[QUOTE=astro]
How in the world would researchers gauge this “perfect-imperfect” continuum of the withdrawal method? Is a woman with a man on the edge, plowing into her vagina like a train into a tunnel and ready to blow, ready going to be to do some Olympic type scoring a of how much semen got into her vs onto her skin?
[/QUOTE]
Since this thread is veering all over creation, so to speak, I thought I’d throw in a swerve of my own.
Perfect-imperfect is not a continuum, it’s an either-or. It’s been a long time since a really new method of birth control came on the market, and the information may even be proprietary, so I’m not going to give a cite on this, just best professional guess.
These data come from the randomized clinical trials that the drug companies have to provide to the FDA before they can sell their drugs or devices. Universities have done the studies for the non-drug ones.
The “perfect use” numbers probably come from smaller studies, where they keep in good touch with the subjects, reminding them of the study protocol, asking about every sex act, and whether the [insert method in question] was used.
The “imperfect use” numbers are what really happens in the real world. Give [method in question] to a whole bunch of people, see what happens. If it’s a good study they will still ask about each sex act and what happened, but that information is used to see how well people actually comply. Once a person is in a group - for example withdrawal, and that group is being compared to another group - for example no birth control use at all, they have to stay in their original group the whole time, no matter what.
It’s a principle of clinical trials called “intention to treat” and it can’t be violated. (Unless you are doing a bad study, and we know that *that *has *never *happened…)
So all of that was to say, astro, that when a couple is going at it, with the man on the edge, plowing into her vagina like a train into a tunnel and ready to blow, no one is going to do any scoring, Olympic or otherwise, of how much semen got into her vs onto her skin. That’s all worked in to the “imperfect use” otherwise known as “reality” column in the statistics. But thanks for the lovely image!
:eek: