Many people "know" or have at least heard that men think about sex every (insert ridiculously low number) seconds. Various popular media sources continue to propagate this urban legend by presenting informal studies to the public as fact. Consider the "study" published by the popular men's online magazine Ask Men in late August of 2010 and the "insight" offer by Dr. Cockney.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HS0gStMZKoE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hoo5AOx_gWw
The textbook even addresses this "fact" the "The average man thinks about sex every seven seconds"(476). However, the text goes on to show the overall lack of research done to prove this common misconception. The overall lack of research done to explore the seven second hypothesis dose not come as a surprise when considering the six scientific principles. When evaluating this extraordinary claim one would be rather underwhelmed regarding any extraordinary evidence or any evidence at all proving men think about sex every seven seconds. In addition it would be nearly impossible to accurately measure how often any individual thinks about sex without encountering considerable bias from the Hawthorne effect, as shown by the above video. As soon as the male subjects were asked "How often do you think about sex?" the participants immediately started thinking about sex and most likely would for the next several minutes skewing any results. Another rather faulty way of measuring how often a male thought about sex would be to have him mark down every time he thought about sex, this method would also fall victim to the Hawthorne effect thus making any possible study both unable to rule out rival hypotheses, and fail Occam's Razor test, because it is both a hypothesis that the participants are thinking about sex more because they know they are being studied and it is much simpler to conclude that because the latter the subject are thinking about sex more often rather than an average measure of sex on the brain. In conclusion this urban legend
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