Well, maybe it was worth the money (I'll explain why in a moment). But first, his study probably cost about $2000, maybe $20,000 tops if the researcher got summer salary for data collection and analysis and paid some grad students to help collect the data in person, not the hundreds of thousands of dollars. (My wife is in the behavioral sciences and does some survey research, so I have a good idea of the costs involved.)
Why was it worthwhile? Because the secular left values emotion and values controlled studies. "Proof" of what whe conservatives knew intutitively was true about the 'sexual revolution', from a goverment funded study that shows the Helen Gurley Brown attitude doesn't fly, and buying into it causes emotional harm to girls, can be cited in arguments for chastity. The left can't very well shout down this argument by claiming it's an imposition of religious values, or 'anti-woman', or comes from a biased right-wing source. (There is some particularly delicous irony about a study which supports chastity coming out of one of the most loney left universities in the country.)
In other words, totally worthless crap. It got $500,000 from the NIH for the researchers and the institution here.
Sure you can come up with some lame rationale for the study.
I can just about see and hear some whining granny-glasses wearing pony-tailed idiot professor going on about the rationale for the study now a la King of the Hill.
But let's get real here for a minute. We all know what gays' thoughts and feelings are regarding promiscuous sex...they like it! There is absolutely no need for such a study, we can all agree, if we are being fair.
This sort of thing is why many scientists have little credibility among conservatives these days.
To survive they have to hype their worthless studies, and after a while, they believe their own bogus hype.
The above is a perfect example is why such professors are basically a cancer on our society...They spend their whole lives working to transform a common vice into a pseudolegitimate area of scientific inquiry. They attempt to legitimize what a generation ago would be a serious crime. They subvert their authority as professors in basically promoting decadence and moral decay.
Just my two cents.