Sex and Significance

How the Heritage Foundation cooked the books on virginity.
By Jordan Ellenberg
Posted Thursday, July 7, 2005, at 3:48 AM PT

It's a confusing time to be a confirmed virgin in America. In March, the Journal of Adolescent Health published a paper by sociologists Hannah Brückner and Peter Bearman, which found that adolescents who pledged to remain virgins until marriage had STD infection rates as young adults that were statistically indistinguishable from those of nonpledgers. Last month, Robert Rector and Kirk Johnson of the Heritage Foundation delivered two conference papers and a press release that accused Yale's Brückner and Columbia's Bearman of reaching an "inaccurate" conclusion that "misled the press and public."