There’s a good Huffington Post article making the rounds now, by another professor at the University of Texas…this one an actual professor of sociology as opposed to “associate professor”. Money-quote here:
Had Regnerus walked down the hall and knocked on my door, I would have been happy to explain that stress and instability harm children in any family context. Love and support help children to thrive and succeed. Pseudo-science that demonizes gay and lesbian families contributes to stress, and is not good for children.
Just so. Robert George is probably having a good laugh right now at the fast one he’s just pulled, of kicking the kids of gay parents in the teeth even as his and other homophobes’ concern for their welfare is taken for granted by the corporate news media.
Reading this something that was nagging at me finally clicked. Mark Regnerus is basically Paul Cameron, but with a job at an actual University. Bear in mind, Cameron’s evil genius is in his ability to deftly gerrymander his data while making it seem like his conclusions are purely and honestly arrived at. His original claim, the zombie lie that never dies, that gay men have vastly shorter lifespans, is the classic case in point. When you look more closely, you see that all Cameron did was select a data set that guaranteed he’d get the outcome he wanted. But you have to really look at what he did to see that was what he was doing, and there of course, is the rub.
Eventually intelligent people of good will would see though it and dismiss it as junk science, but people of good will were never his audience. In the end what he was doing, was giving the kook pews something to wave around as proof that persecuting homosexuals is just good public policy and no, they’re not just saying that because they’re a bunch of knuckle dragging bigots.
Stripped away from all its formal academic pretenses, what you see is Regnerus is doing what Paul Cameron has always done: deftly select just the data that will give him the answer he wanted in the first place, in such a way as to appear to the casual observer that he’s not deliberately biasing the data. This is the essential Paul Cameron technique. Mark Regnerus is just another Paul Cameron, but with a University office. Maybe Paul should send him a diploma from ISIS. Grant him a PhD. This was as good a thesis as anything Paul himself could have produced.
It’s crucial to understand that the Regnerus and Marks studies are twinned to Republican political ends in an election year. NOM’s Robert George is no fringe figure. He authored the anti-gay NOM pledge signed by Romney and other Republicans. He’s personal friends with Scalia, another anti-gay-rights figure. He is an adviser to Boehner on DOMA-related matters; and Boehner rewarded him by appointing him to the US Commission for International Religious Freedom; that appointment should be understood as a Republican response against Hillary Clinton’s gay rights speech. There is no doubt that the Regnerus and Marks studies are Robert George-fueled election year political propaganda. They were simultaneously published in “Social Science Research,” which journal’s editor is James Wright, who has written demeaningly about gays and their relationships. The Marks paper cites the Regnerus paper, proving that these two were working in cahoots, and not on pure science. The Marks paper is quoted in a Boehner/George/Clement Golinski case court filing dated June 4, 2012; in other words, the Marks paper which cites the Regnerus paper was turned over to anti-gay forces for a DOMA-related case, *before* the Marks paper was published or peer reviewed (if these papers even had genuine peer review). The larger question, of course, is why institutions of higher learning are allowing themselves to be contaminated by these anti-scholarship, hate speech political figures. Robert George established a gay-bashing beachhead at Princeton, founded all kinds of pet projects near, but independent of the university, but the relationships between his pet projects and Princeton proper are symbiotic and anything but transparent; through his pet projects, George has attracted a lot of religious right wing money to the Princeton vicinity, and the Princeton Board of Trustees then turn blind eyes when George publishes anti-gay lies with the Princeton name attached to them. If the SPLC can see that NOM/George are lying about gay people, the Princeton Board of Trustees should be able to see that George is violating the school’s academic honor code when he publishes anti-gay lies with the Princeton name attached to them. Having contaminated Princeton in those ways, Robert George of course had no scruples about similarly contaminating additional academics. The University of Texas, Austin is now assembling an inquiry panel in response to my complaint of scientific misconduct against Regnerus. Where are we as a society, when the Texas Republican Party Platform takes a stand against critical thinking, and hate-mongers against gay people?
Umberson and her colleagues’ experience working in Regnerus’ department confirm something that seemed obvious to me: Regnerus steadfastly avoided any contact, input or collaboration with his peers.
If he had mentioned to a fellow researcher that he planned to define any parent who had a same-sex fling as a gay dad or lesbian mom, he should have (and, if the colleague was competent, would have) gotten fierce pushback.
Just a note:
Adjunct Professor
Lecturer
Visiting Professor
Assistant Professor
Associate Professor
Professor
(in some institutions) Senior Professor
(in some institutions) University Professor
and (in some institutions) various endowed chairmanships (the Robert Novack Chair in Political Science, etc.)
are academic titles — granted the same as different titles are granted in any job.
In real terms however, Dr. Regnerus (is that REALLY his name?) has just as much right to be called professor as a full professor does. The academic ranks don’t matter to most people, he holds a doctorate and a tenured university position. Quibbling over whether he is an associate or full professor is meaningless.
Even an adjunct professor (who is therefore not full time and usually not on tenure track) is a professor and a recognized researcher in his field.
Do not fall into the Right wing trap of using semantics as if they mattered. What is wrong with Professor Regnerus’ study is its bias, its shoddy research, its cherrypicked data and its pre-chosen results, not the fact that he has not yet advanced to full professor.
Reynolds Jones
–Technical support and Lecturer in IT (Full time, Permanent {tenured} ) State University of New York.
–Adjunct Professor IT (Part time, year long appointement) SCCC
@Scott Rose
“The University of Texas, Austin is now assembling an inquiry panel in response to my complaint of scientific misconduct against Regnerus.”
Glad to hear this. It is important to expose biased research that hurts innocent people and discredits science and scientists.
I am really Proud of Scott Rose because he *Took Action* He filed an official Complaint.
Also we should ALL write to these Professors and thank them. I did already and so should everybody.
Professors Umberson, Cavanagh, Glass, and Raley
(Comma separated e-mail addresses)
umberson@prc.utexas.edu,scavanagh@austin.utexas.edu,jennifer-glass@austin.utexas.edu, kelly.raley@mail.utexas.edu
SGM, why are we thanking these professors?
We are thanking these Professors who work at the same University as Regnerus and they wrote in HuffPo that Regnerus stacked the deck and did not make a good research. Here is the lead to the HuffPo article-
Mark Regnerus claims to have produced the first rigorous scientific evidence showing that same sex families harm children. As a family sociologist at the University of Texas, I am disturbed by his irresponsible and reckless representation of social science research, and furious that he is besmirching my university to lend credibility to his “findings.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/debra-umberson/texas-professors-gay-research_b_1628988.html
So I wrote and thanked them and we should all should write to thank them for publicly standing up and refuting the Regnerus research.