[Cross-posted on Family Scholars Blog]
In his post earlier tonight, Brad Wilcox writes that I “asked about [his] affiliation with the Witherspoon Institute.”
The reason I emailed Brad was that I had grown curious about an issue that lgbt-rights blogger Scott Rose has raised.
To provide context, here’s the full text of the email I sent to Brad, with links added:
Hi, Brad. Barry Deutsch here – we’ve exchanged a few comments on “family scholars blog” from time to time.
I’ve been reading about something that I will probably blog about, but I wanted to ask you if you wanted to comment.
I’m hesitant to ask you about this at all, because so many of the folks who have criticized Regnerus’ study have been, in my opinion, over-the-top, and have made personal attacks on Professor Regnerus. That’s not something I want to be associated with. Although I’ve criticized Professor Regnerus’ study, I bear him no ill will.
Professor Regnerus has said a couple of times, referring to the NFSS, that “the funding sources played no role at all in the design or conduct of the study, the analyses, the interpretations of the data, or in the preparation of this manuscript.”
However, it appears that you were a paid consultant on Professor Regnerus’ study. And your bio page on the Witherspoon website describes you as “Director of the Program on Marriage, Family, and Democracy.” Finally, publicly available tax records indicates that Witherspoon’s tax return describes the NFSS as one of “the two major accomplishments” of a program called “Family, Marriage & Democracy.”
From this information, it appears that Professor Regnerus’ statement that “the funding sources played no role at all” in the NFSS cannot be accurate.
I’ll probably blog about this in the next couple of days, but if there’s anything I should know for the blog post, please do let me know. (I’ll assume that anything you tell me is okay to repeat in a blog post, unless you say otherwise, of course.) If you think it’s objectionable for me to blog about this, of course please tell me why, so I can consider that as well.
Best wishes,
Barry
First of all, I want to thank Brad for his response.
Brad says that he provided advice to “Witherspoon Institute staff” about “the New Family Structures Study,” as the Director of the program that funded the NFSS. However, Brad explains that his “Director” title was strictly honorary.
Separately, Brad was also a paid adviser on the NFSS project.
There is nothing unethical about Brad working with both NFSS and Witherspoon, in my opinion. Brad is a known scholar with interests similar to those of Witherspoon and Professor Regnerus; it is natural that both the staff at Witherspoon and Professor Regnerus should seek his advice.
However, given Brad’s dual role, I cannot understand why Professor Regnerus wrote in his study:
The NFSS was supported in part by grants from the Witherspoon Institute and the Bradley Foundation. While both of these are commonly known for their support of conservative causes—just as other private foundations are known for supporting more liberal causes—the funding sources played no role at all in the design or conduct of the study, the analyses, the interpretations of the data, or in the preparation of this manuscript.
Professor Regnerus’ statement is unequivocal – there was “no role at all,” according to him, at any level other than funding. But based on what Brad has now written, that simply wasn’t true.
There’s a similarly unequivocal statement on the official NFSS website:
In order to insure that the NFSS was conducted with intellectual integrity, beginning from the earliest stages the Witherspoon Institute was not involved in the Study’s design, implementation, or interpretation.
Neither of these statements are consistent with the role Brad played, according to what Brad describes in his post, and Professor Regnerus should not have made either statement.
I continue to think that the main argument against Professor Regnerus’ study is that it was poorly designed to address the question it claimed to address, for reasons that have already been much discussed. (For those interested in reading up on the matter, I recommend this post and the comments at Scatterplot, and also following the links in this post at Family Inequality.)
And as I said in my letter to Brad Wilcox, I don’t wish Professor Regnerus ill, and I have a strong aversion to personal attacks. But there’s a difference between not making personal attacks, and refusing to criticize what appears to be significant dishonesty in a published study.
Scholars are obligated to be honest in their claims — especially claims which are intended to establish the scholar’s credibility and objectivity in the mind of the reader.
In my opinion, Professor Regnerus’ carefully-crafted statement about his funding sources’ non-participation was deceptive. It omitted a relationship that was obviously relevant and should have been mentioned, and Regnerus’ choice to omit that, and the use of wording which gave the impression that there was unequivocally no relationship to report, calls his credibility into question.
Furthermore, Professor Regnerus’ statement had the effect of covering up an apparent conflict of interest that some people would view as unethical and against academic norms. To actively cover up such an apparent conflict of interest is, in my view, far worse than the apparent conflict of interest itself. I cannot see it as anything but extremely unethical behavior.
Very informative article, and needed. No doubt this letter from the University of Texas Austin to the Attorney General of Texas wherein the university disclosed that Dr. Wilcox participated in the Regnerus study, along with Barry’s inquiry, generated that disclosure from Dr Wilcox that he participated. http://bit.ly/PaXTl3
Obviously Regnerus lied, and he lied twice. He lied in his original study and he lied in his soon to be published Rebuttal that no one from Witherspoon nor the Bradley Foundation participated in the research.
Then there is Wilcox, he is an Editorial Board member of the Journal Social Science Research and presumably is aware of Regnerus lying in his report, I am sure he must have read the controversial study. Yet Dr. Wilcox did not step forward and set the record straight until he was exposed by the University of Texas. http://bit.ly/T0Cp0r If you are a scientist, if you are a PhD and you read something in a scientific study that is a lie, are you ethically obligated to step forward and correct the lie?
Dr. Wilcox says in his explanation that he considered his position “Honorary” thus did not see a conflict of interest. However for “Honorary” he sure did a lot for the Witherspoon Institute http://bit.ly/SDMjQv
Then there is the Peer Review. An audit was conducted by Dr. Darren Sherkat, but that audit is really sketchy. Anyone can access the audit you just have to pay $31.50 for the report at the Journal Social Science Research. Here are the parts of the peer review audit that seem sketchy, it is midway down on this document http://bit.ly/QpVdUE
Thank you Barry for investigating the most expensive $775,000 and invalid anti gay study ever. I am pretty sure this is going to make the New York Times.
Regnerus did not say this. He said the WI played ‘no role at all in the design or conduct of the study, the analyses, the interpretations of the data, or in the preparation of this manuscript.’ You’re assuming because you can’t think of any stages in the research process apart from those listed by Regnerus (other than funding) that there aren’t any, of course it means they can be involved in anything preparatory to design.
Typical research process.
(1) purpose
(2) objectives
(3) hypotheses
(4) methodology
(5) design
(6) conduct
(7) analysis
(8) interpretation
(9) manuscript preparation
James, in my comment above I provide the link to the University Of Texas Austin’s letter to the Texas Attorney General where they describe what Wilcox did. Did you read the letter?
Some people may be interested in seeing apples to apples to apples and oranges to oranges graphs. Dr. Regnerus in his soon to be published Rebuttal Report changed the records into different Groupings. On his rebuttal Report Tables he shows Divorced, Single Parents, and Step parents. Anyone can access his rebuttal report at the Journal Social Science Research by paying $31.50. It will probably be available for free on line fairly soon.
In his rebuttal report where he explains how he rejiggered the records into new groupings of Divorced and Single etc. He says that he removed approximately 400 records from the “Other” grouping from his original report. But I analyzed it and found that in fact he removed records from divorced and step families but he never says that. It took a lot of work for me to figure it out. Here is that report of removing records without saying. This will probably bore you but here it is http://bit.ly/Pk9NLz
Here are the more or less apples to apples and oranges to oranges graphs. However keep in mind that he did a really crappy job on the data. He provides the results in 3 tables but he never in his report gives values for the Range. In other words, What is your current level of household income? You can see on his table that some groups average was 5.6 . BUT he never gives you the 13 values in the range, so you have no idea what 5.6 represents. Is that $20,000 or $50,000? We have no way of knowing since he did not provide the values in his range of answers. We know a question has maybe five possible answers/values but in his report he never tells you what those values are. It drove me NUTS trying to graph this. I found a LOT of errors in his work, after I give the links to the graphs of the data from his not yet published Rebuttal report I’ll give a link showing the errors I caught. But don’t blame me if the graphs do not give explicit values, it is because he never provided them. Some of them I sorta figured out by using the codebook, but most people don’t even know there is a code book. I made pretty good guesses based off of the codebook, but it is only a good guess. Link to apples/apples oranges/oranges graphs and what you will see is there really is hardly any difference.
http://bit.ly/PpS991
Link to a report showing his errors
http://bit.ly/PpR4Ox
In case anyone is interested, there is quite a long article in The American Independent.
http://americanindependent.com/217646/witherspoon-scholar-was-paid-consultant-on-parenting-study
The Journalist Quotes Barry