Talk:Judith A. Reisman

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Contents

[edit] Pathetic Article

I don't know why this article is even included, given the scant information provided. Have her followers and adherents simply deleted everything negative? If so, that could explain why so little is left. The real story of Reisman is that she began her professional career working for Playboy magazine (I see no mention of that anywhere), and later began making a fool of herself before Congressional sub-committees while trying to ban pornography. She later claimed to have been told by a Deepthroat-like informant that she should check into Kinsey's work; she refuses to divulge the informant's name, causing many to be suspicious of the story. She has NO medical training, yet seems to consider herself a scientist worthy of pontificating on such things as "eroto-toxins" (substances which don't even exist). Again, no mention of any of this in the article. What are you people afraid of? That we'll see through her facade? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.5.209.26 (talk) 22:12, 9 January 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Copyrighting, layout of pro- and anti-spin sections

The section labelled "Pro-Reisman spin" was copyvio from [1] and has been removed. The article is now stylistically coherent. Since the user who marked this article "cleanup" did not leave an explanation, I assume the poor formatting and disjoint perspectives were responsible for the cleanup tag. I have thus removed "cleanup".

The remaining material was marked as "anti-Reisman spin", but seems comparatively NPOV from a casual reading. Feel free to edit for POV. -- Creidieki 17:10, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV

It seems to me that this article isn't NPOV'ed that well. It seems to be fairly anti-Reisman or at least slightly condescending toward her. Perhaps someone could review this also and make suggestions/corrections? I'll try to do this myself as well. -SocratesJedi | Talk 17:50, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

It seems to me that Reisman's fans have been very systematically trying to remove information about her views that are outside the mainstream. For example, except for the reference, little has remained of the essay Crafting Gay Children, where she speaks of a grand media conspiracy to "recruit" homosexuals. Instead, emphasis is put on her more socially acceptable work on discrediting Kinsey. I think this is the real NPOV issue here, and the article should try to give a full account of Reisman's views, including her belief in erototoxins, the gay world conspiracy, etc.--Eloquence* June 29, 2005 09:48 (UTC)

[edit] Lancet review

Does anyone have a full copy of the Lancet review which is so prominently quoted? I'd particularly like to know which passages the quote omits, and whether a counterpoint was published alongside the review.--Eloquence* June 29, 2005 09:45 (UTC)

I've removed the quote, and added some more balancing material. The Lancet piece in question is a casually crafted book review, not an academic work. Thus, the claim that it 'demolishes' Kinsey's work should be treated with a degree of sceptism. In looking up the work, I stumbled across evidence that most of Reisman's 'evidence' is nothing new. Her contribution is really the political spin and smear-job on Kinsey. That's not to say that I buy the findings of his research, I'm just not buying hysteria.Limegreen 1 July 2005 04:59 (UTC)
Thanks. I would not object to having a quote from the book review if it is clearly presented as such, and perhaps balanced out by other reviews. I think the article is fine as it is, though Kinsey Reports makes a good case that, while the methodology used by Kinsey wasn't up to today's standards, later studies have shown that many of his key observations still hold.--Eloquence* July 1, 2005 13:59 (UTC)

[edit] Copyvio on Activism against Pornography?

I'm concerned that the Acvitivism against Pornography section is a copyvio. They syntax was broken (check the page history immeditially before my revision on the date of this message) and although I can not directly google-match unique text strings, I'm still concerned. I will leave it for now, because I have no evidence it's copyvio, but could someone please check me on it? Thanks. -SocratesJedi | Talk 06:58, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] revisions to Miscellaneous section

Dr. Makow's opinions in other areas are irrelevant to the truth of Dr. Reismans' claims regarding Kinsey. Therefore, I'm deleting most of the Misc. section.

[edit] Reference Desk comment

From the Humanities reference desk, apparently Dr. Reisman has an issue with the article as written; I vaguely know this person's work, but thought I'd link this over here so editors with experience and knowledge can have a heads-up. Tony Fox (arf!) 16:12, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Erototoxin merge

I have attempted the erototoxin article merge, I believe that it conforms to the neutral POV policy, welcome to any changes. AJMW | Talk

[edit] Citations

Due to the controversial nature of the article, I'd strongly suggest that inline citations be used here, so that fact-checking can be easily performed. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 15:48, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Criticism of this article by Judith A. Reisman

The content of this article is being criticised by its subject and is reported at

Lumos3 12:06, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Radical stubbing

I have not yet reviewed in full the complaints about this article, but nonetheless saw enough to be convinced that at a minimum, a radical stub-and-rewrite exercise is in order. Before editing this article, please review WP:BLP and check yourself very very carefully for bias. Be extremely cautious about sourcing, and make sure that you do not read more into the sources than are actually there. If you have been involved in a dispute about this article in the past, it could be better for you to avoid direct editing and merely participate for a bit in a discussion here on the talk page.

--Jimbo Wales 19:08, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Critics of Reisman's work regularly criticise the poor quality of its methodology. Reisman may want such evidence-based peer critical analysis of her work censored from Wikipedia, but I fail to see why Wikipedia should collude in this practice. To be blunt, Reisman is perceived as an ideologue outside her social conservative networks, and any Wikipedia entry about her work should reflect that general conclusion.

[User Calibanu] 11.15, 11 September 2007 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Calibanu (talk • contribs) 23:34, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Explanation of revert

I have two complaints about the text added back:

1. "Dr. Reisman claims that erototoxins are addictive psychoactive neurochemicals, and exposure to them contributes to an increase in serial murder, rape, child molestation, and erectile dysfunction ([2])." The link, though, does not support that very specific claim. The other link to The Guardian only supports the significantly different claim that "According to The Guardian, Reisman says that pornography is an erototoxin."

Do you see why this is so different? In the first case, it sounds as though Reisman is claiming the existence some new class of neurochemicals, which does not seem to be the claim she is making, nor the sort of claim she seems likely to make. Rather, her claim, as I understand it, is that exposure to pornography gives rise to changes in the brain (presumably due to psychoactive neurochemicals).

2. The focus on the source of funding seems highly POV to me (even though it is sourced to the left-leaning Guardian). Dr. Reisman is a prominent scientist whose work has been funded by a wide variety of groups, and while the source of funds can in many cases be relevant, I think the case needs to be made more substantively that it is relevant here. Did she seek funding only from such groups, or from more traditional sources of scientific funding as well? We don't know, and in the meantime I think that caution is warranted.

I am sorry to be such a stickler here, but this is a very sensitive matter and absolute attention to accuracy will be worth our time.--Jimbo Wales 00:28, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Regardless of what your religious leaders are telling you, "Dr" Reisman is not a "scientist" at all, distinguished or otherwise. You give away your socio-political attitude by referring to the Guardian as "left-leaning," by the way. People with a religious agenda often use that euphemism to refer to anything that leans left of their EXTREME Right-wing opinions. If you survey those taken seriously within the fields of psychology and human sexuality, 90% of them consider Reisman a nut case with an axe to grind. She is NOT taken seriously by those of us in the field, and she and her followers are evidence that the embers of intolerance still burn brightly in American society. Luckily Kinsey and others succeeded in extinguishing the flames of your stupidity long ago.



[edit] Value judgments (as "veiled" as they may want to be) do not belong in an encyclopaedic article

Which is why I have taken the liberty of removing the following sentence:

"Reisman has yet to satisfactorily explain how degrees in Communications qualify her to debunk any scientist's work."

There are no quotation marks in the article itself, so it is perfectly safe to assume that this is not a part of a quotation (this particular sentence would have been irrelevant anyway); rather, it is the personal opinion of whoever wrote that part.

Why "opinion"? Because it clearly implies a personal value judgment:

a) the sentence itself has no special intrinsic informative value, especially not in the present wording. In other words, it's unnecessary for the purpose of delivering unbiased information about the subject discussed.

b) Rhetoric turns of speech, subjective connotations ("has yet to satisfactorily explain", not to mention irony) and slang words like "debunk" do not belong in an objective report, and are not usually used - unless, experience shows, the writer wants to discredit whoever or whatever s/he is writing about. Discrediting is not considered an acceptable practice in encyclopaedic articles.