The world may never have conclusive data on the link between “penis size and self-esteem” after a Missouri State University sociology professor announced last week that she would discontinue her short-lived study on the subject.
Alicia Walker blames the public reaction for ending her research.
“I made this decision voluntarily,” Walker said in a university release. “I continue to believe the relationship between penis size and self-esteem is an important site of scientific inquiry, but the public reaction to the project threatens the reliability of the survey responses. The reliability of the study as a whole has been compromised.”
MSU’s Institutional Review Board had approved the project in the spring and even defended Walker’s subject choice.
“Faculty members have broad discretion in their research choices. … It is a legitimate area of research and she is conforming to all of the guidelines of participant security.”
Still, the university was quick to clarify that the study was not funded by the university or any government institute.
In the study, which launched in June, Walker called for up to 3,600 male participants over the age of 22 to take a survey that asked about their size, self-image, sexual relationships, and sexual habits. She also asked for photos of them measuring the size of their privates.
After a media frenzy, Walker noted that the data started getting distorted. Critics claimed that Walker was only trying to prove that men with small penises had lower self-esteem, which caused the data to skew toward men of below average size. It also didn’t help that men started purposely responding with pictures of cartoon characters and their pets, which called the data quality into question.
According to MSU, all of the submitted photos and surveys have been destroyed and were never viewed.
This isn’t the first time a university-endorsed study has drawn skepticism. Tulane University analyzed three decades of data just to link flu deaths with double-dipping. Researchers at St. Joseph’s University studied whether posting food pics on Instagram made food taste better. Meanwhile, University of Texas at Austin graduate student Cari Goetz received attention from an academic journal when she studied whether men preferred flings with dumb-looking women.
The Left wonders why America’s trust in academia has gone flaccid. When our universities are spending their time — and, in some cases, their resources — on studies like these, the public is bound to have a hard time taking them seriously.
