The Journal of Biosocial Science might be able to justify ignoring my request to examine the credibility of an article published in the journal, but how can they possibly justify ignoring the same request made by two scientists — who are published contributors?

Upon learning about the grossly flawed article by Paul Cameron published in the May 2006 issue of JBS, co-authors Dr. Raymond Hames (Department of Anthropology & Geography, University of Nebraska) and Dr. Edward Hagen (Institute for Theoretical Biology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) became concerned about how being associated with this journal could erode of their own professional reputations. After all, if this journal publishes junk science by Paul Cameron, it brings into question the credibility of all of the articles (and the authors) published in it.

In a letter to the editors, Hagen and Hames explained their concerns:

Biosocial scientists have labored hard over many years to develop methods and procedures that are likely to reveal facts about the world. As authors of several politically incorrect research articles ourselves, we would defend your decision to publish politically incorrect research if it had properly employed scientific methods. We would appreciate knowing why you chose to publish a research article that clearly failed to use any of them. Your decision to publish Cameron’s work seriously damages the reputation of the Journal of Biosocial Science.

We believe that the errors we exposed and others unnoted are serious enough for you consider empanelling a group of experts to evaluate whether the journal should retract the article.

Two weeks after sending the letter to the Journal, Hames and Hagen have not received a reply from the editors nor from the Journal’s publisher, Cambridge University Press. Hames sent me a copy of the letter with permission to make it public, noting that he and Hagen gave the journal a fair amount of time to respond to the correspondence directly.

Here is their letter in full. Please pass this along to social scientists you know — especially if they have an article published in JBS, or are considering submitting one.

August 7, 2006

To The Editors of the Journal of Biosocial Science,

We have long been intrigued by your journal, and in 2001 we published some of our research here [1]. After learning of your publication of Paul Cameron’s article [2], we are stunned that such an incompetent work would appear in your journal.

Paul Cameron was expelled from the American Psychological Association for refusing to cooperate with their Committee on Scientific and Professional Ethics and Conduct [3], and both the American Sociological Association and the Nebraska Psychological Association formally disassociated themselves from his representations and interpretations of the scientific literature [4]. Further, in his written opinion on Baker v. Wade, US District judge Buchmeyer referred to Cameron’s sworn statements, writing [5]:

Dr. Paul Cameron has himself made misrepresentations to this Court. For example:

(i) his sworn statement that “homosexuals are approximately 43 times more apt to commit crimes than is the general population” is a total distortion of the Kinsey data upon which he relies–which, as is obvious to anyone who reads the report, concerns data from a non-representative sample of delinquent homosexuals (and Dr. Cameron compares this group to college and non-college heterosexuals);

(ii) his sworn statement that “homosexuals abuse children at a proportionately greater incident than do heterosexuals” is based upon the same distorted data–and, the Court notes, is directly contrary to other evidence presented at trial…

Judge Buchmeyer states later that [5],

There has been no fraud or misrepresentations except by Dr. Cameron, the supposed “expert” for District Attorney Hill.

Editors of a British journal could not be expected to know that Cameron, an American, has been accused by several academic organizations and a US district judge of misrepresenting research on sexuality and homosexuality. You are expected, however, to select for publication research that makes a genuine contribution to science. It should have been obvious to you and any competent reviewer that this article does not. There are numerous errors in Cameron’s consideration of previous research, and his sampling procedure makes his statistical analysis meaningless.

In regards to previous research on the sexual orientation of children reared by lesbigay couples on page 414 Cameron claims “subsequent research has tended to focus on young children so the effects of parental homosexuality on adult children … are largely unexplored.” This claim is belied by research summarized in the meta-analysis of Stacey and Biblarz [6] which is cited by Cameron. In table 1 on page 169 Stacey and Biblarz refer to studies of young adult children under the heading of “Sexual Behavior/Sexual Preferences”:

• Young adult child has considered same-sex sexual relationship(s); has had same-sex sexual relationship(s) (Tasker and Golombok 1997).
• Young adult child firmly self-identifies as bisexual, gay, or lesbian (Tasker and Golombok 1997).
• Boys’ likelihood of having a gay sexual orientation in adulthood, by sexual orientation of father (Bailey el al. 1995).
• Girls’ number of sexual partners from puberty to young adulthood (Tasker and Golombok 1997).
• Boys’ number of sexual partners from puberty to young adulthood (Tasker and Golombok 1997).

Thus, his claim of no research on the topic is false. All of the research cited in the meta-analysis is on young adults or adults (Bailey above).

Having falsely established this position Cameron then argues that it is reasonable to do a topic search in Amazon.com to obtain a “sample” of three books that deal with sexual orientation of children reared by lesbigay parents. None of these books and the case studies therein represent a random sample. All are non-random case studies designed to give readers a humanistic account of various facets of being reared by lesbigay parents. Particularly egregious is his use of Abigail Garner’s book [7] which comprises more than half of Cameron’s “sample” (50/77). Garner deliberately selected approximately 25 homosexuals reared by homosexual or transgender individuals and 25 heterosexuals reared by heterosexuals[8, 9]. Given the central research question under consideration is the effect of parents’ sexual orientation on children’s sexual orientation, the use of this non-representative sample is illegitimate because it deliberately biases the number of homosexuals (they do not make up 50% of the population but rather about 3-4%).

Last month the American Academy of Pediatrics (the largest pediatric organization in the world), after a review of the relevant research, found that lesbigay parents are just as fit parents as are heterosexuals. In regards to sexual orientation their findings are worth quoting:

The gender identity of preadolescent children raised by lesbian mothers has been found consistently to be in line with their biological gender. None of >500 children studied have shown evidence of gender-identity confusion, wished to be the other gender, or consistently engaged in cross-gender behavior. No differences have been found in the toy, game, activity, dress, or friendship preferences of boys or girls who had lesbian mothers, compared with those who had heterosexual mothers.31,34,50-52 Compared with young adults [our emphasis] who had heterosexual mothers, men and women who had lesbian mothers were slightly more likely to consider the possibility of having a same-gender partner,36 but in each group similar proportions of adult men and women identified themselves as homosexual.

Biosocial scientists have labored hard over many years to develop methods and procedures that are likely to reveal facts about the world. As authors of several politically incorrect research articles ourselves, we would defend your decision to publish politically incorrect research if it had properly employed scientific methods. We would appreciate knowing why you chose to publish a research article that clearly failed to use any of them. Your decision to publish Cameron’s work seriously damages the reputation of the Journal of Biosocial Science.

We believe that the errors we exposed and others unnoted are serious enough for you consider empanelling a group of experts to evaluate whether the journal should retract the article.

Please note that we are interested, not in a response from Cameron, but from you.

Sincerely,

Raymond Hames
Department of Anthropology & Geography
University of Nebraska
Department of Anthropology & Geography
University of Nebraska
Lincoln, NE 68588-0368

Edward Hagen
Institute for Theoretical Biology,
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Invalidenstraße 43
10115 Berlin, Germany

References

[1] Hagen EH, Hames R, Craig NM, Lauer MT, and Price ME (2001) “Parental Investment and Child Health in a Yanomamö Village Suffering from Short-term Food Stress”, Journal of Biosocial Science, 33: 503-528.

[2] Cameron, P (2006) “Children of Homosexuals and Transexuals More Apt to be Homosexual“ Journal of Biosocial Science, 38.

[3] Letter from American Psychological Association to Paul Cameron, dropping him from membership (December 2, 1983). Retrieved August 2, 2006 from http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/html/Cameron_apaletter.html

[4] Paul Cameron Bio and Fact Sheet. Retrieved August 2, 2006 from http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/html/facts_cameron_sheet.html

[5] Judge Buchmeyer (1985) Baker v. Wade. Retrieved August 2, 2006 from http://www.qrd.org/qrd/religion/anti/cameron/baker.v.wade.txt

[6] Stacey J and Biblarz TJ (2001) (How) Does the sexual orientation of parents matter? American Sociological Review, 66: 159-183.

[7] Garner, A. (2004) Families Like Mine: Children of Gay Parents Tell It Like It Is. New York: HarperCollins.

[8] Garner, A. (2006) Open letter to Journal of Biosocial science. Retrieved 31 July 31, 2006 from http://damnstraight.oversampled.net/2006/05/24/garner-letter-to-jbs/

[9] Garner, A. (2006) How is Paul Cameron able to sleep at night? Retrieved July 31, 2006 from http://damnstraight.oversampled.net/2006/02/09/how-is-paul-cameron-able-to-sleep-at-night/

Trackback URI | Comments RSS