Regenerus

A “Bombshell” study was recently published in the Journal Social Science Research which set off a firestorm.  The author of the research, Mark Regenerus, had concluded that children who were raised by gay parents were socially disadvantaged compared to their peers.  The forces of political correctness, mainly gay advocates along with their allies in academia couldn’t have that.  So charges of scientific misconduct were filed against the professor.

Regenerus was exonerated of any misconduct with the university only finding minor errors, which are errors which do not affect the conclusion once factored in.  Most studies will have a few of those (Rose, 2012).  You can bet that given its conclusions the paper and the research behind it were investigated thoroughly.  The University of Texas at Austin was under a lot of pressure from its peers to find misconduct and ruin this man’s academic career.  Since then the Gay community and its friends in academia have been bashing the study and its author nonstop with the article BOMBSHELL: Corruption Uncovered In Regnerus Anti-Gay Study Scandal (Marshall, 2012) being a prime example.

In the hit piece by Marshall, a gay advocate, the organizations willing to pile on include “1) the American Psychological Association; 2) the California Psychological Association; 3) the American Psychiatric Association; 4) the National Association of Social Workers; and 5) its California Chapter; 6) the American Medical Association; 7) the American Academy of Pediatrics; and 8) the American Psychoanalytic Association.”  This is a who’s who of organizations, led by the American Psychological Association, which buckled under the pressure exerted on them by gay activists starting in the 1970s and embraced homosexual behavior as normal and become advocacy organizations for the gay lifestyle.

If the good professor hadn’t been exonerated I would call this the pot calling the kettle black given the lunacy which constitutes gay studies and the ongoing papers presented which condemn conservatives and others who believe in traditional morals as moral degenerates and which are openly presented in gatherings of academia.  With all due respect those folks are in no position to criticize Mr. Regenerus.

Yet they think nothing of it.  In a world where science must now conform to a political agenda in the fields of the social sciences, all research done must conform or not see the light of day.  We saw graphically displayed for us in the field of climate science an ongoing conspiracy to suppress research which didn’t conform to the political agenda and keep it out of the journals.  We also saw something of the same thing when a paper on intelligent design was published by Dr. Stephen C. Meyer in the Smithsonian affiliated journal, the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington (Cashill, 2007).  That scandal back in 2006 revealed an ongoing conspiracy in the scientific community not to allow the publishing of any article suggestive of an alternative theory to evolution in any journal, no matter how well argued.

This writer finds such behavior disturbing.  As a society we have allowed the sciences to be high jacked to serve as propaganda.  Clearly those who do so are using it to manipulate people to allow things they would not otherwise permit.  When something wears the imprimatur of “science” then the average person assumes it must be true.  That gullibility is being exploited to disarm our fellow Americans, get them to accept immoral behavior as good and get them to allow government control over activities they would not normally allow.

We do live in a society where the people are free to accept whatever behavior they choose and permit more government control in their lives if they so choose.  This writer accepts that as a given.  However my problem is when science is used fraudulently to manipulate them into decisions based on misleading information.  And that is what this writer sees going on and why he writes about it.

Sources

Cshill, Jack, Intelligent Design Suppression Scandal Rocks Smithsonian, retrieved 09/19/2012 at  http://cashill.com/intellig_design/supression.htm

Marshall, Jennifer, The Foundry, retrieved 09/19/2012 at   http://blog.heritage.org/2012/08/31/case-closed-at-ut-austin-regnerus-exonerated/

Rose, Scott, BOMBSHELL: Corruption Uncovered In Regnerus Anti-Gay Study Scandal,  Retrieved 09/19/2012 at http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/bombshell-corruption-uncovered-in-regnerus-anti-gay-study-scandal/legal-issues/2012/08/29/47670 

Earth hour: A Dissent

I would like to post the following  essay written by Ross McKitrick:

Earth Hour:  A Dissent.

In 2009 I was asked by a journalist for my thoughts on the importance of Earth Hour.
Here is my response.


I abhor Earth Hour. Abundant, cheap electricity has been the greatest source of human liberation in the 20th century. Every material social advance in the 20th century depended on the proliferation of inexpensive and reliable electricity.

Giving women the freedom to work outside the home depended on the availability of electrical appliances that free up time from domestic chores. Getting children out of menial labour and into schools depended on the same thing, as well as the ability to provide safe indoor lighting for reading.


Development and provision of modern health care without electricity is absolutely impossible. The expansion of our food supply, and the promotion of hygiene and nutrition, depended on being able to irrigate fields, cook and refrigerate foods, and have a steady indoor supply of hot water.

Many of the world’s poor suffer brutal environmental conditions in their own homes because of the necessity of cooking over indoor fires that burn twigs and dung. This causes local deforestation and the proliferation of smoke- and parasite-related lung diseases.

Anyone who wants to see local conditions improve in the third world should realize the importance of access to cheap electricity from fossil-fuel based power generating stations. After all, that’s how the west developed.

The whole mentality around Earth Hour demonizes electricity. I cannot do that, instead I celebrate it and all that it has provided for humanity.

Earth Hour celebrates ignorance, poverty and backwardness. By repudiating the greatest engine of liberation it becomes an hour devoted to anti-humanism. It encourages the sanctimonious gesture of turning off trivial appliances for a trivial amount of time, in deference to some ill-defined abstraction called “the Earth,” all the while hypocritically retaining the real benefits of continuous, reliable electricity.

People who see virtue in doing without electricity should shut off their fridge, stove, microwave, computer, water heater, lights, TV and all other appliances for a month, not an hour. And pop down to the cardiac unit at the hospital and shut the power off there too.

I don’t want to go back to nature. Travel to a zone hit by earthquakes, floods and hurricanes to see what it’s like to go back to nature. For humans, living in “nature” meant a short life span marked by violence, disease and ignorance. People who work for the end of poverty and relief from disease are fighting against nature. I hope they leave their lights on.

Here in Ontario, through the use of pollution control technology and advanced engineering, our air quality has dramatically improved since the 1960s, despite the expansion of industry and the power supply.
If, after all this, we are going to take the view that the remaining air emissions outweigh all the benefits of electricity, and that we ought to be shamed into sitting in darkness for an hour, like naughty children who have been caught doing something bad, then we are setting up unspoiled nature as an absolute, transcendent ideal that obliterates all other ethical and humane obligations.

No thanks.

I like visiting nature but I don’t want to live there, and I refuse to accept the idea that civilization with all its tradeoffs is something to be ashamed of.

Ross McKitrick
Professor of Economics
University of Guelph

Cracking Down.

Today I saw this in the News:

Police Raid Climate Blogger's Hone. 

Now the raid itself isn't exactly news to me since I did see an earlier report simply reporting the fact.  But the analysis  by Mr. Birdnow did get my attention.  Why start going after skeptic bloggers over this?  Why now?

Mr Birdnow Quotes Ron De Haan on that:

This time the e-mails contain the names of political leaders, government departments, institutions and... a potentially explosive content.

Yes, I would say that is plenty of reason to care now.  It was never about science on any level, it was about politics.  Now  that folks with some real power are threatened, it's time to reach out and do something.  It's a story as old as time.  Go read the blog I linked, there is something in there which shoul.d scare everybody in the form of an e-mail sent to various Climate skeptic blogger by the DOJ.

Tea Partyers Racists?

I can only shake my head as I read something like this:

Academics Dub Tea Partyers Racist.

Stuff like this is the reason the Social Sciences have struggled for recognition among their scientific peers for generations.  That they would proudly present such research at a conference totally boggles the mind.  Check out, for instance, the following:

But like Mr. Jacobson, Mr. Abramowitz also said they were more likely to harbor racial resentment, which he judged based on their answers to questions such as whether blacks could succeed as well as whites if they “would only try harder,” and whether they agreed with the statement that Irish, Italians and Jews overcame prejudice and “blacks should do the same without any special favors.”

Really?  Notice the second question.  How does that objectively measure one's racism?  The truth is it doesn't.  It compares blacks with other minorities who have faced and overcome prejudice and asks a person if blacks should be held to a different, arguably racist, standard which demands special treatment for them.  I would argue that the question is design to elicit the opposite of what it purports to measure if I weren't aware of the sophist thinking which motivated it.  It is based on the specious assumption that the black experience is somehow so much worse than that of any other minority in U.S., so much worse, that they must be accorded special status and favors.  To think otherwise is considered in modern academia to be automatically racist.  As a part American Indian myself, who was tossed out of Restaurants in the South in my youth under Jim Crow laws, I beg to differ.

So why do we end up with stuff like this passed off as "science?"  Follow the money.  These studies are financed, just like Climate studies.  By far the biggest provider of money is we, the taxpayers.  Something I learned in college is that basically applicants for research money have to promise an outcome.  The government doesn't hand that money for pure research for research's sake.  Generally bureaus are staffed by folks with left-wing leanings in their permanent positions, much like universities.  These folks determine who gets the research grants and they don't tend to give that money out to those who don't expect to get the approved result.

Clearly a lot of money went into this blatant effort to smear the current administration's political opponents.  Look for this stuff to surface in the coming months as it makes its way in the appropriate academic journals where it will be used by media pundits to smear both the Tea Party and, by extension, Republicans.  That is what happens when science becomes the servant of politics.