Regnerus claims judge had bias

Timothy Kincaid

April 2nd, 2014

There was, for a brief time, a period in which I was open to argument that Mark Regnerus was a principled researcher whose conclusions were misconstrued by others and whose intent was the advancement of knowledge in the area of family structures. Though he was religious and his research was funded by a conservative organization, that did not preclude him from credibility.

And, indeed, for a while he claimed that he didn’t assert the conclusions that anti-gay media attributed to his paper. Until it became clear that his “not asserting” was a technicality, a game he played so as to advance deception while holding to “but I didn’t personally say it”.

And, following the criticism of his employer and the denunciation by Judge Friedman, the world knows Regnerus to be a charlatan willing to sell his integrity in a futile attempt to forward his anti-gay agenda.

Take, as an illustration, his latest whine in his ongoing effort to portray his dishonesty as a badge of martyrdom. (Anti-gay Catholic website LifeSiteNews)

“I frankly don’t understand why the judge elected to pass on a discussion of some of the very real concerns our research raised,” Regnerus told LifeSiteNews in an e-mail. Regnerus says Friedman “chose to privilege certain scholars as well as research that leaned on self-selected samples.”

“it’s as if raising standard methodological issues on this subject is just unwelcome today, unless it’s clear that you are friendly to the political goals of the same-sex marriage movement.”

Yeah, that’s it. It’s not that your study of children of broken families had no relevance to a case about couples wishing to create intact families. No, it must be judicial bias.

Say bye-bye to your career, Mark. Bye-Bye.

TampaZeke

April 2nd, 2014

As Stephen Colbert says, “The truth has a liberal bias!”

Nathaniel

April 2nd, 2014

What a hypocrite! He claims (as do the anti-evolution forces) that all he wants is to point out the flaws in the science that has been done. But, when others offer critiques of his work, he is being mistreated and misunderstood. No one is claiming any of the research is perfect, except Regnerus and his allies, and even then, only when talking about his paper.

L. C. Burgundy

April 2nd, 2014

Well he clearly wants to never be offered as an expert in court again, that’s for sure.

Lord_Byron

April 3rd, 2014

He’ll join the nuts at some right-wing think tank or he will go on to write a book about how he was persecuted by those evil evil liberals.

Ben In Oakland

April 3rd, 2014

Regenerus made this statement, reported in huffpost late last year. He has made similar statements in the past.

“I’d be more careful about the language I used to describe people whose parents had same-sex relationships,” Regenus told the magazine. “I said ‘lesbian mothers’ and ‘gay fathers,’ when in fact, I don’t know about their sexual orientation; I do know about their same-sex relationship behavior.” He also noted: “Finding someone whose parent had some sort of same-sex relationship as they were growing up is like trying to find a needle in a haystack.”

In other words, it wasn’t about gay parents because HE DIDN’T KNOW THEIR SEXUAL ORIENTATION. He didn’t know about their same-sex relationship behavior, only that they had committed a homosexual act at some point. He could have found plenty of same sex couples raising children, but clearly chose not to find that pile of needles in a tiny haystack. Contrary to what NOM claims, HE DIDN’T STUDY CHILDREN RAISED IN A SAME SEX UNION, but children raised in mixed-orientation marriages, be definition, UNSTABLE.

For anyone who is defending this piece of garbage as somehow scientific, or who just doesn’t understand English: HE’S ADMITTING THAT HE DIDN’T STUDY WHAT HE CLAIMS TO HAVE STUDIED.
I’m sure he will be telling rightwingers at any moment not to distort his research.

Any moment.

Hunter

April 3rd, 2014

“I frankly don’t understand why the judge elected to pass on a discussion of some of the very real concerns our research raised,”

Because the research didn’t raise any real concerns, except about the ability of money and ideology to taint science.

Regan DuCasse

April 3rd, 2014

Excellent analysis of the reality and truth around this man’s shoddy work.

Now he won’t own what he did.

I cannot stand this kind of cowardice, I really can’t.

CPT_Doom

April 3rd, 2014

All other research in this area has used self-selected samples precisely because of the relative rarity of adults raised by openly gay or lesbian parents. While it may be laudable to, as Regnerus claimed to want to, attempt to correct for the scientific constraints of such samples through a population-based approach, when it becomes clear a population-based approach isn’t yielding statistically significant samples, the answer is not to simply make sh*t up. A real scientist would have abandoned the approach or raised the money to widen his sample (of course that would have prevented publication of results until after the DOMA & Windsor cases were heard).

And if a real scientist had decided to go forward with the approach Regnerus selected, that scientist would have not only acknowledged the methodological flaws, as Regernus did, but also the inconvenient fact that this research contradicts the entire known body of research on same-sex parenting & therefore must be questioned. Seeing as Dr. Regnerus chose not to do this and further has let his paper be used to argue for that which it is not suitable, I must conclude the good doctor is not acting as a real scientist at this time.

Elaygee

April 3rd, 2014

The judge did have a bias, a bias against garbage science.

MattNYC

April 3rd, 2014

Press Release:

Cameron Regenerus Analytic Partners (CRAP)

When you absolutely, positively have to have statistical support for your wing-nut ideas. Facts don’t support your conclusions? No problem!

You deposit, we provide!

Disclaimer: No affiliation with any reputable, peer-review organizations or publications.

MattNYC

April 3rd, 2014

I bet Dr. Mark finds conversations in the faculty lounge at Texas A&M quite enjoyable there days.

Bose in St. Peter MN

April 3rd, 2014

Only two options here.

#1: Dr. Regnerus authentically earned his PhD, understands the basics of the scientific method, Sociology 101, concerns of his peers, and the simple building blocks which lead to evidence-based conclusions being accepted in court (or not). In which case, he’s being disingenuous about, “I frankly don’t understand why the judge elected to pass…”. Yeah, lying. Feigning innocent confusion.

#2: Dr. Regnerus is incompetent. Some flavor of toxic soup — ignorance of the scientific method, lack of humility to ask for feedback from peers with experience studying LGBT families, and believing that the judge would accord his work substantial or equal weight because he showed up with his PhD after spending boatloads of other people’s money — has been festering for years. The gravest risk of incompetence is being blinded to self-awareness of it, incapable of self-reassessment. A credible but misguided researcher would be humbled, step back to say mistakes were made and lessons will be learned, at whatever personal and professional cost necessary. Clearly, that’s not him.

Neither possibility serves him well.

The nastiest pill is being swallowed now by those who funneled money through Witherspoon to fund NFSS. The money that was to advance their cause has set them back instead. Their man of science has fallen flat and is clueless as to why, much less how to get back up again.

jerry

April 3rd, 2014

I have to agree that judge Friedman is biased and he should stand up and take his whacks for it like a man. To think that he could get away with a bias for honesty and integrity in this day and age is appalling. I’m shocked right down to my toe nails.

Nick

April 4th, 2014

Funny thing is, Regnerus’ employer, the University of Texas at Austin Sociology Department, lets Regnerus teach the required Sociological Methods course for undergraduates (SOC 317M)!!!

As Texas Governor Rick Goodhair Perry might say, “Ooops!!!”

ebohlman

April 5th, 2014

Bose: There’s a third possibility: Regnerus is selectively incompetent in areas that touch on his personal biases. There’s precedent for this: Paul Cameron’s research on topics other than sexuality is generally considered credible and methodologically sound (almost all of that research, however, was done in the 60s and 70s). So he’s clearly competent in psychological research in general, but everything goes out the window when he tries to study something that falls into his blind spot.

So I think that Regnerus may be engaging in intellectual dishonesty without truly being aware that he is. This is aggravated by his choice to associate himself with people whose livelihoods depend on his unawareness. A good researcher relies on his peers to warn him if his blind spots (which everyone has) are adversely affecting his work. Regnerus appears not to.

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