Illustration: Leo Espinosa
Early in Masters of Sex, Showtime's new Mad Men-era drama about pioneering sex researchers William Masters (a respected ob-gyn) and Virginia Johnson (his secretary turned partner), Masters proposes a seemingly modest scientific inquiry: "What happens to the body during sex?" Over more than three decades of highly charged collaboration, the pair gathered data from thousands of "complete cycles of sexual response"—and also experimented on each other. But even with all the research that Masters and Johnson did and inspired, researchers haven't stopped asking a lot of basic questions about sex. Here's what science is still wondering.
How does external stimulation produce an orgasm?
Masters and Johnson outlined an enduring framework for the stages of sex. But scientists are still trying to understand arousal. Some people can think themselves to orgasm; others need zero mental preparation. Debby Herbenick, a sexual health educator at the Kinsey Institute, is studying the phenomenon of exercise-induced orgasm: no partner — and for men sometimes no erection—required.
Why don't some women orgasm from intercourse?
Women faking orgasms was another of Masters' obsessions. One recent study found that women who report having more orgasms boast a shorter distance between their clitoris and their vagina. But psychological causes are harder to establish: "If you find a woman who's happily partnered, you can't randomly assign her to someone else," Herbenick says.
How can sex scientists parse the distinction between nature and nurture?
Modern studies of caged monkeys mating and lab-rat vaginas have helped inform the animalistic qualities of our own sex lives. But culture isn't so easily corralled. (And the most convenient lab rat for sexuality studies—the college student—fails to explain the practices of the wider human population.) "When sex becomes a human characteristic, it becomes so much more complicated," says J. Dennis Fortenberry, senior research scientist at Kinsey.
How can scientists re-create sex in a laboratory?
Masters and Johnson conducted research with the help of a motor-powered plexiglass phallus nicknamed Ulysses. Though their gadgets are growing ever more sophisticated, sex scientists are still not sure how their tools affect the act, and therefore the data. One approach: Have women recline in a La-Z-Boy and watch sexually explicit images with a blood-flow-sensing plethysmograph attached to their vaginas. But that's not something you do every day. Probably.
- ### Dropbox has a Radical Plan: Become the Portal to your Digital World
