I just read the following headline which made me go, "WTF!" followed by additional expletives: Study: Gay Parents More Likely to Have Gay Kids. Walter Schumm, a family studies professor at Kansas State University, has released a study proclaiming that gay parents are more likely to raise gay children than straight parents. His study appears to support the theory of right wing zealots that people can be taught to be gay.
I've done a great deal of research in my professional career, and I can tell you this, the questions that you ask have a direct correlation to the answers that you find. According to Schumm, he was looking for a connection between parenting and sexual orientation, "His study on sexual orientation, out next month, says that gay and lesbian parents are far more likely to have children who become gay. 'I'm trying to prove that it's not 100 percent genetic,' Schumm tells AOL News."
Schumm's research methodolgy consisted of reviewing other people's studies on gay parenting. In his meta-analysis of 10 such studies, Schumm extrapolated data that adult children of gay men and/or lesbians are statistically more likely to identify themselves as gay.
Whoop-di-do! This anecdotal evidence proves nothing except that children who grow up in a straight household may be far more reticent to self-identify as gay. In other words, a child who grows up in a home with two loving parents who are gay may feel more comfortable in acknowledging their own orientation. This so-called lighting bolt of insight is nothing more than the logical result of growing up in homes where sexual orientation is not a basis for disowning or ostracizing one's children.
Think about the number of people who are gay and stay in the closet for years, afraid of the reaction from their parents and other family members. That the adult children of gay parents are more likely to identify themselves as gay is not an indicator that sexual identity is determined by parenting; growing up in an accepting environment just means that you don't spend part of your life denying your authentic self.
I might actually read Schumm's study when it's released. I'd like to know if he addresses the conundrum that there have always been gay people. Who taught them how to be gay? What about gay children with straight parents? Did the straight indoctrination just not take?
This isn't research. This is a man who read a lot of books on gay parenting and then drew conclusions based on the answers collected by a variety of other studies. There is no control group, no methodology for isolating relevant data, or to account for variables because Schumm didn't interview any of the people on whose responses he bases his conclusions. Were the respondents in each of the ten different studies asked the identical questions, phrased in the same exact language, and under the same conditions? I doubt it; each of these studies produced its own independent report. Schumm just read them all.
Studies like this grab headlines. I find such studies to be the height of irresponsibility, feeding into the prejudice and hysteria of homophobia. Ultimately they are shown to be meaningless but the harm has already been done.
In the late 1960s and well into the 1970s, well credentialed researchers such as Arthur Jensen and William Shockley produced studies that proclaimed that intelligence was predetermined by genetics and that Black people were intellectually inferior to Whites. However, Jensen also concluded that Asians were intellectually superior to Whites. Although these studies were later largely discredited they still influenced policy makers in making decisions regarding public education.
Jensen and Shockley were not a one time anomaly. In 1994, Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray published a book in 1994 clearly directed at policy, just as Jensen and others had in the 1960s and 1970s,The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. Herrnstein and Murray posited among many theories about IQ that Blacks were genetically inclined to have lower IQs than Whites. They also advised that the government "stop encouraging" poor women to have babies and contaminating the gene pool. In 2007, James D. Watson, 79, co-discoverer of the DNA helix and winner of the 1962 Nobel Prize in medicine, told the Sunday Times of London that he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really."
Research can be used to support any position and its validity is only as good as the methodology of the researcher. The harm done by pseudo sociological research is like a tsunami; it hits the shore destroying everything in its path and then recedes but the damage it leaves behind is catastrophic. WTF were you thinking Mr. Schumm?
Sheria,
ReplyDeleteI recall reading the The Bell Curve, years ago. I found it repulsive, to say the least. Quite aside from IQ being greatly overrated as a measure of intelligence,* posing the question "which race is the smartest?" in the first place seems to me worse than any response the authors could possibly give. Even if we were to go temporarily bonkers and entertain the claims of some author who insists he's got data to prove that one race is collectively smarter than some other race, leaning on those data would be socially unacceptable, even cruel. If the data say that Group A scores ten points lower than Group B, whatever should we do? Rearrange our society so that it serves as a paternalistic keeper for our supposedly slightly less smart brothers and sisters? Deny people from Group A the same opportunities and aspirations as everyone else? What good could it possibly do to ask such a question? How can anyone even ask it in good faith? I would say more or less the same of the newer work you mention -- who really ought to care whose kids are gay or straight anyhow?
As for the whole orientation issue, I think the usual debate is spurious: it's obvious that people orient as they do (somewhere on the spectrum, that is) for biological reasons. And it's just as obvious that almost nothing human is entirely natural or merely biological, so to get anything like a satisfactory understanding of human sexuality, you'd have to go beyond the concept of animal nature.
*Note. Sound judgment, compassion, and other qualities are surely more important in most circumstances than the ability to make lightning-fast, correct connections, which is, at the very most, all "IQ" measures. Personally, I think the notion that it measures anything worthwhile is ridiculous. In the Book of Dino Wisdom, anyone who thinks a high IQ alone makes him or her genuinely intelligent is a fool.
Personally, I think the notion that it measures anything worthwhile is ridiculous. In the Book of Dino Wisdom, anyone who thinks a high IQ alone makes him or her genuinely intelligent is a fool.
ReplyDeleteI think that the Book of Dino Wisdom is pretty on target.
"Personally, I think the notion that it measures anything worthwhile is ridiculous. In the Book of Dino Wisdom, anyone who thinks a high IQ alone makes him or her genuinely intelligent is a fool."
ReplyDeleteBeing 7 feet tall gives one more basketball aptitude than being 5'7" and I can bear witness. None the less, having been familiar with and having argued with many Mensa members, I can attest to some idiocy and much small mindedness amongst that proud crowd, not that membership requires much and not that the "genius" IQ of 132 makes one all that special.
Nichdestoweniger as such true geniuses as Nietzsche would say, there is a huge difference between someone with an IQ of 50 and the average guy, so why deny the difference when it's above the average? If we look at IQ as a composite score of several measurements, I think it's true that people can excel in one and limp along in another. I'm quite familiar with quite a few people who have IQ's quite in excess of what Einstein's was alleged to have been -- and none of them are Einsteins, or Feynmans or even close. Much of the tests I remember was simply vocabulary and much was the ability to repeat strings of numbers backwards or predict the next in a series. One can, as I can attest, do quite well above average in one and be mediocre in another, so people with the same aggregate score may have very different aptitudes.
I believe the initial use of these tests was to rescue and perhaps redeem children who had been marginalized by an educational system unequipped to understand them. It's all too easy to see an intelligent person as stupid and I think our experience with the militant dullards and ignorant armies of the right will bear witness to that.
I believe the concept of IQ was developed
disregard that last sentence fragment please!
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I also read the Bell Curve - I suspect that many of its staunches critics did not, as is typical of any topic with political implications. I'm not a statistician and so I have to refrain from commenting on their methods, but I did agree that the usual rubric about cultural bias might be less pertinent than it seems. My biggest laugh however was that it was used to make a rather hard to define group: "white people" feel good about a two or three point IQ "advantage." Those same folks are more cohesive when it comes to calling people with a 50, 75, 100 point advantage stupid and elitist. Truth is not only stranger, but funnier than fiction.
The real gist of the book was not that one group is "superior" but that the alleged three point offset of the median score produced far fewer members in the 4th, 5th, and 6th standard deviations upward. To me that is overstepping oneself as such small differences can't be separated from statistical "noise" and it depends upon the notion that the notorious bell curve has the same shape for all groups tested.
But I'm not a statistician and perhaps I'm the one overstepping myself here. I have however slept in a motel or two which qualifies me to make two statements: The Bell Curve suggests that the Chinese and Eastern European Jews (what's left of them) are just as much smarter than the Good Old Boys pretend to be with respect to African folks. The probability of any random person of African origin being just as smart or smarter as the average Euro type is so close to being as equal as it is between any gene pools, that it's asinine to inflate the books conclusions into fuel for racist notions. We don't base civil rights or citizenship status or our assessments of humanity on such notions of aptitude anyway and face it Bubba - Obama is smarter than you and your momma put together. Live with it.
ReplyDeleteI have spoken.
One of my childhood friends knew she was gay most of her life but hid it until coming out about 10 years ago. Her parents and her siblings were heterosexual. I have had quite a few gay friends over the years and without exception, they were all raised by "straight" parents and only one of them also had a gay sibling. I'm sure there are enough of this type of example to shoot this dangerously flawed "research" down but who will be paying attention?
ReplyDeleteNo the gay bashers, that's for sure.
During my nursing career I was involved in several research projects and this is what I learned: Well planned, ethical research geared to increasing knowledge can be a valuable tool.
I also learned that when there is money and/or reputations at stake, research data can and is manipulated to serve the manipulator.
I like Capt's turn of phrase above - this so called research is designed as fuel for racist notions. It has absolutely no other value.
I'm disgusted with what passes for intelligence in academia.
Schumm: I'm trying to prove that it's not 100 percent genetic.
ReplyDeleteIn my not so humble cephalopod opinion, this quotation alone is a pure expression of research bias. Our friends from Freakonomics taught us long ago that patterns in observed phenomena do not always mean there are cause-and-effect relationships … sort of like comparing rises in dog food sales with higher incidence rates of mental illness, or attributing lower crime rates to higher abortion rates.
The problems of working with meta data is simple: These are disparate study sets employing disparate study designs that employ disparate statistical analysis methods. To cross-reference data between them is always problematic at best … and Schumm has invited a heap of trouble. The purpose of a meta study is to pool similar data sets, if they exist, not to force fit data into supporting hypotheses that were unintended in the constituent studies, or to reinterpret data to support preconceived conclusions. This is apparently what Schumm has done.
Perhaps a meta study may reveal a “hunch” but the proper investigative approach is NOT to prove the hunch from pre-existing meta data but to design a new and rigorous study that controls for errors and iatrogenic artifacts (note: "iatrogenic" is a fancy term for research bias). It would be more interesting, for instance, to compare the proclivities of biological offspring versus adopted children ... a correlation Schumm has failed to perform ... but even this type of correlation proves nothing because similar Nature v. Nurture studies have proved nothing.
In the end, we have to ask ourselves: So what? Whether or not a phenomenon under study is attributable to genetics or upbringing is quite beside the point regarding matters of equality under law ... unless one sets out to use flawed studies as an instrument of social oppression.
Sheria, am glad you like the Book of Dino Wisdom. There are lots of empty pages in it, of course, but we try to use engaging fonts to gussy up what little smarts we have.... It would be a great coffee-table book, if we had any coffee tables to put it on.
ReplyDeleteCapt. Fogg, I put little stock in the numbers -- it's a trick of quantification to masquerade as substance. I know the IQ test has a long history, but by now I think it's pretty much been reduced to a cheap reference point or a put-down. It has about as much scientific oomph as a "yo-mama" joke. Well, I can do no better than quote William Blake, who was a good deal smarter than any dinosaur could ever be:
"The hours of folly are measured by the clock, but of wisdom no clock can measure."
On more remark on the nature of statistics.
ReplyDeleteStatistics are mathematical measures of probability, and the operant term is “general tendencies.” Although statistics offer a useful tool in studying all types of human phenomena, there is no deterministic certainty in the use of such tools, and it is dangerous to think of statistics in this way.
Journalists are the worst offenders. Generally, they do not understand common research methods … meaning they do not understand such concepts as study design techniques, controls for eliminating study and sampling bias, and the use of validity tests whose only purpose is to separate “general tendencies” from random background noise.
When journalists get their hands on a research study, they have a tendency to botch meaning and interpretation. Even worse, they have a tendency to seek stories that can be sensationalized regardless of whether or not the study provides meaningful data. Most studies, especially meta studies, are direction pointers that suggest new areas of study, not destination points in our knowledge of human phenomena.
The worst pseudo-scientific studies are reported by evolutionary psychologists, whose non-insights on gender are put forth by male researchers whose pants are on fire.
Journalist almost always lack the skill to identify flaws in a study, and their reports merely end up advancing public ignorance and prejudice.
While I have to agree that the IQ test is an ad hoc and fuzzy estimation of something slightly intangible and very complex -- and so we shouldn't quibble about a point here or there, it's as obvious as can be that there are huge differences in cognitive ability between people. Talk to someone with a 70 IQ and you won't miss the lack of something. At 170, one generally finds a person quite different than average, even if she's not educated. But you may not notice it as she bags your groceries nor will she do a better job of it than a dummy like me.
ReplyDeleteDoes it grant good sense, sanity, polished erudition, an aptitude for memorizing? a love of learning? Motivation? I doubt it, but I think there's a spectrum and a variety of mental abilities as diverse as other physical attributes. IQ attempts to quantify some of these but not all.
There are people who read at the high school level in kindergarten. There are some who really never master tying their shoes and all the education possible won't make them good at spotting fallacies in complex arguments. Is it revealing that we're more likely to accept that a low IQ is a deficit, but a high one is to be regarded as potential elitism and poo-pooed?
I'm afraid I suspect politics for the difficulties with studying or measuring any kinds of differences between people, from size and strength to blood type. FWIW I once had an interest in finding data about worldwide distribution of ABO blood types. You'd think I had walked into an AA meeting with a pint of rye whiskey in my hand asking for ice. That's raaaaacist! No it isn't, it's data. People are racists, not numbers. We don't make them go away by chanting "we're all the same" like Gregorian monks. And we're not all the same. We may be better off for that too.
I'm not quite sure The Bell Curve was as much about racism as it's said to be, or that Hawkings' new book was a declaration of war on God believers. These are itchy subjects and we scratch them until we bleed and get infected.
Of course, he of 8 legs has it quite right - what the hell difference does it make even if it were true? Of course racists and bigots make their own tools and they don't need this one or even a concept of reality to support their damned ideas. We can't win that way.
In defense of the concept, I have to close with saying it's saved people from being marginalized and even institutionalized for their differences and I'm here to tell thee.
"I'm not quite sure The Bell Curve was as much about racism as it's said to be..."
ReplyDeleteI am, having trudged through all 800 or 900 pages of the book.
I don't disagree that IQ is a predictor of certain types of academic success, however to suggest that IQ is linked torace or ethnicity is racist and patently absurd. The Bell Curve posits that certain groups are inherently more intelligent than other groups based on race and ethnicity, echoing the so-called science of Eugenics that Nazi Germany found so ingtriguing, a science generated in America and embraced by Germany to justify it's anti-semitic policies and its overall racist agenda.
Then there's the entire issue of race itself. Race is primarily a social construct and appears to have little or no basis in science based on the work of the Human Genome project. According to the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research, Human Genome Program,
DNA studies do not indicate that separate classifiable subspecies (races) exist within modern humans. While different genes for physical traits such as skin and hair color can be identified between individuals, no consistent patterns of genes across the human genome exist to distinguish one race from another. There also is no genetic basis for divisions of human ethnicity. People who have lived in the same geographic region for many generations may have some alleles in common, but no allele will be found in all members of one population and in no members of any other.
Some suggested reading on the lack of a genetic basis for race:http://www.news-medical.net/news/2005/01/17/7317.aspx,
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/kron/archive/1998/02/23/race_part1.dtl,
http://www.pbs.org/race/004_HumanDiversity/004_01-explore.htm,(I highly reommend trying the interactive excercises offered at this site, they will turn everything that you thought that you knew about race upside down.)
I also wrote about the issue of race as a social construct in my old blog.
http://sheriasplace.blogspot.com/2007/01/obsessiveness-of-race.html
http://sheriasplace.blogspot.com/2007/01/sorry-but-i-disagree.html
http://sheriasplace.blogspot.com/2007/01/that-race-thing.html
I agree with Octo, the Schumm conclusion is spurious on its face and meta-analyses are largely only useful as Master's Thesis material employed to set up PhD dissertations or as pointers for more rigorous research. To use a meta-analysis of ten studies to conclude anything that informs vital human policy is politics, not science.
ReplyDeleteRemember the meta-analysis of studies that Irving Kirsch did "proving" that antidepressants are no more effective than placebos? Front cover of Newsweek for Sharon Begley and a perfect storm for patients and their doctors. That was my favorite example of the dangers of popular science reporting, but Schumm's study might turn out to be my new favorite.
Looking close at hand, I also have the experience of growing up with someone gay and knowing at age five or six that this younger child fit neither of the two gender categories I'd been taught. And the grownups all seemed worried about it.
I haven't read it yet, but it looks like Schumm was focused on behavior--on "acting gay," self-designating, etc. Homophobes hedge by saying that they have nothing but compassion for the "genetically anomalous"; they are merely insisting that they not be identifiable in public. They interpret whatever research they can find to turn to their purpose as proof that their world view should not be disturbed by the complexity and diversity in the human species. They are saying, "Okay, be gay if you can't help it, but you are responsible to appear heterosexual and to behave like one. And speak English, for God's sake!"
Ultimately, when I take my mental helicopter as high as it will go and view the world from there, the ridiculousness of an argument that tries to herd us all into one acceptable set of criteria is insane.
Our technological revolution has served primarily to put us in ever closer touch with our diversities as a species and with the universality of our basic human needs. We are the inhabitants of a planet, in all our different sizes, shapes, colors, genders, affectional orientations, beliefs, histories, and homes. We have such big jobs to do. STFU, Schumm.
And keep on pointing the way to sanity, Sheria.
Ultimately, when I take my mental helicopter as high as it will go and view the world from there, the ridiculousness of an argument that tries to herd us all into one acceptable set of criteria is insane.
ReplyDeleteNance, I love this sentence. It sums up succintly what I meandered on and on about. It's a perfect summation.
I read the Newsweek article on anti-depressants and I'm so glad to have my suspicions about the merit of the conclusions reached therein confirmed by someone with your expertise. This shoddy research grabs headlines and when it is finally discredited, very few take note of it. Instead, people continue to repeat the misinformation as fact.
Sheria,
ReplyDeleteIf you define race as subspecies, you're quite right. The last true subspecies seem to have died off or have been assimilated tens of thousands of years ago, although I'm still waiting for the genetics people to show some Neanderthal allele in the "Republican race."
For what it's worth, the term used to denote something a bit different a hundred years ago when people would use it to refer to rather arbitrary groups, such as the "German Race." You still hear some talking about the "Jewish Race" and yes, some Jews have a unique allele, but with all the blue eyed, blond Jews I know and descend from, it's a bit laughable. Still, I once heard a forensic anthropologist say of a heel bone "Of course that's Roman and not Saxon - can't you tell?" We should be able to accept that sort of thing without accusations of racism or suspicion that we think people from Rome have superior heel bones.
I look at "race" more as a kind of family resemblance writ large - which is genetic - and not much more. I wish we could talk about such things without the Sturm und Drang and the suspicion, since I think human variety makes life interesting. It's why I have usually gravitated to people who are different than me and come from different cultures.
Anyway, I think I was agreeing with you about IQ and race! And I do. Regardless of the writer's motivations the book is flawed and it's sad because the public isn't smart enough about scientific method to see it. It's a shame however that we're still reacting to the eugenics nonsense of a century ago - and over-reacting sometimes. I've heard too many arguments stating that we shouldn't do research on this or that because the knowledge would be misused. I think that's wrong.
I don't know if you read Gould's rebuttal: The Mismeasure of Man but I thought that was flawed too since it didn't really address the idea of claiming a very fuzzy measurement could produce highly accurate generalizations. His theses seemed to be that it couldn't be true,because if it were, it wouldn't be fair. Life has no obligation to be fair.
Anyway, as a large number of the dark skinned people life has introduced to me have been smarter than I am, and I admit it, It would not flatter me to make generalizations based on my own anecdotes.
It's irrelevant to our discussion here, and I hate to be so prolix, but I've heard complaints from medical types about the study of blood factors being so difficult and sometimes dangerous because research is politically suspect. I do know that people of African descent react differently to some medications than others and it's difficult to print warning labels like "If you're black, this may not work for you" because we're hypersensitive to anything that even hints at racism. I'm not making it up, I got it from my Doctor who is himself a black man and yes, sorry to offend any racists out there, a very smart one too.
But back to the "study" and homosexuality being an acquired characteristic, There's a growing body of literature about how the public is totally unable to analyze data, totally unable to discriminate between a double-blind, randomized study of a significant sample and spurious, rigged and even fraudulent one.
ReplyDeleteThe diet industry thrives on it and every day we read that eating this or that and especially buying this book or program will keep you from getting cancer, diabetes or whatever. All it takes is a white coat and a lack of integrity to bamboozle the public. This study, of course is more than suspect, it's a crock.
Whether homosexuality results from one thing or another, such as prenatal hormone levels or has a genetic basis or both, it isn't contagious and the best response I've heard to the argument that "it's a choice" was on The Impolitic recently.
"Just when did you choose to be straight?"