STUDIES STUDIES STUDIES: From Michael Triplett's blog

Marriage Debate posts Lerner and Nagai's study faulting the research supporting the proposition that studies on same-sex parenting are flawed and therefore bad social science. The research is interesting and demonstrates the flaws of researching family structure and especially same-sex families, which have not been prevalent and therefore lack randomization and large amounts of data.

It is important, however, to also critique the critics. The research was commissioned by the Marriage Law Project, an organization with the goal of reaffirming "the legal definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman through scholarly, legal and educational work." If the people who fund and sponsor your research have this clear a bias, what are the chances that the research is going to come to an opposite conclusion? Just as you would expect research sponsored by toothpaste manufacturers to criticize the non-use of toothpaste, so to should you expect research sponsored by an organization focused on "the legal definition of marriage as a union of one man and one woman" to be critical same-sex marriages and parenting.

Lerner and Nagai also have a history of doing research backed by, or favoring, a conservative ideology. Nothing wrong with that, necessarily, but the bias of the researchers is something that always needs to be considered. Lerner and Nagai's past research has criticized race-based admissions and "revisionist" textbook content. If a researcher's results always reach a conclusion favoring one ideology over another, even when it crosses academic disciplines, the research becomes very suspect.

I would also point out that the research that showed girls raised by lesbians found that girles were less chaste and more sexually adventorous also showed the boys to be less seuxally active. In a world where boys coerce girls to have sex, this seems like a fairly significant outcome and does strengthen the outcome that being raised without sex-role expectations also has pay-offs.
posted by Eve at 10:22 PM | link

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