In the late 1980s, the urgent need for a major national sex survey seemed clear to eminent University of Chicago sociologist Edward Laumann.
The AIDS epidemic and much larger epidemics of other sexually transmitted diseases were raging, yet health educators didn't know enough about typical - and atypical - sexual behavior to stop them.
Meanwhile, a flood of popular sex books, magazine surveys and sex-soaked talk shows had inundated the public with what Laumann calls "junk statistics" on everything from infidelity to sexual frequency.
Even academics still relied on the four-decades-old findings of Alfred Kinsey - which were not only outdated but considered scientifically soft by modern research standards.
So when the government sought researchers to design an extensive adult sex survey, Laumann's team eagerly joined the competition. They won and began plans for a 10,000-to-20,000 person study costing up to $20 million.
But they eventually lost one of the more bizarre battles in U.S. scientific history, after their survey and a separate study on teen sex came under attack by conservatives.
The conservatives argued government had no business using taxpayer money to ask about the likes of oral sex. In late summer 1991, government funding for both surveys was killed.
Laumann and company went back to the drawing board. The result: a much more modest, $1.6-million privately funded study of 3,432 people.
This is the sex study called the most comprehensive ever. But its authors say it's not the study they wanted to do - or the study that still needs to be done.
Although the study does provide a picture of typical American sexuality, it's too small to provide details health educators need to fight problems ranging from AIDS to sexual abuse, Laumann says.
Critics already are picking the study apart, but Laumann and colleagues believe the data to be the best ever collected and proof that a survey of such intimate behavior is feasible. "Now, the question is to (proceed) in ways that will help us mount education efforts where it matters."
Meanwhile, conservatives who fought the original study hail many of the results, but stand their ground about public funding of any follow-up. "This is just an area government should not be involved with," says Beverly LeHaye of Concerned Women for America.
