Penis size and the secret of nations

Martin Henry, Contributor

THIS IS a good time to talk about penis size and about the secret of nations. Emancipendence has just gone by, and at 49, a year shy of half a century, independent Jamaica, all agree, is only a fraction of what it might have been. Why?

Just ahead of Emancipendence, on Sunday, July 24, the assistant business coordinator of the Observer, Julian Richardson (not the culture or entertainment coordinator!) ran a story, 'The penis factor - Wacky economics, or does size really matter?', in the Sunday Finance section of the paper, no less. And some time before that, forensic accountant and regular Gleaner guest columnist, Collin Greenland, sent me one of those nice musical PowerPoint email circulars, this one called 'Secret of Nations'.

One thing shared by 'The penis factor' and the 'Secret of Nations' is that development may not be as dependent on favourable macro-economic factors as we are often led to believe, certainly if you watch the acrobatics of successive Jamaican governments to get the macroecon right.

Julian Richardson based his long 'penis factor' article on an arousing economic paper, 'Male Organ and Economic Growth: Does Size Matter?', published just the week before by the Helsinki Center of Economic Research (HECER) which "identifies a strong correlation between the size of the penis among men in the population and the economic performance of countries". The Observer story was appropriately illustrated by the sculpture of the well endowed naked slave couple gracing the entrance to Emancipation Park, a sculpture which had caused a phallic furore when it first went up.

Negative correlation

The HECER paper explored the link between economic development and penile length in 121 countries - using a subsample of 76 from a total of 98 non-oil producing economies - between 1960 and 1985, and found that the average (economic) growth rates are negatively correlated with the sizes of male organs.

According to the researcher, Tatu Westling of the Department of Political and Economic Studies, University of Helsinki, "unit centimetre increase in its physical dimension [the penis] is found to reduce GDP growth by five to seven per cent between 1960 and 1985. Furthermore, quite remarkable is the finding that male organ alone can explain 20 per cent of the between-country variation in GDP growth rates between 1960 and 1985,"

Westling further noted that, "regarding the relative importance of political institutions in shaping economic development, it seems that male organ is more strongly associated with GDP growth than a country's political regime type".

The data set of the study on the economic side included income, investment, schooling, and population statistics from 1960 to 1985. Data regarding the physical dimensions of male organs, the researcher said, was obtained from an extensive number of sources, largely health authorities.

The researcher found that the size of the male organ varied considerably across countries, with the average being 14.5 centimetres (5.7 inches). The findings were that African and Latin American countries largely had above-average penile length; Asian countries were mostly below average and European countries were in between.

Westling, at the end of the period under review, 1960-1985, found that the strongest economies were those where men had around average-sized penises.

In a country proud of penis size and ashamed of economic performance, the online responses to Richardson's story on the HECER study has been largely negative and dismissive. There are a lot of people out there who just know that this ain't so because they say so.

Jamaica underestimated

"The GDP maximising size is around 13.5 centimetres (5.3 inches), and a collapse in economic development is identified as the size of male organ exceeds 16 centimetres (6.3 inches)," said the researcher. Jamaica was found to have average penile length of 16.5 cm (6.5 inches) - which must be the flaccid length, or underestimated like our GDP - and the relatively low GDP per capita of US$3,080 in 1985.

The researcher said in the introduction to his study that he was actually motivated to do the research because studies on economic performance largely lack biological and/or sexual considerations.

"The aim of this paper," he said, "is to fill this scholarly gap with the male organ. Hence, in contrast to much of the existing literature, economic development is viewed from a perspective quite novel".

It is precisely this orthodoxy-bucking novelty why I find the Westling study so interesting. The world is packed with pedantic research which discovers the obvious hiding in broad daylight in the open. The really revolutionary is as refreshing as it is rare.

Armed with unprecedented computer power, researchers can now assemble and mine massive data sets which were previously impossible, from population to climate, from atoms to astronomy, where the data sets brought together and the mining questions asked are only limited by the creative imagination of the researchers.

The Observer's Julian Richardson tapped two local experts for responses, sociologist Orville Taylor and economist Davidson Daway. Taylor, while not being outrightly dismissive of the study, strongly suggested that the findings are mere correlation if the statistics are true. Taylor, obviously, has no basis whatsoever for this conclusion, except that it is racially comforting to sub-Saharan men for whom he claims as a biological fact that they have larger penises. Of course, he said, there were numerous socio-political factors that impact economic performance.

"For years, people have attempted to justify where people are based on their biological features, but it's a dangerous argument," Taylor told the reporter.

Other factors

Daway took a more sympathetic stance to the HECER study. "There might be", he said, "other factors (which impact economic performance), but that does not take away from the causational aspect [of the penis study]".

Indeed, while critics such as Taylor say any study on economic performance would have to look beyond biology for causes, Westling, as we have seen, was actually motivated to do the research because studies on economic performance largely lack biological and/or sexual considerations.

There should be no out of bounds research question. Critics should challenge research findings they don't like with superior data and disputed interpretations with better evidence-based alternatives, not whine about danger. It is the application of knowledge which poses danger, not knowledge per se. Bits of work I have done in the history, philosophy and sociology of the sciences have thrown up numerous cases of the forbidden research question, often squashed not explicitly but subtly by authority and by derision. The HECER/Westling study certainly deserves follow-up by repetition and extension in the great tradition of scientific research. Westling himself has offered some tentative explanations of his data. But checking to see if strong correlation is, in fact, causation, and why, is the real thrust of new work.

Meanwhile the 'Secret of Nations' simply tells us - again: The difference between the poor and the rich nations is not the age of the nation - Canada, Australia, New Zealand vs Egypt and India. The difference between the poor and the rich nations does not depend on available natural resources. Check Japan and Switzerland. Executives from rich and poor countries show no significant intellectual differences. Racial and colour factors do not evince importance. Migrants heavy in laziness in their own country are forcefully productive in rich countries.

Rich vs poor

What then is the difference between poor and rich countries?

The difference is the attitude of the people, moulded for many years by education and culture. The majority of the population in rich countries, the 'Secret of Nations' says, display: ethics as basic principles, integrity, responsibility, respect for laws and regulations and for the rights of others, love for work, effort to save and invest, the will to be productive, and punctuality. In poor countries, less than the majority follow these basic principles in their daily life.

My response to the sender of the 'Secret of Nations' was along these lines: I have long held that a handful of sociocultural conditions is determining our national prospects more than any macroeconomic factor, or all macroeconomic factors taken together.

These overarching negative sociocultural conditions include: Family and child-rearing and with these the attitude to sex; the attitude to time, to work and to property; Anancyism broadly conceived as commitment to trickery, deception and underhandedness.

Another anti-development factor is envy and, with envy, the inability to collaborate. Austrian-American Sociologist, Helmut Schoeck has done a masterful study of envy in his work Envy: A Theory of Social Behaviour (a book in which a Jamaican case study features) which explores the relationship between envy and the development, and wealth of people groups. And, contrary to the popular belief of dog-eat-dog competition, collaboration is an absolutely critical feature of capitalist wealth formation through the mechanisms of stocks and shares and the limited liability company.

The politics of fixing the economy has failed us because the fundamental problems are not economic. Prime Minister P.J. Patterson was on to something with the Values and Attitude Campaign which went flaccid for the said same lack of success-friendly values and attitudes.

And where does the size of the Jamaican penis fit into all this? While we await deeper and more penetrative analysis of causation behind the strong correlation between penis size and GDP which was picked up by the HECER/Westling study, we can, with some confidence, conclude that our national penis pride and prowess and the rampant romping-shop sexuality attached to it must be breeding underdevelopment.

Martin Henry is a communications consultant. Send comments to columns@gleanerjm.com