Zoo Research and Data Sendler, D. (2018). Why People Who Have Sex With Animals Believe That It Is Their Sexual Orientation

As its is said in the abstract the author did a search of key words and focused on sites specializing in mental health issues, correlating the comorbidity of such to zoophilia. Its like doing a key word search of "tire" "accident" "demolition derby" and then focusing on forums about demolition derbies and finding out a significant amount of cars with wheels had a collision, then concluding that cars with wheels are highly likely to crash. Another case of biasing research methods for a more desired outcome, an attempt to alter perceptions increasing the image of deviance and illness to give feelings of support to those against zoophilia and its irrational classification as mental illness to justify some of the barbaric treatment methods proposed which look more like punishments than true solutions (at least they haven't proposed lobotomies, yet. Maybe Anil Aggrawal does it in a few years).

Another search for any negative correlation to it, from penile cancer, Alzheimer and now a high comorbidity to other classified mental issues. As stated by others the author of the study also makes a noticeable insinuation that zoophiles are likely to be pedos and psychopaths even when other studies have showed the opposite at least in psychopathy and violence.

And after further research (I apologize for replacing my review 2 times but I had to link to the original article were he was exposed) I decided to change my rating. My critique stands even when it becomes kind of unnecessary. I have found that the author; Damian Jacob Sendler is an unlicensed and untrained psychiatrist and sex specialist, already caught and uncovered as a fake sex expert. for anyone curious about that please read the next report https://gizmodo.com/the-fake-sex-doctor-who-conned-the-media-into-publicizi-1832711205

So as it can be read, he envelops himself as a benefactor then works in favor to whatever might give him the most gains. Zoophilia being such a taboo and abhorrent concept for most people he can get big bucks to use his fame to publish such kind of crap research against us, anyone who wants to see us classified as deviant sure would have the interest of financially supporting him, money is after all what he seems to seek and the reason of his fraud

Overall this is not scientific at all. Methodology is unusual and relies on heavy usage of algorithms that can give very inaccurate results depending on the usage and therefore needs detailed description of such. That description is nowhere to be found. Moreover there are multiple sentences that are clearly the author's opinion that is taken as a fact, presumably because it's a "scientific document", and then discussed like a philosophical subject. The language is filled with attempts to create subconscious links between zoophilia, pedophilia and harm. For example: "The forum had to require, or grant, the users the following conditions of safe participation. [...]Second —each discussion thread had its content-specific consent (for instance, in pedophilic threads, participants...". At first I wanted to point out potential mistakes but due to the way this study is written it quickly became something like answering an anti-zoo post so I'm not sure if that will be of any use at all but I'll still leave it here:


"While zoophilia is a form of a mental condition that can be treated by a psychiatrist..."
It can not though? And that is written after quoting Miletski's studies 3 sentences earlier. Moreover, the author seems to be aware of the lie here since later on he writes: "The main form of confirmation of these allegations is an argument that there is no effective pharmacological treatment for zoophilia."

The whole "From the legal point of view" paragraph is basically anti-zoo propaganda about injuries. Then there is some vague talk about "re-classifying" our tendencies and stating the objective of the study.
The studied sample was chosen based on tag search of forums and possibly consisted of many different sites. I don't even know how to comment on this. This is how the marketing is done, not actual research. This method focuses on gaining big amounts of data quickly and cheaply in exchange for a lot of noise and unknown factors. That's probably what they were aiming for considering that the first statistical results described are the preferred size of animals and "pedophilic fantasizing". At this point I'm curious whether it was actually fantasizing or just arguing that got tagged. Technically I'm talking about "pedophilic fantasizing" right now and without checking the context this could review could be considered a proof I'm a pedophile. That is the only way I can explain why they got 20%.

The study quotes some post of "Mark155" that does not show up in the search engine (neither the quote nor the user) without even stating the site. It does so to support the claim that we strongly believe "the knowledge of genetics [...] is singly the most legitimate science explaining the roots of their non-normative sexual attraction". I have seen many conversations about that and they were always about "who thinks what and was there finally some actual data about it". There were hardly any people saying it's a known thing.

This is great: "Most of our participants believe that there is not much published research that supports the validity of the current diagnosis of zoophilia. " How many people have you seen expressing their opinion on the subject? I have seen none. And here we have a study claiming that over half of random zoos from unknown sites on the internet not only said what they think about it without being questioned but answered in the same way. This is just ridiculous.

"A third of participants agrees that there is no scientific proof of the pathological mechanism of zoophilia" I have serious doubts we can call the mechanism that usually do not result in disorder as "pathological" (a quote from DSM-5: "A paraphilia is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for having a paraphilic disorder").

"In multiple conversations, zoophiles copied and pasted passages from research papers in an attempt to discuss these findings and justify normativity of zoo-sexuality." Hmm, sounds like the author predicted he would be criticized and tried to defend himself. I'm not trying to discuss normativity and never really wanted to, I'm just pointing out mistakes in this crappy study.

"Zoophiles believe that they are stigmatized because people compare them to pedophiles." Really? It's actually almost exclusively done by anti-zoo bigotry. And this study.

"Some of out participants expressed an opinion..." Some? Meaning how many? Is this really not made out of a thin air?

The "THIRD THEME: LEGALITY OF SEX WITH ANIMALS" section has next to nothing about law. Like someone did not bother to do actual research here.

Supposedly an argument made by a zoo: "First, humans do not know what animals want because of the language barrier." I don't have to explain anything further.

Ok, the whole part about themes is just putting their words in our mouth. No statistics, no references, just one random quote per theme. One of those quotes is not even from a zoo (first answer in post https://psychcentralforums.com/sexual-and-gender-issues/307808-what-should-i-do-about-my-zoophilia.html).

"In order to understand the zoophiles’ self-perception, it is critical to view the entire subculture in comparison to other sexual minorities." ...why?

"Moreover, being gay is no longer viewed as a disease" Neither is being a zoophile nor having any paraphilia. I couldn't find the exact rules in DSM-5 but I had a bunch of psychology classes based on DSM-4 and teacher clearly said that if a disorder has to either hindrance the life in society or make the person affected cause harm to others.

"(as per the diagnostic criteria of the DSM)" Not even stating the version, this is just...

" In their discussions, zoophilesbelieve that until zoophilia remains on thelist of the DSM diagnoses, their sexualitywill remain highly stigmatized." I don't care and will not speak for the whole community unlike a certain someone.

"They use the discussion of the law of nature" "law of nature" again, feels like he read one thread and written a study about it.

I'm done, that's enough.

This is not constructive or exhaustive. Mr. Sendler has been exposed as a legitimate fraudster.