A recent study claiming only 1.6 per cent of Australian men and 0.8 per cent of Australian women are gay has been labelled dangerous and inaccurate by a leading researcher. Ian Johnson, a consultant with over a decade's experience in researching Australia's gay population for public and private sectors has questioned the methods used by the survey, which was conducted by telephone and is the largest survey yet conducted of Australian sexuality. “Would you tell a stranger calling you at home at night that you were gay? Of course not,” he said. Johnson said the survey, which spoke to 19,000 people and was published in April's Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, would be used as ammunition by anti-gay lobbyists who wanted to deny gays and lesbians equal rights under the law. He drew attention to a similar US survey which interviewed participants face-to-face and found that an average of 6 per cent of Americans identified as gay or lesbian.