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 

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.

Introduction

Just by way of an introduction:

I’m new at this and looking forward to seeing where this takes me.  I’ve always been curious about the world around me and had many and varied interests.  Mother and father got tired of answering my questions and saved up for an encyclopedia so that they could tell me “go read about it.”  That was before I could even read.   My three biggest interests, the ones with the most passion, are the languages of the Bible and some of its earliest translations, writing, and the guitar.  The first is something I’ve pursued all my life as the resources became available to me; the other two are older passions and desires I’ve only begun to explore now, in my sixth decade of life.

The first is, of course, largely a part of my life as a committed Christian, now for some thirty-seven years.  I definitely cannot be called mainstream as far as being a Christian goes.  However, I follow the evidence where it leads me, with the Bible as the ultimate authority.  That should explain my interest in biblical related languages, I made the vow that one day no translator with his bias, no matter how honestly held, would stand between me and God’s word.  I’m amazed at the resources which God has now made available through the net, resources I could only dream of as little as ten years ago.  So I feel a bit like a kid in a candy store now as opportunities abound.  Naturally my faith informs my views in other areas, such as politics, however, do be careful trying to put me in a box there.  As I wrote, I’m not mainstream by just about any definition of the word.

I'm not too sure how much space here will be devoted to the other two.  Maybe just enough to keep friends updated as to going's on in my life where they are concerned.

Among my interests listed in my profile I mentioned one soapbox issue which will probably be written on time and again, the misuse of science in pursuit of an agenda.  I do hold a science degree in the social sciences.  So I do have a basis for examining the issue.  While in college I noticed a body of research which was being published in medical journals which had no basis for the lofty status it was being given.  The research I refer to was the research into guns and gun control published by such men as Dr. Arthur Kellerman.  That work was done using inappropriate methodologies and amounted to junk science.  More than one of the esteemed doctor’s papers have been debunked, even by other M.D.s within his own scholarly community and I find it amazing that this agenda driven work still gets cited as authoritative.

When I became aware of "Global Warming” science and checked it out, I found it to be on no better a foundation than the gun research.  So the misuse of science for political ends has become something of a soapbox issue for me. 

Before he died, Michael Crichton wrote the following in his notes on The Thirteenth Warrior:

“I mention this because the tendency to blend the boundaries of fact and fiction has become widespread in modern society.  Fiction is now inserted seamlessly in everything from scholarly histories to television news.  Of course, television is understood to be venal, its transgressions shrugged off by most of us.  But the attitude of “post-modern” scholars represents a more fundamental challenge.  Some in academic life now argue seriously there is no difference between fact and fiction, that all ways of reading text are arbitrary and personal, and that therefore pure fiction is as valid as hard research.  At best, this attitude evades traditional scholarship; at worst, it is nasty and dangerous.  But such academic views were not prevalent twenty years ago, when I sat down to write this novel in the guise of a scholarly monograph, and academic fashion may change again—particularly if scholars find themselves chasing down imaginary footnotes, as I have done.”

Unfortunately, things didn’t improve, not in the history discipline, and for sure not in the sciences, where we’ve seen the sad spectacle of scientists being outed for flagrant violations of scientific ethics.  That more than one panel found those violations to be consistent with current scientific practice is a sad commentary on the state of things in our time.

Well, that’s all for now.  I look forward to seeing folks around.

Stanley Loper