The Journal of the American Medical Association published an article, based on an eight-year-old Kinsey Institute study, finding that a majority of college students questioned did not consider oral sex to be real "sex," an attitude apparently shared by President Clinton. After publishing the piece, long-time editor George Lundberg was fired for lending the journal's considerable scientific prestige to transient political controversies.

Yet this report was scientifically well grounded compared to one published by Lundberg in JAMA the previous April. Authored by Devra Lee Davis, an epidemiologist at the World Resources Institute, an environmentalist group, the report compared male-female birth ratios between 1970 and 1990, found male births declining, and suggested that man-made chemicals were to blame. "Proportion of Male Births Down in U.S., Study Says; Pollution Suggested as Possible Cause," echoed the Washington Post. But government statistics on sex ratios of newborns go back much farther to 1940, and the full data set indicates that the ratio swings up and down from one decade to the next. Ms. Davis simply ignored those years she found inconvenient. The data also show the relative number of male births since 1970 has been increasing among blacks, revealing an apparent discriminatory effect on the part of synthetic chemicals against white males.

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