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According to the American Independent, via The Huffington Post, the Regnerus study – which cause a huge controversy because it said that children raised by same-sex families encounter problems – was created specifically to sway Supreme Court decisions on marriage equality. And the funders of the study knew what the study would “prove” before the work on it began:
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 and published in collaboration with The Huffington Post, 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.
To put a long story short, before this study was even put to paper, those funding it had already decided what it would “prove” and how they would “use” it. Many of us lgbtq bloggers and activists knew something was phony about the Regnerus study at the time in which it was publicized. And many mainstream medical groups and organizations pointed out the study’s flaws. The Huffington Post and The American Independent confirms all of our suspicions:
. . .when Regnerus first published his New Family Structures Study in the July 2012 issue of Social Science Research, he made a point of saying that his conservative funders had not played a role in designing the research or analyzing the data.
“The NFSS was supported in part by grants from the Witherspoon Institute and the Bradley Foundation,” he wrote. “While both of these are commonly known for their support of conservative causes — just as other private foundations are known for supporting more liberal causes — the funding sources played no role at all in the design or conduct of the study, the analyses, the interpretations of the data, or in the preparation of this manuscript.”
He reiterated this statement in his follow-up analysis of the study, again writing that “[n]o funding agency representatives were consulted about research design, survey contents, analysis, or conclusions.”
Regnerus’ assertions come into question in light of revelations last year that Wilcox had been hired on contract by UT to assist Regnerus with the data analysis of the study. During part of that time, Wilcox was also the director of Witherspoon’s Program on Family, Marriage, and Democracy, out of which the study was conceptualized and Regnerus was recruited. Wilcox had been a fellow with Witherspoon from 2004 to 2011, and he has said that he worked as a paid consultant on the study from October 2010 to April 2012.
The excerpts above only scratch the surfaces. Go to this link and read the article.
9 Comments
It’s becoming more and more clear that Regnerus is not merely a shoddy researcher but a paid shill. The man should be drummed out of academia for what he’s done.
His reputation’s already pretty well shot, except among those who practice faith-based science — you know, Paul Cameron and that lot.
Has there ever been an honest study on parenting from any aspect of the political spectrum?
This is not one of my issues, but as it is a hot button that I have seen pressed to generate heat not light, like guns, I decided to ask.
There are, the last time I checked, over 125 legitimate studies of children of gay parents vs. children of straight parents, including longitudinal studies that go back 20-30 years. (Probably more by now.) They are remarkably consistent in their conclusions (i.e., no difference in psychosocial development), and while none are perfect, they are, as you put it, “honest”. None of them seem to have had their design and their data analysis dictated by an ideological agenda (or their funding sources), all of them have been legitimately peer-reviewed, and they have been accepted as legitimate by the relevant professional organizations. And, remarkably enough, their data actually supports their conclusions.
This is not something where the question of the “honesty” of researchers is likely to come up, unless you’ve got someone like Tony Perkins (or Robert George, and his fingerprints are all over this) who doesn’t like the results — then the researchers are accused of having an agenda. The psychological term for that reaction is “projection.”
Short answer: Yes, but not from the “Christian” right. They are the ones who do faith-based science.
Thanks. I suspected as much, but as I said it is not one of my issues, so I haven’t looked.
If there is a summary or meta study you could link me to, I’ll save it in case I need it to buttress an argument. I’ll check back later.
“Faith based science”? That’s quite an oxymoron!
You should look up Paul Cameron if you want to see a sterling example. It may be an oxymoron, but it’s an apt description, I think. (Come to think of it, the Regnerus study is the latest example of the type.)
The problem is that most of the literature reviews (not to mention the studies themselves) are behind paywalls in scholarly journals. You can, in some cases, get the abstracts. Here are a couple:
http://tfj.sagepub.com/content/13/1/43.short
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190740905000174
Struck gold: here’s the full text of a review by Charlotte Patterson, who’s one of the main researchers in the area: http://familyproject.ch/files/Charlotte%20Patterson.pdf It’s loaded with citations. It’s from 1995, so there’s not a lot of information on gay fathers, but everything that I’ve seen lately suggests that there’s no difference.
Here’s the abstract of a more recent survey by Patterson (2008).
I am sure there have been lots of honest studies about parenting. There are lots of good social scientists doing good, evidence based work. The hot-button usually gets pressed when people misuse the study, misrepresent the conclusion to push a political agenda. Which is exactly what happened here. (The National Association of Sociologists says Regenerus’ data doesn’t support his conclusion.)