AOL Has A Propaganda Arm

And it's anti-gay propaganda, to boot.

Via Pam's House Blend, I found this article at AOL News by Paul Kix, touting a new "study" by Walter Schumm, which is a rehash of a previous study by Paul Cameron. Jim Burroway has a pretty thorough analysis at BTB, so I don't need to debunk the study here. Let it suffice to say that Walter Schumm is not a reputable researcher, any more than is Paul Cameron (who, depending on your source, is either a joke or an embarrassment among social scientists). You may remember Schumm as the other "expert" witness in the Florida gay-adoption trial, who, like George "Rentboy" Rekers was found by the court to be not credible -- in fact, his testimony helped the plaintiffs.

What's egregious here is 1) the fact that this "study" was reported at all, and 2) the completely credulous nature of the reporting. Add #3: the political slant, which paints Schumm and Cameron as lonely warriors fighting a tide of politically correct (and by implication, baseless) criticism.

As Burroway points out, Schumm's "study" is badly flawed, not least because of the "data" that he used, which was drawn from popular books for a lay audience. At least one author has already stated that her sample was deliberately skewed because she wanted even representation of both gay and straight children. Nowhere in the AOL article is there any hint that Schumm's study is anything less than scientifically valid, when in fact it is anything but.

Schumm says it shouldn't have taken until 2010 to do the meta-analysis. Too often his colleagues impose "liberal or progressive political interpretations" on their studies, which inhibit further inquiry. "It's kind of sad," he tells AOL News.

As if expecting a political backlash himself, Schumm concludes his study with a quote from philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. "All truth passes through three stages: First it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."

The idea that Kix is holding Schumm up as some sort of prophet is appalling. And he's so clueless that even when Schumm states his bias baldly, he doesn't get it.

But also in his testimony was an inkling of the robust research Schumm has just completed. 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.

I have a real problem with a scientist of any sort who engages on research directed toward "proving" a particular hypothesis. Sorry -- science doesn't work that way. Most research is not directed at proving anything -- it's directed toward testing the validity of a particular hypothesis. And from other comments in the story, it appears that Schumm started with data that was skewed, and then skewed it further. Kix just swallowed it whole, and doesn't seem to have questioned anything that Schumm said. Color me unimpressed.

Kix is obviously unqualified to be writing about science of any sort, and his cheerleading in this article is almost embarrassing -- at least, he should be embarrassed.

(Sadly, the comments are largely as ill-informed as the article itself.)

(The more details I notice about this article, the more warning signals go off. Let it suffice to say that, because of Schumm's agenda, he's probably not asking the right questions. And because of Kix' incompetence, neither is he.)