Hailed as “the biggest political science study” of 2014 and published in Science magazine, “When Contact Changes Minds” was destined to launch its authors to academic fame
writes
Benny Huang.
Too bad the data were faked.
The study purported to demonstrate that door-to-door canvassers who
targeted conservative voters could induce long-term attitudinal changes
on the question of same-sex marriage through the use of sob stories, or
what they called “heartfelt, reciprocal and vulnerable conversations.”
It’s easy to see how the study appealed directly to the prejudices of
the Left. When one proceeds from the assumption that opposition to
same-sex marriage can only be explained by ignorance, then the obvious
solution is to “educate” the rubes. If only these stupid old bigots knew
more homosexuals they’d understand that “gays” are categorically nice
people who suffer real harm from societal prejudice. A little human
contact, a little “dialogue” and—voila!—mindless, heartless, bigotry
melts away.
The study’s irregularities became apparent when graduate students at
UC Berkeley attempted to replicate its results without success. … With a little more digging it became apparent that
the study was not just flawed but entirely bogus.
… No one can doubt your conclusions when you’ve got
science
to back them up, which explains why homosexual activists nearly always
buttress their questionable claims with chest-beating proclamations that
the science is settled. Amazingly, it’s on their side…
again! Isn’t it always?
I suppose that would depend on what you mean by “science.” If you
mean an organized, methodological system for discerning truth through
controlled experimentation conducted with no emotional interest
whatsoever in the results, then no. But if you mean the scientific
establishment, then I suppose that yes, Big Science is on the side of
the homosexual movement, or more accurately, it’s in the tank for them.
Once you understand this fact it becomes clear why
Science
magazine published the paper in the first place and why their much
ballyhooed peer-review process didn’t spot this obvious fake a million
miles away. How rigorous could their fact-checking have been?
It wasn’t always this way. There was a time when psychiatric experts
actually classified homosexuality as a pathology. Apparently the experts
were fallible in those dark ages, whereas now they’re not. After
shrieking homosexual activists crashed a string of psychiatric
conventions, the scientists decided, in 1973, to cave to their demands
and remove same-sex attraction disorder (SSAD) from its Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual (DSM). That’s how science is done, right? When an
angry mob doesn’t like your findings, you change them.
Gone are the days when such histrionics are even necessary. Pressure
tactics are rarely used anymore because infiltration of the sciences and
outright fraud of the variety perpetrated by Michael LaCour work so
much better.
Consider for a moment another study from the University of Melbourne
that found that same-sex parents actually raise happier, healthier
children. The study failed to meet even the most basic scientific
standards. Here’s how they reached their foregone conclusion: the
researchers placed advertisements for same-sex parents in “gay”
magazines and forums, then asked the respondents questions about the
health and welfare of their children. The respondents, knowing that they
were being studied and why, were nearly unanimous that the kids were
okay. No, they were better than okay! They were straight-A students and perfect junior citizens.
It’s science! Okay, so it’s not real science. It’s rainbow science, a shoddy imitation that isn’t bound by any of the old rules.
Rainbow science is actually older than you might expect. I would
trace it back to at least 1948, when Alfred Kinsey, a bisexual professor
at the University of Indiana, published his “Sexual Behavior in the
Human Male,” often regarded as the first shot fired in the sexual
revolution. The study came as a shock to American senses because it
claimed that men routinely engage in sexual activities that were taboo
at the time and some that are taboo even now. Kinsey’s “research” found
that an astonishing 95 percent of men had broken sex crimes laws that
merited prison time, thus transforming those who were actually in prison
into unfortunate souls who had had the bad luck of getting caught.
Surely the juries that convicted them were comprised almost entirely of
hypocrites who secretly indulged the same desires. This was exactly
Kinsey’s desired effect—to make the deviant seem normal and thus to
transform traditional sexual mores into badges of hypocrisy. It should
be noted that Kinsey was something of a pervert himself who engaged in
or condoned pretty much every sexual aberration you’ve ever heard of and
few you haven’t. Animals and children were fair game.
… Rainbow science isn’t science, even if
it’s peer-reviewed or appears in a highbrow journal. … Yet rainbow science appears to
be winning adherents with its fake studies, foregone conclusions, and
unfalsifiable hypotheses.