Researchers Quash Anti-Gay Study

http://gaylife.about.com/od/gaydictionary/fl/Researchers-Quash-Anti-Gay-Study.htm?utm_source=exp_nl&utm_medium=email&utm_term=list_gaylife&utm_campaign=list_gaylife&utm_content=20150520

In 2012, Mark Regnerus, a sociologist at the University of Texas Austin, published a controversial study at Social Science Research with appalling conclusions about Gay Parenting. It was called “How different are the adult children of parents who have same-sex relationships? Findings from the New Family Structures Study”. Now, his conclusions have been debunked.

Mark Regnerus published the study raising questions about the differences from a child’s point of view between having gay or straight parents.

That study gainsaid a previous research from 2004 from the American Psychological Association, which already concluded that there were no such meaningful differences (You can read the 2004 study here).

In 2014, in defence of its ban on same-sex marriage, the state of Michigan called Mark Regnerus to testify. His study was already questionable and after this testimony it became apparent that Mark Regnerus conclusions were biased. But in order to prove it, researchers had to go back to his study and deconstruct its structure. They started highlighting flaws on the study, which eventually forced Social Science Research to publish the results to an audit pointing out those same flaws.

Researchers Simon Cheng of the University of Connecticut and Brian Powell of Indiana University went back and re-examined Regnerus study in detail, publishing their results on the same journal that ran the original Regnerus study. Cheng and Powell found that Regnerus committed elementary data mistakes and made very serious and questionable assumptions.

“What we found was actually quite astonishing,” Powell said. Both scientists concluded that after removing all this errors and false claims the number of meaningful differences observed between adults who grew up with gay and straight parents on Regnerus study dropped to zero. “If he were one of my students I’d make him redo the paper,” said Cheng.