Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyMay 1st, 2008
Focus On the Family has a long history of misrepresenting legitimate social science research, and researchers are starting to raise their voices in protest. The latest to join the chorus of outrage is Dr. Gary Remafedi, M.D., M.P.H., a professor of pediatrics at the University of Minnesota. When he discovered that Focus On the Family was misrepresenting his 1992 paper, he wrote an open letter to Focus on the Family’s James Dobson to stop misrepresenting his work. That open letter has been posted at Truth Wins Out:
I want to draw your attention to a gross misrepresentation of our research at the website of “Focus on the Family” In the third paragraph of the article, “Myths and Facts,” our research is cited in support of the statement: “During early adolescence, many children experience a period of sexual-identity confusion when they can easily be influenced in either direction.”
First, please note that the citation itself is incorrect. The original article was published in Pediatrics, not Journal of Pediatrics. … More important, had the authors of “Myths and Facts” actually read the article, they would have found no support for their contention that “many children experience a period of sexual-identity confusion when they can be influenced in either direction.” The word confusion does not appear in our article; nor did we find that anyone can influence a young person’s sexual identity.
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Fannie
May 1st, 2008
Shocking. You mean studies don’t always show that marriage defenders are right about everything, after all!?
queerunity
May 1st, 2008
how do they get away taking quotes and distorting actual research? isnt there some sort of penalty for that?
Neil H
May 1st, 2008
There’s no penalty beyond appealing to the general public to heap on the scorn that these dissemblers so rightfully deserve. Unfortunately that’s been difficult with the lack of exposure that this sort of misrepresentation has been getting. Hopefully the publication of statements from the people whose research has been distorted will help to fix things.
But even with original researchers coming forward, I expect groups like Focus on the Family to try and say something to the effect that the original researchers who object have been “pressured into repudiating their research by homosexual activists”.
Joel
May 4th, 2008
““pressured into repudiating their research by homosexual activistsâ€.”
And would this be true?
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SO i can take whatever research and interpret it whoever i wish, like the bible? Interesting… i wonder if some blog would take the spitzer and J&Y study and come up with a ‘different interpretation’.
But i wonder, is this ‘different interpretation’ although not concluded/found by the original researchers stand up to scrutiny? Otherwise… if their just LIEING/making-stuff-up-and-labeling-them-as-‘truth’, isnt there any legal measure that can be exercised upon the frauds?
“There’s no penalty beyond appealing to the general public to heap on the scorn that these dissemblers so rightfully deserve”
I find this hard to believe.
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