But are they really values, rather than convenient positions for which a self-satisfying argument can be made - "politicized consensus", as the writer of the following article describes them?
In the introduction to today’s issue of MercatorNet, Michael Cook writes:The disappearance of moral consensus from Western society has turned us all into social scientists spouting the latest study to support our values. But not even “data” can end arguments over issues like abortion, euthanasia and same-sex parenting.
The article to which he refers is titled, Hijacking science: how the “No Differences” consensus about same-sex families works . The subtitle reads:
Mark Regnerus, a professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, knows that better than most people. More than four years since his New Family Structures Study on same-sex families was published, he continues to be criticised, indeed vilified, by peers and activists alike for findings which contradict a cosy consensus that there are “no differences” between the children from same-sex and opposite-sex households.
However, he is not about to give up. In today’s Public Discourse essay Professor Regnerus explains carefully and dispassionately the shaky ground on which the consensus rests. It will be worth your while to memorise a few critical facts from this piece for your next after dinner debate or letter to the editor.The data tell a different story.
and the article commences:It was nearly five years ago that I first received data back from the research firm that had carried out the New Family Structures Study (NFSS) protocol. Shortly thereafter, I began to question the scholarly consensus that there were “no differences” between same-sex and opposite-sex households with children. My skepticism didn’t sit well with the guild.
This is only the introduction; there is much of value to follow, if you care to read it, and Professor Regnerus has included links to relevant articles which I have not Hyperlinked here.
Social network analysts subsequently assessed patterns of “citation networks” in the same-sex parenting literature and concluded that there is indeed a consensus out there that claims there are “no differences.” I see it. I just think the foundation for the consensus is more slipshod than rock-solid. It is the result of early but methodologically limited evaluations that formed a politically expedient narrative. It is not the product of many rigorous, sustained examinations of high-quality data over time, across countries, and using different measurement strategies and analytic approaches.
Some liken the debate over the science of same-sex parenting to that around climate change. They argue that the science is so extensive, the published studies so numerous, and the conclusions so overwhelmingly unidirectional that only scientists acting in bad faith would object. But that’s not where this field of study is.
How can we possibly come to a legitimate consensus about the short and long-term effects of a practice (childrearing) of a tiny minority about whom generalizable data of sufficient size for valid comparative analysis was not available until the past decade? The answer, of course, is that you cannot—or rather should not—yet.
What we have, rather, is a politicized consensus generated by lots of small studies of tiny, non-representative samples misinterpreted as applying to the entire population of same-sex parents. It is—by comparison to climate change—like saying that since the surface temperatures in Taiwan, Togo, and Texas have inched up a degree or two that the entire globe must have as well. Scientists know better than to declare such a thing based on limited evidence.
In fact, I am unaware of any other domain of science in which scholars have so little high-quality data to answer comparatively new research questions and yet are so quick to declare those questions answered and done with. We don’t do that in any other field or with any other question. What ought to be an empirical matter—an important one, no doubt—has instead turned into a moral test of fealty.
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