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Originally posted by Squibs:
I don't know enough about the social sciences to tell if this is sound research or not. But I've been utterly shocked at the reaction shown to this man simply because he published a paper that goes against the flow of cultural and academic streams. What exactly is going on here?

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Although the findings reported herein may be explicable in part by a variety of forces uniquely problematic for child development in lesbian and gay families—including a lack of social support for parents, stress exposure resulting from persistent stigma, and modest or absent legal security for their parental and romantic relationship statuses—the empirical claim that no notable differences exist must go. While it is certainly accurate to affirm that sexual orientation or parental sexual behavior need have nothing to do with the ability to be a good, effective parent, the data evaluated herein using population-based estimates drawn from a large, nationally-representative sample of young Americans suggest that it may affect the reality of family experiences among a significant number.

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Originally posted by orfeo:

Correlation is not causation, basically. And it looks to me as if Mark Regnerus doesn't CLAIM causation, he only claims correlation.

A subtle point I fear that many of my fellow-homosexuals will miss in their haste.

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Originally posted by orfeo:
And on what basis do we say it involves deception or fraud, exactly?

Having had a quick read through parts of the article, I cannot see someone who an axe to grind. ...

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Regnerus’s Seeming Falsification of Data

Regnerus appears to have carried out a qualitative falsification of his data, and perhaps a deliberate one, where he labels certain of the parents of his young adult respondents as being “lesbian mothers” and/or “gay fathers” without having formulated an operational definition for “lesbian mother” or “gay father,” and additionally without having done anything scientifically to determine whether the persons he labels as “lesbian mothers” and “gay fathers” are indeed “lesbian mothers” and “gay fathers.”

Regnerus’s Use of a Seemingly Inadequate, Inappropriate Research Design

A preponderance of the evidence suggests that, perhaps in bad faith, Regnerus might have committed scientific misconduct by;

1) using an inadequate and inappropriate research design, which;

2) did not feature a valid operational definition for “lesbian mother” or “gay father;” though he alleges he studied young adult children of “lesbian mothers” and/or “gay fathers” and which study ultimately;

3) fell 552 parents short of the minimum number of gay parents that apparently would be necessary for a statistically valid study of gay parenting.

Regnerus’s Possible Bad-Faith, Invalid Comparison Between His Test and Control Groups

Regnerus’s study’s comparison of 1) young adult children raised by continuously married heterosexual parents with; 2) young adult children raised by parents in a welter of varying family structures — predominated by that of divorced biological heterosexual parents – is wholly invalid as a study of young adult children of “lesbian mothers” and “gay fathers.”

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Regnerus’s study was published on June 10, 2012 in the Elsevier journal Social Science Research.

A group of over 200 Ph.D.s and M.D.s in sociology and relevant related fields sent a letter to Social Science Research expressing profound concerns about the study’s perceived lack of intellectual integrity, as well as about the integrity of the publication process through which the study appeared.

Those Ph.D.s and M.D.s wrote: “We have substantial concerns about the merits of this paper and question whether it actually uses methods and instruments that answer the research questions posed in the paper.” They continue: “We are very concerned about the academic integrity of the peer review process for this paper as well as its intellectual merit.”

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Originally posted by orfeo:
And on what basis do we say it involves deception or fraud, exactly?

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Question: What do the following all have in common?

• A heterosexually married female prostitute who on rare occasion services women
• A long-term gay couple who adopt special-needs children
• A never-married straight male prison inmate who sometimes seeks sexual release with other male inmates
• A woman who comes out of the closet, divorces her husband, and has a same-sex relationship at age 55, after her children are grown
• Ted Haggard, the disgraced evangelical pastor who was caught having drug fueled-trysts with a male prostitute over a period of several years
• A lesbian who conceives via donor insemination and raises several children with her long-term female partner

Give up? The answer — assuming that they all have biological or adopted adult children between the ages of 18 and 39 — is that they would all be counted as “Lesbian Mothers” or “Gay Fathers” in Mark Regnerus’s new study, “How different are the adult children of parents who have same-sex relationships? Findings from the New Family Structures Study” (NFSS).

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Originally posted by orfeo:
Frankly, anyone who tries to take this study and say "AHA! Gays make worse parents!" isn't actually reading the study.

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posted by orfeo:
Frankly, anyone who tries to take this study and say "AHA! Gays make worse parents!" isn't actually reading the study.

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posted by Crœsos:
And yet this study seems designed and presented in such a way that that it can only serve that purpose...

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Why shouldn't hate and hostility masquerading as scientific impartiality be met with a negative reaction? [/QB]

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Originally posted by gorpo:

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Why shouldn't hate and hostility masquerading as scientific impartiality be met with a negative reaction?

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The question is why should scientific conclusions that do not fit your purpouses be considered hate and hostility?

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Originally posted by ken:
I suppose a robust study would have to find a group of people whose parents have stayed together as a couple, and then compare the children of same-sex couples with different-sexed couples. That might just be possible for lesbian mothers, . . .

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Originally posted by ken:
. . . though you would need a huge ransom sample.

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Most scientific publications frown on demanding ransom.

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Originally posted by gorpo:

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Why shouldn't hate and hostility masquerading as scientific impartiality be met with a negative reaction?

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The question is why should scientific conclusions that do not fit your purpouses be considered hate and hostility?

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Originally posted by Crœsos:

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Originally posted by gorpo:
[QUOTE] Why shouldn't hate and hostility masquerading as scientific impartiality be met with a negative reaction?

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The question is why should scientific conclusions that do not fit your purpouses be considered hate and hostility?

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That presumes Regnerus' methodology is actually scientific and that it actually addresses the question it claims to be investigating. I, and several others, have cited reasons to doubt both. Care to offer a counterargument?

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:

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Originally posted by Crœsos:

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Originally posted by gorpo:
[QUOTE] Why shouldn't hate and hostility masquerading as scientific impartiality be met with a negative reaction?

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The question is why should scientific conclusions that do not fit your purpouses be considered hate and hostility?

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That presumes Regnerus' methodology is actually scientific and that it actually addresses the question it claims to be investigating. I, and several others, have cited reasons to doubt both. Care to offer a counterargument?

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If the flaws were the natural difficulties/ limitations inherent to the inquiry itself (common in the behavioral sciences) or even were the result of ignorance or sloppy work, we could write it off as simply that, rather than hate or hostility. A bad piece of research, it happens, move on. But if what has been reported here is true-- especially the financial relationship to a right-wing organization with a particular political interest in the outcome-- it looks far more malicious than that.

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Originally posted by Squibs:
[QUOTE]Regnarus has openly stated who he got funding from. But he has maintained that they did not determine the results, the data did. It's my understanding that research is often funded by special interest groups - and that this doesn't automatically mean that the results are being bought.

That right-wing organisations funded this particular research is surely no different or shocking than a left-wing organisation doing the same.

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Regnarus has openly stated who he got funding from....

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Originally posted by The Silent Acolyte:
[QUOTE]
And, please don't post a link to a ten-minute video, with only the comment, "Straight from the horses mouth." That's not mature discussion. Tell why you think something from the video is pertinent; otherwise, it's as though you want us to make your argument for you.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
The the sampling method seems deliberately constructed to achieve a desired result. For instance, heterosexual parents who were divorced or who never lived together were automatically excluded from the study. Coupled with this overly-narrow definition of heterosexual parents is an overly broad definition of homosexual parents

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Question: What do the following all have in common?

• A heterosexually married female prostitute who on rare occasion services women
• A long-term gay couple who adopt special-needs children
• A never-married straight male prison inmate who sometimes seeks sexual release with other male inmates
• A woman who comes out of the closet, divorces her husband, and has a same-sex relationship at age 55, after her children are grown
• Ted Haggard, the disgraced evangelical pastor who was caught having drug fueled-trysts with a male prostitute over a period of several years
• A lesbian who conceives via donor insemination and raises several children with her long-term female partner

Give up? The answer — assuming that they all have biological or adopted adult children between the ages of 18 and 39 — is that they would all be counted as “Lesbian Mothers” or “Gay Fathers” in Mark Regnerus’s new study, “How different are the adult children of parents who have same-sex relationships? Findings from the New Family Structures Study” (NFSS).

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Originally posted by Squibs:
Regnarus has openly stated who he got funding from. But he has maintained that they did not determine the results, the data did. It's my understanding that research is often funded by special interest groups - and that this doesn't automatically mean that the results are being bought.

That right-wing organisations funded this particular research is surely no different or shocking than a left-wing organisation doing the same.

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Originally posted by Nicolemrw:
Do I understand correctly that this study is based on a sample of only 72? That's absurd right there.

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The peer-review process failed to identify significant, disqualifying problems with a controversial and widely publicized study that seemed to raise doubts about the parenting abilities of gay couples, according to an internal audit scheduled to appear in the November issue of the journal, Social Science Research, that published the study.

The highly critical audit, a draft of which was provided to The Chronicle by the journal’s editor, also cites conflicts of interest among the reviewers, and states that “scholars who should have known better failed to recuse themselves from the review process.”

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Like Regnerus, the editor of Social Science Research, James D. Wright, has been at the receiving end of an outpouring of anger over the paper. At the suggestion of another scholar, Wright, a professor of sociology at the University of Central Florida, assigned a member of the journal’s editorial board—Darren E. Sherkat, a professor of sociology at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale—to examine how the paper was handled.

Sherkat was given access to all the reviews and correspondence connected with the paper, and was told the identities of the reviewers. According to Sherkat, Regnerus’s paper should never have been published. His assessment of it, in an interview, was concise: “It’s bullshit,” he said.

Among the problems Sherkat identified is the paper’s definition of “lesbian mothers” and “gay fathers”—an aspect that has been the focus of much of the public criticism. A woman could be identified as a “lesbian mother” in the study if she had had a relationship with another woman at any point after having a child, regardless of the brevity of that relationship and whether or not the two women raised the child as a couple.

Sherkat said that fact alone in the paper should have “disqualified it immediately” from being considered for publication.

In his audit, he writes that the peer-review system failed because of “both ideology and inattention” on the part of the reviewers (three of the six reviewers, according to Sherkat, are on record as opposing same-sex marriage). What’s more, he writes that the reviewers were “not without some connection to Regnerus,” and suggests that those ties influenced their reviews.

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Originally posted by Doublethink:
Yes, it looks like it was poorly designed research, rather than deliberate scientific fraud.

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Originally posted by Squibs:
What I was interested in was the reaction to the research, which at times bordered on pant wetting hysterics.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
Why do you consider it surprising that telling a whole class of people (who have often been conflated with pedophiles) that they're harmful to their own children elicited a strong and negative response?

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The conservative funders who bankrolled a flawed and widely cited academic study that’s critical of gay marriage choreographed its release in time to influence “major decisions of the Supreme Court,” documents show.

The documents, recently obtained through public-records requests by The American Independent, show that the Witherspoon Institute recruited a professor from a major university to carry out a study that was designed to manipulate public policy. In communicating with donors about the research project, Witherspoon’s president clearly expected results unfavorable to the gay-marriage movement.

The think tank’s efforts paid off. The New Family Structures Study came out just in time for opponents of gay marriage to cite it in multiple federal cases involving marriage equality – including two cases soon to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

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Records show that an academic consultant hired by UT to conduct data analysis for the project was a longtime fellow of the Witherspoon Institute, which shelled out about $700,000 for the research. Documentation about University of Virginia associate sociology professor W. Bradford Wilcox’s dual roles contradict Regnerus’ assertions that the think tank wasn’t involved with how the study was designed or carried out.

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Second, many scholars have drawn attention to the unusually fast timeline by which the journal, Social Science Research, operated in publishing Regnerus’s paper. As Philip Cohen, a sociologist and family scholar, notes, “According to the data listed at the top of the article, it was submitted, revised, and accepted within 6 weeks. That’s fast, but that doesn’t make it wrong, necessarily.” However, Cohen goes on to point out that “according to the study design document online at the University of Texas and the article history dates listed by the journal Social Science Research ... the paper was submitted for publication 20 days before the end of the data collection, and 23 days before the data were delivered to the University of Texas.” All of this raises serious questions about the unusual process by which Regnerus’s study was prepared, analyzed, and published.

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