be found above, in the blurb I wrote for the publisher.) Instead, I'd like to provide some additional information for open-minded readers without an ax to grind who are trying to decide whether to buy the book.
Before Ogas and Gaddam began their research for this book they conducted a survey of an online community of slash fiction fans. ("Slash fiction" is a kind of romance fiction--often very sexually graphic--that is typically written by and for women, in which both lovers are men.) Some slash fans who participated in this survey, or did not participate but came to learn of it, strongly objected to it. These fans are the source of the 1-star reviews, which claim or imply that A Billion Wicked Thoughts was based on, or derived from, this survey.
I haven't seen the survey and therefore can't comment on its merits or shortcomings, but for the purposes of this review it doesn't matter because (please pardon my caps) THE SURVEY HAD NOTHING WHATEVER TO DO WITH A BILLION WICKED THOUGHTS. How do I know this? Because I read the book. Why don't the 1-star reviewers know this? Because they didn't read the book. All the data used in this book was obtained from publicly available sources or shared with the authors by private enterprises, and all the data is completely anonymous.
Furthermore, the slash fan community is by no means uniformly hostile to A Billion Wicked Thoughts. In fact, the Foreword was written by Catherine Salmon, who, for more than two decades, has been a member of the slash community as a reader of slash, a writer of slash, a participant in online slash discussion groups, a slash conference participant, and the co-author of a book about slash (I am the second author).
I would also like to respond to some specific claims made by 1-star reviewers:
> These two "scientists" were actually asked by the institution they claimed to represent to cease and desist from using their name in relation to this non-IRB approved "experiment." (Skittish)
> Other raised their concerns with the institution the writers claimed y to be affiliated with, and discovered that their claims of affiliation were made up. (H. West)
> The very college the two writers worked for pulled their accreditation of the research and disavowed the study. (Jess Idres)
> One of the people at Boston Uni who was there when they were suspended for their 'research' has published a short expose on Kindle. (J. Davitt)
Ogas and Gaddam have replied to these sorts of charges in a Q&A on the Freakonomics web site (please see "Comments" for web address).
For further clarification of these matters I emailed Dr. Ogas and received the following reply:
"There was no cease and desist from BU, no reprimand or sanction of any kind. This is a complete fabrication. (Where is the evidence? We still have our Boston University websites and email addresses.) Sai was a working post-doc at Boston University and I still retained student status when we represented ourselves as being at Boston University. When we were no longer affiliated with BU we stopped claiming affiliation. We never claimed BU affiliation with the survey or used BU resources. There never was any "accreditation" of the research (I don't even know what that means) so it could not have been pulled. BU never avowed any research, so how could it have been disavowed? We openly state that we intentionally conducted our research independent of any institutional support. We never requested any institutional support."
I have chaired the Human Subjects Committee (a.k.a. Institutional Review Board, or IRB) at The University of California at Santa Barbara for the last 25 years, and I have no idea what "accreditation" or "avowal" mean in this context.
I found Dr. Ogas's response to J. Davitt's Kindle charge especially interesting and, I confess, amusing.
"About the Kindle "expose" by a "colleague" from BU. We created that ourselves as a "honeypot" to ensnare the hostile slash fans. We crafted a ridiculous anonymous document that claimed all kinds of outrageous stuff about ourselves and filled it with nonsensical neuroscience mumbo jumbo that purports to explain why our science is wrong (like "there can be no AND gate in the female hypothalamus because it lacks lateral neurons"). We hoped that the protesters would start citing it as gospel and then we could reveal that we were the authors (the first letters of one of the sentences reads "ogi and sai wrote this satire"), demonstrating that these protesters are relying on anonymous, fabricated, unverified smears. Unfortunately, our publisher insisted we take it down, which we did."
I hope this information is useful to potential readers of A Billion Wicked Thoughts.
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A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the World's Largest Experiment Reveals About Human Desire
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Broken binding
I guess there's a first for everything.... book binding completely falling apart. Very hard to keep the pages in order, let alone have any semblance of a proper book. Amazon makes it IMPOSSIBLE to get through to anyone, let alone rectify the situation so here I am posting. That aside, the book seems very interesting, but it's distracting to be reading something falling apart. It will be hard to go back and ever reference
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- Santiago Samaniego SahagunReviewed in Spain on April 23, 2023
A window into the complexity of sexual desire
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase - Tom DReviewed in the United Kingdom on February 4, 2024
Fascinating data driven book about our online habits.
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
