Posted on 05/20/2015 2:45:02 PM PDT by markomalley
A study purporting to show that people’s views on gay marriage could change simply by meeting gay people has been retracted following revelations that its data was fabricated.
The study was published last December in Science, and prior to publication drew a great deal of attention from the American media. Vox, for instance, described the findings in the study as “kind of miraculous.” As it turns out, that’s exactly what they were, because they were apparently made up.
According to the study, people from communities hostile to gay marriage could have their opinions shift dramatically after spending just a few minutes speaking with a gay person who canvassed their neighborhood promoting gay marriage. Not only that, but this could have a spillover effect, making not just the people themselves more pro-gay but also other people who lived in the same household.
The study, among other things, lent support to the notion that those opposed to gay marriage simply don’t know or interact with open homosexuals. More broadly, it was seen as an important development in the science of how people can be convinced to change their minds on ideologically-charged issues.
The study began to fall apart when students at the University of California at Berkeley sought to conduct additional research building off of it, only to find major irregularities in how its research was apparently conducted. For example, thermometers used to measure participants body temperatures produced consistent, reliable information, even though they are known for producing relatively unreliable numbers.
Also, the data recovered had an exceptionally consistent distribution, with not a single one of the 12,000 supposed participants providing anomalous or unusual results. In other words, the study’s data was too perfect to be believable.
Donald Green, a professor at Columbia University and a co-author of the paper, made the decision to retract it after having a confrontation with co-author Michael LaCour, a graduate student at UCLA. While LaCour maintained that he hadn’t fabricated the data, he was also unable to produce the original source files supposedly used to produce it. When he failed to write-up a retraction, Green took the initiative and did so himself.
“I am deeply embarrassed by this turn of events and apologize to the editors, reviewers, and readers of Science,” Green told Retraction Watch, a science watchdog website.
LaCour, the graduate student accused of fabricating at least some of the data, made a Twitter post Wednesday afternoon saying he was “gathering evidence” about what had occurred:
Considering the amount of pro-homo propaganda churned out, it would come as no surprise that the polls that show support for this evil are all fabrications.
I will never trust a college-made study EVER AGAIN. LIARS! FILTHY LIARS!!
Nature as well.
ah, I hate to disagree but none of my brothers and sisters, and myself, believe in gay marriage, 3 out of 6 of the nephews and nieces and many of their friends do.
This CAN be reversed, by explaining that 80 percent of venereal disease comes from 3 percent of the populations, gays, to be exact.
That HIV has had devastating consequences and continues at a pace of 50k new cases a year because of lack of self control. And even with meds, they are getting dementia in their 40s
that gay men die 20 years earlier than their straight counterparts.
That the past 6000 years marriage has been understood to be between man and a woman.
Matrimony, derived from words meaning mother and condition. The condition of motherhood.
Most gay marriages are “open”, which means they think nothing of breaking marital vows.
etc.
Your comment reminds me of something that happened to me 3 weeks ago. I was perusing the racks at a thrift shop when an older black gentleman grabbed a hideous pair of rally stupid looking pants. He looked at me and said that he’d only wear those if he was the grand marshall at a gay rights parade.
We shared a good laugh.
I think that a lot of studies that support the lefts naeative have been fabricated over the years.
Truth and reality don’t matter to the left.
so we’re supposed to believe that people would completely change their values and beliefs just by talking to a homosexual for a few minutes?
has “Magic Negro” now been replaced by “Magic Homosexual”?
has anyone told Morgan Freeman that he’s soon to be out of a job?
Kinsey’s “revolutionary” reports on sexual behavior were almost entirely fabricated to suit his agenda. that’s one example you can cite where fake science has been used to further the goals of the critical theory/cultural marxist crowd.
http://www.crisismagazine.com/2012/kinseys-secret-the-phony-science-of-the-sexual-revolution
This is what happens when you mix science, politics, and money...
The jerks living in this country are so busy trying to come across as “a nice person” that they have all turned into gullible morons.
The first rule of mathematics, statistics, or any science is to search for the truth. I have nothing but contempt for any one who would falsify data.
Nothing could be further from the truth. I'd bet most non-homo parents are seriously upset when they discover a homosexual child. If they could push a button and change things, I'd bet most would choose to have their homosexual child be heterosexual. Many would probably automatically abort a homo child if it could be detected during pregnancy.
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