Paradoxical

Oh man.

I managed to avoid signing up for Twitter and Tumblr for so long.  And now it's happened.

Thanks, Supernatural fandom, you have a lot to answer for!

Where to start?

jonquil summed it up rather nicely in a post that includes this on-point quote:

"a degree in neural networks cuts no ice when you're researching gendered behaviour in sexuality"

vanseedee contributed this hilarious post that shows just how strong the fail is:

They are doing serious research about subcortical circuits that are involved with romantic attraction, erotic arousal, emotional bonding, and sexual behavior.

Still with me? Wait for it.

The book will be called: "RULE 34: WHAT NETPORN TEACHES US ABOUT THE BRAIN".

I swear I'm not kidding and that's just the start.

And linkspam has been awesome at archiving all the lulz.

I took the survey after seeing a banner on my flist - and before seeing any of the objections.  Well, I tried to take the survey.  I answered the first couple of questions, thinking to myself, "What is wrong with me?  I'm finding it impossible to answer these questions, and we haven't even gotten to the actual fanfic stuff yet!"  The multiple choice answers to questions about my gender, ethnicity, location etc were so bad that I was longing for a "please explain" text box option so that I could let them have real answers.

And then when I got to the fanfic stuff... well.  I closed my browser in disgust.  The questions were unanswerable.

The worst part is that I blamed myself for my inability to pick from their answers.  It didn't occur to me that my difficulty in doing so wasn't because of anything on my part, but because their questions were so bad and their assumptions so limited.  Only after I saw a post by eruthros  "titled please don't take the fan fiction survey" did I realise that there were a whole lot of problems with the actual survey questions and questionners.

And (the majority of) fandom's awesome response to this travesty of a survey has been brilliant to see.