From Bilerico: http://www.bilerico.com/2013/05/chief_reviewer_repudiates_regnerus_study.php
By John M. Becker
May 30, 2013
In an explosive interview published yesterday by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Darren Sherkat — a member of the editorial board of the journal Social Science Research, which published Mark Regnerus’s disgraced “study” claiming that gays and lesbians make inferior parents — once again eviscerated the study as “deeply flawed” and its author as “disgraced.” Sherkat, who is also a professor of sociology at Southern Illinois University, was appointed by Social Science Research editor James Wright to conduct an audit of the process by which Regnerus’s study was reviewed and approved for publication.
Speaking to the SPLC’s Evelyn Schlatter, he remarked,
When we talk about Regnerus, I completely dismiss the study. It’s over. He has been disgraced. All of the prominent people in the field know what he did and why he did it. And most of them know that he knew better. Some of them think that he’s also stupid and an ideologue. I know better. I know that he’s a smart guy and that he did this on purpose, and that it was bad, and that it was substandard.
Additionally, Sherkat said that Regnerus’s “study” is part of a much larger and very alarming trend: the infiltration of mainstream academia, science, and research by conservative evangelicals, who then conduct and publish dubious studies bought and paid for by private foundations and think tanks with specific ideological agendas. In short, the right wing is hijacking science in a long-term effort to win the culture wars:
There is in fact a movement to change the intellectual and cultural climate of academics. This has been going on for over 30 years. Look at things like James Davidson Hunter’s Evangelicalism: The Coming Generation, where he talks about the growth of these more intellectual conservative evangelical types in Christian colleges like Wheaton and Gordon and Calvin, which is Regnerus’ alma mater. They’ve actively courted the young, successful people in these colleges to become professors, to become intellectuals, and they support their careers.
One thing that’s disturbing to me about the Regnerus study is that Regnerus (right) received a large amount of money from these foundations and this creates a very different scholarly and intellectual atmosphere. It creates a playing field that’s not level. Someone like Regnerus is now able to go out and buy his own data, if we’re to accept data of this quality.
Continue reading at: http://www.bilerico.com/2013/05/chief_reviewer_repudiates_regnerus_study.php
