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Allegations of scientific misconduct against faculty member Mark Regnerus have been found to have no merit, University of Texas at Austin officials announced Aug. 30.
The allegations were filed in a written complaint by an irate blogger, Scott Rose (a pseudonym for Scott Rosensweig), a homosexual-activist blogger who writes for a website called TheNewCivilRightsMovement.com, after Regnerus published research showing that young-adult children of parents who’ve had same-sex relationships suffer more emotional and social problems than those reared by a mom and a dad.
Among the findings, young adults from homes in which either parent had a same-sex relationship were more likely to be unemployed, to be on public assistance, to have been arrested, to smoke marijuana and to have thought about suicide during the previous year.
Published in the June issue of Social Science Research, Regnerus’ study drew sensational and often outraged criticism from dozens of media outlets, including The New Yorker, the Huffington Post and The New Republic.
The “New Family Structures Study” challenged the politically correct “no differences” thesis that has been used repeatedly and effectively to sway state and federal judges to redefine marriage in the U.S. as simply a contract between two consenting adults and not as the only institution that binds a child to his or her mother and father.
“There is insufficient evidence to warrant an investigation,” the university announced in a press release on Aug. 30.
In an Aug. 24 memorandum, University of Texas research integrity officer Robert Peterson stated that “Professor Regnerus did not commit scientific misconduct when designing, executing and reporting the research published in the Social Science Research article.”
“In brief, Mr. Rose believed that the Regnerus research was seriously flawed and inferred that there must be scientific misconduct,” Peterson stated. “However, there is no evidence to support that inference.”
As part of the inquiry, Peterson interviewed both the accuser and the accused and sequestered Regnerus’ research and correspondence, which included four laptops, two desktop computers and 42,000 of his emails.
In addition, to ensure that the inquiry was conducted appropriately and fairly, the university hired Alan Price as an outside, independent consultant. Price served for 17 years in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s Office of Research Integrity. There, he and a staff of senior scientists saw, handled and resolved more than 3,000 charges of scientific misconduct, leading Price to state that no one in the U.S., or for that matter, in the world, has more experience in this area than he does.
“Regnerus shattered the myth that mothers and fathers are interchangeable and that homosexual couples can generally do as good a job raising kids as a mother and father,” said attorney Charles LiMandri, president and chief counsel of the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund. “The legal significance of this fact is that it proves there is a rational basis for laws, such as Prop. 8 in California, which limit marriage to a man and a woman.”
LiMandri observed that homosexual activists “are determined to pull out all the stops in seeking to discredit the study and anyone associated with it.”
The very month the study was published, allegations of scientific misconduct against Regnerus were filed with the University of Texas.
In his complaint, Rose charged “that Regnerus accepted money from political persons and groups to further their political goals, and in preparing a study for them, rushed it through production for their use in the 2012 elections.”
In a letter to University of Texas at Austin’s president, William Powers Jr., Rose made scientific-conspiracy accusations not only against Regnerus but also against the Witherspoon Institute (which funded the study), the National Organization for Marriage, Marriage Law Foundation’s director, William Duncan, Princeton University professor Robert George, the Family Research Council, the editor of Social Science Research, “sociologists from Brigham Young University” and the bishops of the Catholic Church.
The university has a stringent rule in its operating procedures that says any written complaint regarding scientific misconduct against any of its professors — lodged by anyone — must be responded to with an inquiry. The inquiry is a preliminary examination of the complaint to see if it is serious enough to warrant a formal investigation.
This preliminary inquiry into Rose’s claims has now been completed, and the university has concluded the charges against Regnerus have no merit.
In response to the closing of the inquiry, Regnerus said, “I’m pleased with the university’s decision. I think it’s just, wise and the product of a careful, thorough process.”
And the matter is closed, as far as the University of Texas is concerned.
Still, Regnerus observed, “I suspect critics will not rest for long. Writing in this area seems particularly to bring out hostility and ill will and to wear the code of civility thin. Amid it all, I am simply trying to discern and describe social reality in American families and households as best I can.”
Register correspondent Sue Ellen Browder writes from Ukiah, California.
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A small dose of the suppression of freedom of speech likely to reign in America if the ersatz marriage movement manages to achieve their goal, esp. if ersatz marriage is declared a “constitutional right.” Once that happens, be sure that the thought police will sweep down hard on anybody who brooks dissent from the new orthodoxy, and your kids will be indoctrinated in this nonsense with unremitting vigor. Another reason to make sure that the four state referenda to legalize homosexual “marriage” are D E F E A T E D .... And have no doubt that if you think the Obamacare abortiofacient mandate tramples your Constitutional rights to freedom of religion, you ain’t seen nothing yet if ersatz marriage gets in under the tent…..
What a lot of hooey! for this instance I agree with Mr. Rose! given the dysfunction of our society in general I would posit that our kids, unless brought up in deeply religious homes, whose principle is mercy and service and Service of the Lord, are most likely to “smoke marijuana,be depressed and at odds”. Our education system which teaches minimum wisdom and maximum skills and no understanding of anything useful to the Christian soul, has taken over the care of our kids, and it is expected that the System will teach our kids everything there is to know! Given the government of the day, it looks pretty bleak indeed for our children. I disagree that the good professor is guilty of scientific misconduct, (by the way what is that exactly?), he did his homework, and drew his conclusions and published them. They smack a bit of the 19th Century notions of Blood and elitism… So pitter-patter let’s get at her… there’s some witnessing to do, to help these poor children of our age’s biggest lie to know the truth. Oremus et laboremus!
Amazing that after all these years of political correctness and brainwashing that there is still some sanity left in America’s colleges & universities.
Saints be praised!
The truth will set you free. In their search for this liberating truth, scientists are bound to their data regardless of their beliefs. When popular culture rails against their studies, because the truth is inconvenient to a political agenda, it often demonizes the scientist. This vindication of Regnerus’ study is a victory of science over rhetoric.
Good for the honest professor. I have a BS in Sociology and will need to read his research. The attempts to “shout down” truth that does not conform to politically correct theory confirms Benedict’s phrase “The dictatorship of relativism”. We should pray to St Michael to ask him to defend us against what Ann Coulter called “The demonic mob” who are really useful idiots of Satan.
Hopefully this will be one of many studies that will support marriage as being between one man and one woman. The homosexual activists are aggressively pushing their views on society to the detrement of all and it must be stopped. Good studies will prove I believe the genious of our Creator and the obvious fact that children are naturally better off with a family of one man and one woman. What people due in the privacy of their own homes is their business and according to their beliefs and their free will. (There are consequences to going against God’s commandments though). We live in a free society but no anti relegious, anti God group should be able to force their views and beliefs on our sociiety that was born of Christian beliefs.
Yipeee!
on reading this article on your web pape that Mark Regnerus, has found doing his study. my sister has been living this life style for years, of her own choice. she was married, had three daughters, from different men. then in living this life style she got herself pregant, so that she and her female partner could raise the children as if in a normal husband and wife family. making them call her female partner dad. the children where brought up so abused, that we called children and youth services to have them taken out of the home. it all failed. the children that are now adults. havbe all been in abusive realtionships, had aborations worked as prostitues, drug abuse the son that she had was in prison. she takes no responisiblites of her pasted choices that have resulted in not only her children but her grandchildren as well. it caused my whole family pain to see what has become of this life style of choice. as far as i am concerned on this issue, GOD created male and female to be married and to live together. GOD have mercy on us for our sins.
Gee, What a stunning surprise! A traditional family unit is healthier for kids than a make believe unit headed by 2 homosexuals. Let’s hear it for the bible. And if you are an atheist how about celebrating a victory for common sense. These are real hard ones to figure out.
Years ago I learned that the surest way of destroying a thing is by redefining it. Redefining marriage and the family will destroy both. Since the family is the basic unit of society redefining it will eventually destroy society itself. It is inevitable.
Depravity shall not triumph over truth.
These gay activists are disgusting, evil, and irrational.
I feel like this is another example of the desire for something to be true overtaking reality. Unfortunately it happens on the left and the right. For gay activists and regular ol’ straight people who believe in gay marriage, any negative information about gay parenting is seen as an attack on their Truth that gay is equal to (or even superior to) straight. Women who raise children sans husband (either as never married or divorced women) freak out when studies show children in such households do more poorly in this, that, and whatever than children raised in an intact home. On the Right, I see it with pro-lifes who want to believe that women who abort pregnancies suffer terrible psychological repercussions afterward, even though most (I said most, not ALL) women who have had abortions do not suffer any psychological ill effects. We don’t like facts when they get in the way of our ideology regardless of what side of the fence we get our ideology from.
JMJ I suggest reading Homosexuality and American Psychiatry, The Politics of Diagnosis by Ronald Bayer. Specifically Ch. 4: Diagnostic Politics: Homosexuality and the American Psychiatric Association. The American Psychiatric Association Under Attack: 1970-1972. “The outrage against the view that homosexuality was a mental illness could be translated into a demand for the deletion of homosexuality from the APA’s official DIAGNOSTIC AND STATISTICAL MANUAL OF PSYCHIATRIC DISORDERS.”
Br. Maurus, your critique of schools is spot on. I am a public school teacher and I can confirm your suspicions that the youth are learning almoost nothing of Truth or even basic logic. Also, while I see this as a victory for justice, I would like to read the research, too. Did he compare these kids to other orphans/foster children raised in a family with a mother and father? I am sure, but I would like to read it.
@jacobum. Had Regnerus’ study actually done a comparison of those two cases, your faux surprise might have had merit. The complaints about the study have more to do with his attempt to compare apples to hamburger meat, and the unwarranted conclusions that various organizations are drawing from it.
Many questions arise here. They have to do with the role that the University of Texas, and the journal in which Regnerus’s study appeared, played in all this. To wit: (1.) If the shoe was on the other foot, and some socially liberal group had funded a study to which social conservatives bloggers objected, would the University of Texas have conducted a comparable investigation? (2.) Does the university apply this policy in a consistent manner? Sequestering 42,000 emails and four laptops (!) sounds like what goes on in an FBI investigation. Is this normally the scale of the university’s inquiries into claims of research misconduct? (3.) Regnerus’s published findings were peer reviewed. Shouldn’t that have satisfied the university initially? If not, why was peer review moot in this case? Why have peer review? (4.) Apparently the journal is publishing some sort of counterpoint to the article it published. Is it doing so under pressure? Did the journal criticize the University of TX for embarking on this inquiry, which calls into the question of the referees it uses to evaluate research published in its pages? (5.) Did the University of Texas take into account the ad hominem anti-Catholic diatribe of the blogger? Imputing prejudice is no small matter. What does University of Texas think about anti-Catholicism? Don’t the ideological motivations of a researcher’s attacker enter into the equation? (6.) Shouldn’t there be a formal apology from the university for having conducted this investigation, with all its attendant bad press, to begin with? Doesn’t this sound like harassment of Regnerus? (7.) Doesn’t the mere fact that the university conducted this investigation, in this instance, throw a damper on any research that might issue in controversial results? No assistant professor up for tenure would engage in such research, nor any thin-skinned tenured faculty member. All to the detriment of free discussion.(8.) What other U.S. universities and colleges have a policy similar to that of U. of TX? How are those policies applied in those venues? Etc. etc.
As a scientist, the only thing as horrific as misconduct are those making false accusations. It happens far too often and usually for vindictive reasons or personal gain. It is my opinion the person making a false claim should be ostracized in a manner akin to one who does commit misconduct. This person who attempted to suppress results he simply didn’t agree with should lose allcredibility. By all. It’s disgraceful and demeans science that these people think it should submit to social mores. I understand this person probably didn’t have the respet of those reading this article. But those who pay attention to him and value science and truthful information should seriously reconsider placing value on such a person.
Marius, it’s sad to say but science is already highly politicized.
Look at global warming and especially evolution. The scientific establishment viciously enforces its politically correct dictates in the colleges & universities, and it will tolerate no contrary view.
Posted by Malchus on Sunday, Sep 2, 2012 12:53 PM (EST):
You obviously did not read my full post or you didn’t appreciate my sarcasm. I am about as “surprised” and stunned at the validity of the study as I will be when the sun rises in the east tomorrow morning.
For a true, first hand account how the horror of being raised by homosexual parents read “Out From Under” by Dawn Stefanovicz. See her web site for additional information dawnstefanowicz.org
May God have Bless and Protect all children.
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