Top academics involved in sex research have launched an attack on "seriously flawed" government-funded research into British brothels.
The academics claim that research into prostitution in the UK published last month by the Poppy Project, which is partly funded by the Ministry of Justice, is inaccurate and unethical.
The research in the Big Brothel report exhibits serious flaws in its mode of data collection and analysis, they warn.
The group of 27 key figures in sex work research from prestigious universities across the UK and overseas claim the report was conducted with neither ethical approval nor acknowledgement of evidence and co-authored by a journalist known for producing
anti-prostitution findings.
The Poppy Project has received £5.8m in government funding and the women and equality minister, Harriet Harman, has publicly endorsed the organisation. The report's findings lend weight to Home Office moves to make it against the law to pay for
sex.
The row comes just days before the October 8 deadline of a Home Office consultation into proposals to amend existing legislation on prostitution and brothels. The proposals, which will go before parliament in December, would create a new criminal offence
of paying for sex with a person controlled for gain , enable police to close brothels and change the definition of kerb-crawling.
The academics, led by Dr Teela Sanders at Leeds University and Dr Belinda Brooks-Gordon at Birkbeck, University of London, have condemned the research.
Their response, sent to the Poppy Project and Harman, states: The report builds a damning picture of indoor sex work on the basis of data whose reliability and representativeness is extremely doubtful and a methodological approach that would be
considered unethical by most professional social researchers. It makes claims about trafficking, exploitation and the current working conditions of women and men employed in the indoor sex industry on the basis of that data.
These claims cannot be substantiated in terms of the methodology, the data presented or in terms of wider, ethically approved, peer reviewed academic evidence. In short, the report does not provide any evidence concerning the current working
conditions of women and men employed in indoor sex work venues in the UK.
The Big Brothel report, co-authored by journalist and campaigner Julie Bindel and Helen Atkins, received huge media coverage last month.
But critics accused it of conflating fears over trafficking with general prostitution.
Brooks-Gordon said: You can't just churn out political propaganda and say it's research. You end up with very dangerous policy. The government has to bear responsibility if they have put tenders out for research and the people carrying out that
research are not following full ethics procedures.
She called the report a shocker . Not only is the methodology flawed but it shows a complete lack of understanding about the sex industry.
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