A new study paid for by Eli Lilly Canada Inc. has received some attention about its findings on the sex habits of Canadians. It found that Canadians between the ages of 46 and 60 are 7% less likely to engage in spontaneous sex compared to twelve other countries around the world. The United States and South Korea scored similarly. The margin of error being 3% throws those results into question right away, but there are more questions to this study than the math suggests.
A study on sex habits funded by a drug company that has an erectile dysfunction drug on the market (in this instance, Cialis), makes all the sense in the world. However, making a press release and distributing that news to the world is slightly suspect.
The study shown online is very high on graphs and low on information. Anyone familiar with an academic study will know it tends to involve detailed reports on the methodology and supporting literature. The Lilly funded study instead opts for a very colourful and slightly confusing presentation of data collected by a '10-minute online quantitative survey'.
What kind of questions did they ask? What options were available? And how was all of this calculated? Your guess is as good as mine. I'm assuming all that crucial information, if any thought was put into it at all, is being used for further research at Lilly Inc. Although it most likely isn't being used for product research; it's more likely being utilized in the marketing department.
A quick look at the Cialis website will offer a glance at the advertising slogan 'With CIALIS for daily use, I can be ready anytime the moment is right.” and that may hold all the answers right there. Cialis is being marketed as a pill to be taken daily, for those unexpected moments when you want to engage in some below the belt cuddling. A study which makes people in two obviously large markets as though they aren't having enough spontaneous sex would go a long way to selling more erectile dysfunction pills.
Now it should be clear that numbers may very well be accurate, and as far as has been visible to my own research, there's no reason to assume the results are fabricated. Still, not knowing how the study was performed outside of a few vague descriptions means some cultures may have viewed the same questions differently, if any attention was paid to a confound like that to begin with. The study does make note that some answer options were changed for South Korean participants, but it's hard to imagine that only one country required that kind of special treatment.
One other point of interest is the last time a Lilly sponsored study made the news was to report a finding that Canadians find night time to be the sexiest time of day. I don't disagree, though it once again makes reference to being able to perform whenever the mood strikes. These results being trumpeted around like 'studies' seem more like extensions of a tricky ad campaign than a serious means of understanding the sex habits of older folks. You may want to keep that in mind the next time you read something about how you don't have enough spontaneous sex.
José Gonzalez
Image by photostock
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