Suspect 'Science'
In July 2012, the journal Social Science Research published a study by University of Texas at Austin sociology professor Mark Regnerus that seemed to indicate that the children of LGBT parents are more likely to get involved with self-destructive behaviors like using drugs and to suffer from depression than those raised by heterosexual parents, despite many studies that have indicated otherwise. The Regnerus study was immediately trumpeted by anti-gay groups as proof that children are in danger in LGBT households. Just a day after its release, for example, it was cited in an amicus brief by the American College of Pediatricians, a tiny anti-gay breakaway from the main pediatricians’ professional association, that was filed in support of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). At press time, the U.S. Supreme Court was weighing arguments on DOMA’s constitutionality.
But the study also engendered serious criticism. More than 200 other sociologists signed a letter to journal editor James Wright that decried the study’s allegedly faulty methodology, and major medical and psychological associations criticized it for similar reasons. Regnerus himself subsequently conceded that his study had problems (key reasons are detailed in the interview below), and he also said his analysis did not conclude that “gay or lesbian parents are inherently bad.” But at the same time, he has continued to defend the study’s results and to push them in anti-LGBT circles. This summer, he is to speak about it to a gathering sponsored by the anti-marriage equality National Organization for Marriage (NOM).
Questions were also raised about Regnerus’ motives, seeing as how he’d accepted almost $700,000 for the study from the Witherspoon Institute, a think tank that opposes same-sex marriage and includes fellows like Robert George, one of the founders of NOM. The Bradley Foundation, another conservative think tank, gave over $60,000. Most recently, documents obtained by the American Independent suggest that Regnerus’ funders choreographed the timing of the study’s release to influence “major decisions of the Supreme Court.” The court this spring heard both the DOMA case and another involving an anti-gay marriage California referendum.
Darren Sherkat, professor of sociology at Southern Illinois University and a member of the editorial board of Social Science Research, was tapped by journal editor Wright to conduct an audit of the process of publishing the Regnerus study. Sherkat was given access to all the peer reviews and correspondence connected with the paper, and was told the identities of the reviewers. What he found, he says, was a study that is deeply methodologically flawed and a peer-review process that failed to identify significant problems. Sherkat also says that the story of the study’s publication is part of a much larger trend in academia and the social sciences: the rise of conservative ideologues in academia whose tendentious studies are paid for by private sources and think tanks with a specific ideological axe to grind. The Intelligence Report spoke to Sherkat about the Regnerus study and its flaws.
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2013/summer/suspect-science#.UakojOumVSp
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