NO EVIDENCE FOR NEW SEX ED

Not 1 randomized trial

Kerri Waibel, principal and self-proclaimed sex-ed activist on 101.5 last week, insisted that the new changes to the NJ sex Ed standards have been “well researched in anecdotal studies.” She may be a principal and activist, but I am a biostatistician who does analysis and research for medications, phycological interventions and non-drug therapeutics. Not only do I actually perform the analysis on the research, I design the studies and I review papers to determine credibility. I got got my hands on her so called “well researched anecdotal studies” on Sex Education and I’m going to share the truth with you, as an professional reviewer and expert of 25 years, in the field of research.

I look at things from a clinical level and use clinical words. This NEW sex education program is what the research community likes to call a “treatment” or “intervention.” This treatment/intervention applied to the schools should meet some objective of having “positive outcomes”. Kerri gave a fuzzy definition of her goal for these sex standards on 101.5.

“It works!” is not a real objective, and is quite a juvenile hypothesis statement from a self described expert. If she was an expert in her field, she should be able to precisely describe her concrete objectives. I went through the trouble to turn Keri’s fuzzy ideas and organize it, because this is actually how research is done and why I’m paid the big bucks.

Claims of the new 2020 standards of Comprehensive Sex education that lowers the age of sex education and includes gender identity lessons:

• Reduction in suicide for LGBT kids

• Reduction STI’s (formally known as STD’s)

• Reduction in pregnancy

• Reduction in sexual assaults

These are her claims in objective form (not activism speak), however, its not enough for her to CLAIM there is a problem, she has to state the objectives and find studies that PROVE that her intervention/treatment works.

I got a hold of the documentation she provides to school administrators as “evidence” to support her claims and it comes in 3 forms:

• An extensive list of websites with no name authors who provided opinion pieces with no numbers based on tested subjects

• Research papers from a Meta-analysis (BIASED objective evidence)

• Research misdirection, which is research/ medical papers on facts (objective evidence), but these scientific facts do not actually address the objective for the new program

She shared not one randomized experiment (the gold standard of scientific evidence). Anecdotal evidence (stories) are not science, it does not meet the burden of proof in order to force a generation of NJ school children to use your experimental idea. Randomized experiments (trials) are the scientific gold standard, which she failed to provide. Basically, none of her “research” supports her claims about the treatment (the new 2020 New Jersey comprehensive sex education standards). This makes Kerri’s claims 100% false. She has not met the burden of proof to introduce this NEW concept into the schools.

Remember, activism isn’t about science, its being the loudest person in the room.

What I find incredibly frustrating, is that she provides website blogs with unknown authors. First of all, research needs an author, if someone doesn’t stick their name on it, its not valid research. She shared opinion pieces from someone’s blog or random website, and tries to claim these blogs are written by an expert, with no objective numbers to make a statistical claim. When doing a review, you need to throw out evidence without numbers of subjects (kids). If there are no numbers then this is NOT scientific research. So its garbage and cannot be used to make a claim on a treatment (i.e. determine if the new sex education standards “work”).

She listed the article “Lee, M., & Flynn, S. I. (2018). Sex Education in Schools: An Overview. Points of View: Sex Education in Schools.” Seriously? She thinks this opinion piece on points of view is a substitute for real research? That goes right in the trash. If we based treatments on the opinion of professionals, we would still be using leaches to cure the flu. A consensus of opinion is not science, and does not meet the burden of prove that your new treatment/intervention “works”. A serious title would state “Sex education reduces number of partners in teens ages 12-18 by xx%, in a comparative study.” But I get no numbers, I get opinions. I’m not sure why she would include “opinions” as “scientific evidence” .

A Meta-analysis is statistical analysis that combines or integrates the results of several independent clinical trials considered by the analyst to be “combinable.” There are severe bias problems with using Meta-analysis and the 2 biggest problems are:

• Publication bias

• Review selection bias

Biggest bias problem is that failed studies do not get published (publication bias). So all the studies that you find in publications had to be slightly successful to get published, therefore, when all this data is combined, of course it looks successful. In addition, the authors can cherry pick the studies with the most favorable outcomes so show a successful hypothesis. Meta analysis is useful, however, it does tell you where further research should be applied and followed up with a randomized trial, but in no way does it mean that a treatment works on a population.

Research misdirection is also frustrating when it is used by a self proclaimed ‘expert”, like Kerri. She gave a newsroom report from the CDC with statistics on STIs (formerly known as STDs) that shows there is a rise in STI’s. Upon further investigation, the “rise” are from 15-24, and older adults, NOT our population of interest which is ELEMENTARY SCHOOL AGED CHILDREN. We are not arguing against sex education for high school students, but you can’t justify teaching anal sex to 12 year old’s to curtail what adults aged 18-24 do in the bedroom. Its disingenuous to include adults in the population of kids you are trying to help.

The rise in STI’s actually proves that the current Sex Education is NOT WORKING, contrary to her claims. If sex education “works” then why did it not prevent this increase in STI’s in the population of people 15-24? She is advocating that she can fix the failed sex education standards by doing more of what doesn’t work and force it on younger kids.

Oddly enough Kerri includes survey results which claims that there has been a REDUCTION youth risk behavior that reduces STI’s in 2015, 2017 and 2019. Which one is it Kerri? The STI rate can’t be rising while the high risk behavior is decreasing.

Did she even read the articles she sent? She doesn’t understand that the rise in STI’s is actually counter evidence to her claims that “sex education works?” In addition, it renders her survey results as conflicting. If it works in the survey, then why doesn’t work in the population data?

Keri’s information was incomplete and I wanted to understand why this population of young adults and teens have high risk behaviors. I found an article in PUBMED from 2016 that explains the higher rates of HIV/AIDS with teens/young adults:

“…adolescents are more likely to engage in high-risk sexual behavior such as concurrent partners or sex without a condom. This is due in part to the fact that the prefrontal cortex, responsible for executive function, is still developing throughout adolescence. Furthermore, adolescents are less likely than adults to access and utilize sexual health services. Those factors lead to a higher chance of exposure and a lower chance of diagnosis and treatment.”

The survey she provided makes no claim that early Sex Ed prevents these issues listed above; it makes no claim that if kids learned about anal and oral sex at younger ages, that STI’s would go down. She continues to fail to provide studies that show that her intervention reduces STI’s in a sample of kids or in the population in general.

She threw about 20+ so called “studies” in an unorganized fashion, hoping no one would look at them. I will though, and I’m going go through each objective claim and show how her “anecdotal” research is worthless to prove her hypotheses that younger Sex Ed and gender identity classes “work”.

This multi part series will continue as I will explore and organize the list of “studies that prove sex education works”.

Written by

Nicole Stouffer, Clinical Trials/Population Health Biostatistician.