# Why do people continue citing the Rosenbaum study as proof that abstinence education doesn't work? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 24, 2009, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-continue-citing-the-rosenbaum-study-as-proof-that-abstinence-education-doesnt-work/522490 "2009-12-24T22:50:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Revenant\_Threshold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@Revenant\_Threshold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revenant_Threshold)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2009, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-continue-citing-the-rosenbaum-study-as-proof-that-abstinence-education-doesnt-work/522490/21 "2009-12-27T21:39:45Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > To me, that’s the number that sinks the ship on AOSE: any number bigger than 0 means that teens who took the pledge or were told to not have sex will still have sex, but in this case, without any benefit of knowledge about proper protection. Which means that those teens who do give in to their urges for that one evening, are much **more likely** than their “normal sexually active” peers to either become pregnant, or contact an STD. It would be interesting to see some more stats on number of sexual encounters by abstinence-only teaching/none-or-other methods. I mean, per Wikipedia, pregnancy rates using only a condom are on average the worst at 18%; a condom user (well, condom user’s partner) would have to have sex 8 more times than someone who has a single, non-protected encounter to be at the same risk rate. HIV/AIDs infection rate lowest reduction is 80%, so that’s roughly the same sort of difference. (I think, anyway; statistics are really not my strong suit). Which is a worrying figure, especially compared to the numbers you’ve quoted. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-continue-citing-the-rosenbaum-study-as-proof-that-abstinence-education-doesnt-work/522490.md?page=1)