Reason: Penis Measurements Cannot Justify a Sex Offender’s Indefinite Detention, South Carolina’s Top Court Says
The South Carolina Supreme Court elaborated on those problems in its opinion, which was written by Chief Justice John Kittredge and joined by the court’s four other members. Although PPG has been used for decades, Kittredge noted, there remains a “significant schism in the scientific community” regarding whether it works as advertised.
“Some experts have focused on the high rate…of false positives and false negatives associated with men’s ability to willfully suppress or display arousal,” Kittredge wrote. “Other experts have noted there can be significant differences between the results of an offender’s initial PPG and a subsequent retest administered several months later. The disparities may be explained, at least in part, by the PPG’s inability to account for a host of variables that affect erectile responses.” Those variables include “the recency of an offender’s last orgasm,” “his level of intoxication or fatigue,” “his cardiovascular health,” “his current medications,” his age, his intelligence, the gender of the person administering the test, and the time of year when the test is conducted.
“The scientific community appears polarized as to whether to recognize the PPG as a diagnostic tool for assessing sexual deviancy,” Kittredge wrote. “While some experts have found the PPG inherently unreliable—based, in part, on the lack of standardization and high error rate (upwards of twenty percent)—others have concluded the opposite and found the PPG to be an accurate and reliable diagnostic tool.” But “even the experts who believe the PPG to be a valuable tool in pre-commitment evaluations acknowledge the test is not standardized.”
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Just because smart people have stupid ideas doesn’t mean we have to adopt or try them.
History is full of examples where highly intelligent, respected figures and entire scientific or intellectual establishments promoted ideas and practices that were not only wrong but actively harmful. The fact that “the experts” or “the smart people” endorsed them at the time didn’t make them true or worth implementing. We should judge ideas by evidence, outcomes, and reasoning—not by the credentials of their promoters.
Your examples (refined and clarified):
Bloodletting with leeches: For centuries, this was mainstream “science” and medicine. Doctors believed illness came from imbalances in the four humors, so draining blood (often with leeches) was standard treatment. Benjamin Franklin was among those who supported or experienced variations of these practices; many patients, including prominent people, were weakened or killed by excessive blood loss. It persisted long after better evidence emerged because it was backed by tradition and authority.
Crude electric shock treatments: Early versions of what became electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and other shock-based “therapies” were sometimes barbaric. They were promoted as cures for mental illness or to “reset” the brain.
Drowning tests for possession/witchcraft: In various historical periods, intellectuals, clergy, and authorities used water ordeals—submerging people to see if they floated (guilty) or sank (innocent, but often drowned anyway)—as a supposedly rational way to test for demonic possession or witchcraft. These were treated as serious diagnostic methods.
Additional examples:
Lobotomies: In the mid-20th century, Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz won a Nobel Prize for developing the prefrontal lobotomy. Many psychiatrists and surgeons enthusiastically performed thousands of these operations, destroying parts of patients’ brains with ice picks through the eye socket. It was hailed as a miracle cure for mental illness until the devastating long-term damage (personality erasure, disability, death) became undeniable.
Phrenology: “Reading” the bumps on someone’s skull to determine intelligence, character, and criminal tendencies. It was popular among 19th-century scientists and intellectuals and used to justify discrimination and bad policy.
Eugenics: Promoted by many leading scientists, intellectuals, and progressives in the early 20th century (including some Nobel laureates). It led to forced sterilizations and influenced horrific policies. The smartest people of the era treated it as cutting-edge science.
Thalidomide: Marketed as a safe sedative for pregnant women in the 1950s–60s by respected pharmaceutical companies and regulators. It caused thousands of severe birth defects before being withdrawn.
Mercury treatments (for syphilis and other ailments): Used for centuries by physicians, including “blue mass” pills that contained mercury. Figures like Abraham Lincoln took them. The toxicity was profound.
Other medical/intellectual fads: Heroin marketed as a safe cough suppressant, radium water as a health tonic (drunk by wealthy and “scientific” people until it caused radiation poisoning), or the once-popular practice of trepanation (drilling holes in the skull to release “demons” or pressure).
The pattern is clear: Intelligent, educated people operating with the best knowledge and tools of their era still got things badly wrong—often for decades or centuries—because of groupthink, incomplete evidence, tradition, financial incentives, or overconfidence. Authority and intelligence are not guarantees of correctness.
This doesn’t mean all new or expert-backed ideas are bad. Science and reason do progress, precisely by testing claims, demanding evidence, and discarding failures. The key is skepticism and empiricism: Don’t outsource your critical thinking just because someone has a fancy degree, a Nobel Prize, or consensus behind them. Demand reproducible results, weigh risks honestly, and remember that today’s “settled science” can become tomorrow’s bloodletting.
We are not obligated to try every “brilliant” idea pushed by smart people. A healthy society questions. Pecker measurements is just another labotomy.