Social Science Research bows down to political pressure

After receiving tremendous amounts of political pressure, the academic journal Social Science Research performed an audit of the publication of the recent controversial article by sociologist Mark Regnerus.  (Here are my thoughts on the Regnerus controversy.)  The Chronicle of Higher Education had a summary write-up of the audit's findings.

The audit found that the, "peer-review process failed to identify significant, disqualifying problems" with the study on children raised in homes where one or both parents has same-sex relationships.  It found that unbiased reviewers would not have let the study slide by in its definitions of "gay parenting".

I see three problems with this audit:

1. The study wasn't about "gay parenting".  Regnerus was actually very careful to not make it about that because of difficulties in defining what exactly that is.  The study intentionally looked at the children of parents who had engaged in same-sex sexual encounters.  This avoided a lot of tricky definitions.  So, the result of the study was that children who knew one or more of their parents had experienced a same-sex sexual encounter had a harder time growing up and faced difficulties in early adulthood.  The objection arises that this isn't representative of "gay parents".  My response, to be blunt, is "no duh".  What the study shows, and what the paper's conclusions clearly said, is that it was promiscuousness and instability that were the primary problems for the kids.  Why should that have blocked it from being published?  To be honest, it matches every single heterosexual study I've ever seen on the topic.  Kids do better in a stable home environment.
2. Some of the reviewers were biased.  I concede that.  For those of you not familiar with the peer-review process, it is basically a group of experts who read an academic article "blind" (they don't know who the author is) to evaluate its academic merit.  Here's my problem.  How are you going to find six unbiased peer-editors for this paper?  Almost every expert in this field is biased.  In fact, apparently two of the reviewers were biased against the Regnerus position.  They still thought the paper met academic snuff, despite being less than thrilled with the results.  (My guess is that they actually read what the paper was trying to say, not what it later got interpreted to say in the media.)  This brings me to my third point.
3. The auditor was himself biased.  The auditor is Darren E. Sherkat, a sociologist at Southern Illinois.  As is the case with Dr. Regnerus, I've met Dr. Sherkat a couple of times.  Both times, and this stuck out to me as an Evangelical Christian, we were at a reception of some sort and he went on a tirade about how stupid and bigoted Evangelical Christians were.  His own research shows glimpses of this bias.  How did a biased scholar come to audit another scholar's work for bias?   My guess is that the journal was looking for political cover.  They found an auditor with biases of his own to placate the political uproar.  (Incidentally and conveniently, Sherkat found no fault with the journal editor.)

Now, having said all this, I want to point out something that is very important.  Dr. Regnerus is biased.  He has an openly-stated view on same-sex marriage and parenting.  This is why a conservative group gave him money to fund the study.  It may very well be that the paper was influenced by his bias, as I suspect the vast majority of academic papers on this topic are biased. If you want to attack Dr. Regnerus' work, though, be fair about it.  Give him the same treatment everyone else receives and attack him on the scholarship he actually did, not on the fact that a bunch of people didn't read his work carefully enough to know what he said.

Is the Chronicle of Higher Education not being politically correct?

I must give credit where credit is due.  The Chronicle of Higher Education published an opinion piece by Notre Dame professor Christian Smith calling the scathing reception of Mark Regnerus's research a witch hunt. I made a similar argument in a previous post.

Unfortunately, I was surprised that the Chronicle posted an opinion piece from that perspective.  I supposed I shouldn't have been, since they also published opinion pieces about how universities should eliminate Black Studies programs.  (Of course, there was such an uproar that the blogger who posted that opinion was soon fired for doing so.  Fortunately Dr. Smith is not a regular contributor to the Chronicle.) The Chronicle, to its credit, seems willing to publish views that lie outside of academic orthodoxy, even if they don't have the stomach to keep such dissident views around for long.

I should note that I am not opposed to Black Studies programs.  I actually think they play an important role in academia.  The blog post linked to above was poorly thought out, in my opinion.  But, I want that perspective heard in the debate without getting shouted down without rational discussion.  I taught for five years at a Historically Black College and I exposed my students to a (more sophisticated) argument that Black Studies should be eliminated, even though I disagree with the position myself.

I think healthy debate is good for academia.  I just don't think there is an equal opportunity to present one's views.  I believe Dr. Regnerus was discriminated against because of the conclusion reached in his article.  I wish I could think otherwise, but the evidence to me is overwhelming.  He suffered from a politically correct witch hunt.  And, even if they are inconsistent with it, I must give credit to the Chronicle for breaking through the politically correct dogma and allowing a diverse opinion to be presented.

Mark Regnerus and a politically correct academic witch hunt?

The July issue of Social Science Research, a fairly well-respected academic journal, published an academic article by sociologist Mark Regnerus entitled "How different are the adult children of parents who have same-sex relationships? Findings from the New Family Structures Study".  It found that children of parents who had same-sex relationships had more difficulties as young adults.  As one might expect, after the study came out there was a firestorm of criticism about the study, Dr. Regnerus, and the journal.  

First, let me mention that I have met Dr. Regnerus on a handful of occassions and we have a number of mutual friends.  He seems like a nice guy, if a bit quiet.  He is openly Christian and a social conservative.  His views are not secret, and the study results mirror his views.  

My wife, who is a sociologist, believes that the study's findings are bogus.  I asked her to show me what, in the study itself, she found to be problematic.  She couldn't.  I looked around further and the only complaint I found about the study itself was about where Regnerus found his respondents.  Given my experience in academia, this seems to be a flimsy complaint. Finding respondents for a new study is notoriously difficult, and getting better respondents requires more money.  It costs a lot of money to get top-notch respondent pool.  The majority of studies are like this one and have a "good enough" pool. There's also the issue of what a "better" respondent is.

Most of the complaints about the study came from people complaining about the funding source of the study.  The money came from the Witherspoon Institute, a think tank known for its socially conservative viewpoints.  There were complaints that the study didn't come from sources such as the National Institutes of Health or an academic source.  Personally, I don't believe the Witherspoon institute is any more biased than the NIH or most academic sources.  I've been concerned with a variety of biases at these institutions for years.  At the very least, their funding trends indicate biases.  There are very few funding sources I can think of for this topic that wouldn't have bias one way or another.  While it isn't ideal, it is what it is.  If the study itself is good, I'm not as concerned with the funding source.

A second point of complaint is that it looked like the study was rushed through in record time.  Whereas most academic journal articles will take at least a year from submission to publication, this article's timeline was two months.  While that is fast, it is not unheard of.  Speedy publication happens fairly often in public policy research, for example.  If there was some collusion to speed the study through, that would be a source of concern.  Having it go through in two months doesn't bother me so much.

A third point of complaint is that the commenters on the article in the journal were themselves on the same research project.  This one is odd.  Commenters are generally selected by the journal and are experts in the particular topic.  The two commenters in this case were not "established scholars" having never published on the topic of lgbt parenting.  Giving the benefit of the doubt, here's what I think might have happened.  When you submit a paper to some journals, you get asked for the names of people who know about your subject to serve as commenters.  The two commenters were probably mentioned by Regnerus because they were two of very few people familiar with the study in question.  Let me emphasize that this is still not ideal, but I'm not convinced it was as nefarious as some would lead us to believe.

Here is what I suspect may actually be happening.  I want you to imagine that a study came out finding that the adult children of lgbt parents turned out better than children of a traditional monogomous two-parent home.  Imagine also that all of the irregularities I mentioned in the previous three paragraphs were true of this study.  Would there be a national firestorm about it?  I sort of doubt it.  I doubt anyone except a few socially conservative, academically inclined outlets would even notice the irregularities.  And, no matter how much they screamed, I doubt mainstream press or academia would pay any attention.  

Now I could be absolutely wrong about all of this.  There might be an equally vociferous complaint.  I doubt it, though, because I have never seen it happen.  Think tanks fund studies that get published in academic journals all the time.  Speedy publication happens all the time.  Commentators who are somehow connected to the author get published all the time.  I think this particular case is getting all the attention because a scholar dared to present a study that violated academic political correctness.  Now his career is at risk, despite being tenured.  

After all this, I have to plead ignorance on the quality of the study itself.  It is well outside my field and I am not familiar with the methodoligies.  For all I actually know, the study might be academic garbage.  If that is the case, the study should be attacked on the grounds of it being academic garbage.  Having seen my share of academic garbage being printed in academic journals going virtually unnoticed, though, I doubt the firestorm has anything to do with the quality of the research itself.  I think Dr. Regnerus dared step into politically sensitive territory and came out on the wrong side of the politically correct line.  

I could very well be wrong and welcome any input on how I am misreading the situation.  In some ways I hope that I am.  I may very well be biased myself because I have felt personally discriminated against because of my Christian faith. But I have seen this pattern before--where Christian scholars can't come out of the religious closet until they are tenured, and even then they can't publish on the topics they want in most academic journals because of a refusal by those journals to even look at those topics.  Regnerus got into a journal, and look what happened...

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