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Opinion: Editor Of Anti-Gay Regnerus Study A Menace To LGBT Families And Community

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James Wright is editor of the Elsevier journal Social Science Research. Because Wright allowed Mark Regnerus‘s booby-trapped anti-gay study with NOM-linked funding to be published through a corrupt process in violation of science publishing ethics, many leading scholars are calling for James Wright to be fired from Social Science Research.

It is true; given what Wright enabled with his illicit publication of the Regnerus study alone, he undermined the trust on which science is based.

And, Wright and Elsevier have sent a clear message to anti-scientific, radical anti-gay-rights factions, that they are for sale, and that it is possible to get pseudoscience that has been booby-trapped against LGBTers published through Wright with Elsevier.

WHY ELSEVIER AND WRIGHT ARE SUCH SERIOUS MENACES TO THE COMMUNITY

What makes Elsevier and James Wright such serious menaces to the LGBT community, is that Elsevier has assigned James Wright to be editor-in-chief of The International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2nd Edition.

If trust does not begin getting restored right now, if Elsevier refuses to commit to upholding at least bare minimum standards of science publishing ethics, then when that 2nd edition of the Elsevier Encyclopedia appears, it could very likely be stuffed absolutely full to bursting with hoax studies commissioned by anti-gay-rights organizations that know that with James Wright driving the Elsevier bus, profits are in the front seat and the bus is running clear over science publishing ethics, smashing science publishing ethics to smithereens.

We must keep in mind that National Organization for Marriage strategy documents released only through court order described plans for an “Expert Witness Project.”

Imagine how empowered NOM feels right now, having, so far, successfully pulled off the Regnerus hoax, and knowing that Elsevier and Wright are thrilled with how the hoax upped the Social Science Research journal’s “impact factor.”

It is essential to remember that NOM’s recent political losses in the United States have made its bigot leaders more determined than ever to spread ignorance-and-lies-based anti-gay hatred around the world, including to countries that promote murdering people only because they are gay.  We must take a firm and unwavering stand against Elsevier and James Wright giving an unwarranted imprimatur of scientific respectability to anti-gay hatred and lies.

We have a worldwide human rights duty of conscience to stop James Wright and Elsevier from profiting from unseemly hate speech in the false disguise of a “study.”

Certain scholars not currently active in the drive to get the Regnerus study retracted nonetheless do not mince their words when speaking about it. For example, Dr. Judith Stacey says this: “I certainly agree that the review process at the journal was seriously flawed and that the article should not have been published.”

Wright’s violations of science publishing ethics are already copiously documented.

WRIGHT AND ELSEVIER ARE KNOWINGLY ABETTING REGNERUS IN HIS LYING TO THE PUBLIC

One very serious infraction will serve here as an example of what makes Elsevier and James Wright so dangerous to the community.

Regnerus was funded chiefly by the NOM-linked Witherspoon Institute.

In 2010, a study supposedly to be on gay parenting was organized by the Director of the Witherspoon Project for Marriage, Family and Democracy, W. Bradford Wilcox.

Wilcox recruited Regnerus to do the study. Witherspoon gave Regnerus a $55,000 planning grant. Wilcox and Regnerus then collaborated on the study design. Subsequently, Witherspoon approved the study design and arranged for Regnerus to have his full $785,000 in study funding.

Wilcox was extensively involved in the remainder of Regnerus’s study, and, he is on the editorial board of the journal that published Regnerus, Elsevier’s Social Science Research. Yet, no further details of Wilccox’s involvement in the study are necessary to making the present point.

In his published study, and then again in his more recent Additional Analyses, Regnerus makes the false claim that no study funding agency representatives were involved in his study design or in otherwise conducting his study.

Wright, Regnerus and Wilcox did not disclose Wilcox’s multiple conflicts of interest of their own free wills. Rather, investigations unearthed the documentation that Wright had published a lie from Regnerus involving Wright’s editorial board member Wilcox.

Moreover, Wilcox’s conflicts of interest with Regnerus’s funders do not stop with The Witherspoon Institute. Regnerus received $90,000 for the study from The Bradley Foundation, which contributes money to The Ridge Foundation, whose chief officer is Brad Wilcox. (On page 3 at this link, you may see the Bradley Foundation’s $20,000 grant to Wilcox’s Ridge Foundation).

In response to being exposed in these ways, Wilcox is attempting to deny his connection to the funders by saying that his title of Director of Witherspoon’s Program for Marriage, Family and Democracy was “honorific.”

That is fooling exactly nobody.

Sociologist Philip Cohen says this: “I find this description not credible. I do not think any reasonable auditor or ethical agency would subscribe to the idea that the “director” of an organization was not an “officer” of it.”

Sociologist Dr. Lori Hollyfield says this:

“For Wilcox to use the word “honorific” about his position of Witherspoon Program Director, and Regnerus study design collaborator, is a veiled attempt to turn back the clock. But the damage is done, and the credibility of this study is absolutely, indisputably undone. That Wilcox was a study designer, and that was not disclosed, is alone enough to justify retraction. The further possibility that he was a peer reviewer just adds weight to the case for retraction.”

“It is especially unacceptable that the conflict of interests were hidden, and that there is an ongoing attempt to deceive the public about them.  It adds insult to that injury, that what was produced was a methodologically invalid study that perpetuates negative social stereotypes. This is a very malevolent situation; something must be done about it.” (Bolding added).

Elsevier officials and James Wright have been shown the documentation that Wilcox was a Witherspoon Program Director and that in that capacity, he recruited Regnerus to do Witherspoon’s study on gay parents, and then collaborated with Regnerus on the study design before Witherspoon approved Regnerus for full study funding.

Instead of correcting Regnerus’s lie, Elsevier and James Wright knowingly repeated the lie in publication.

Witherspoon, caught out lying on its stand-alone website for the Regnerus study, scrubbed incriminating evidence from their site, though we already had screenshots of that incriminating evidence.

People sponsoring, carrying out and publishing honest work do not have to lie in these ways.

In telling the public the lie that Regnerus’s funders were not involved in designing or conducting his study, Witherspoon and Regnerus are deliberately attempting to mislead the public into believing that Regnerus carried out his study independently of his funders and their anti-gay-rights political goals for the study.

Yet, Elsevier and James Wright have upon their shoulders an even heavier weight of accountability for disseminating that lie to the public, as they, not Regnerus, make the decisions of whether to publish.

With their planned, upcoming 2nd edition of Elsevier’s International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Elsevier and James Wright are capable of foisting any number of booby-trapped anti-LGBT “studies” off into the world.

Both Elsevier and James Wright must be counted as very serious menaces.

Sir William Timothy Gowers, British mathematician, is a Royal Society Research Professor at the Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics at Cambridge University. He is the leader of a boycott against Elsevier. Gowers has said:  “a piece of blatant anti-gay propaganda has been published in the otherwise respectable journal Social Science Research. The research was, it appears, indirectly funded by anti-gay campaigners and is now being gleefully used to help Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. The refereeing process seems to have been accelerated as well. Most importantly, the paper is bunkum and shouldn’t have been accepted: its conclusion (that children do worse if they have gay parents) is not remotely justified by the data used. So who publishes the journal Social Science Research and is not interested in investigating whether proper academic standards have been upheld? I surely don’t need to spell it out.” (Bolding added).

It is far past time for Elsevier to start behaving responsibly and to restore the trust that was shattered with the corrupted publication of the Regnerus submission. The Regnerus study must be retracted from publication, and James Wright must be fired from Elsevier, if the trust on which science is based is to begin to be restored.



New York City-based novelist and freelance writer Scott Rose’s LGBT-interest by-line has appeared on Advocate.com, PoliticusUSA.com, The New York Blade, Queerty.com, Girlfriends and in numerous additional venues. Among his other interests are the arts, boating and yachting, wine and food, travel, poker and dogs. His “Mr. David Cooper’s Happy Suicide” is about a New York City advertising executive assigned to a condom account.


				
				
																											

													
													
													
													

																												

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OPINION
‘I Hope You Find Happiness’: Moskowitz Trolls Comer Over Impeachment Fail
Published
 2 hours ago 
on
 April 24, 2024
By
  
U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) is mocking House Oversight Committee Chairman Jim Comer over a CNN report revealing the embattled Kentucky Republican who has been alleging without proof President Joe Biden is the head of a vast multi-million dollar criminal bribery and influence-peddling conspiracy, has given up trying to impeach the leader of the free world.
CNN on Wednesday had reported, “after 15 months of coming up short in proving some of his biggest claims against the president, Comer recently approached one of his Republican colleagues and made a blunt admission: He was ready to be ‘done with’ the impeachment inquiry into Biden.” The news network described Chairman Comer as “frustrated” and his investigation as “at a dead end.”
One GOP lawmaker told CNN, “Comer is hoping Jesus comes so he can get out.”
“He is fed up,” the Republican added.
Despite the Chairman’s alleged remarks, “a House Oversight Committee spokesperson maintains that ‘the impeachment inquiry is ongoing and impeachment is 100% still on the table.'”
RELATED: ‘Used by the Russians’: Moskowitz Mocks Comer’s Biden Impeachment Failure
Last week, Oversight Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-MD) got into a shouting match with Chairman Comer, with the Maryland Democrat saying, “You have not identified a single crime – what is the crime that you want to impeach Joe Biden for and keep this nonsense going?” and Comer replying, “You’re about to find out.”
Before those heated remarks, Congressman Raskin chided Comer, humorously threatening to invite Rep. Moskowitz to return to the hearing.
Congressman Moskowitz appears to be the only member of the House Oversight Committee who has ever made a motion to call for a vote on impeaching President Biden, which he did last month, although he did it to ridicule Chairman Comer.
It appears the Moskowitz-Comer “bromance” may be over.
Wednesday afternoon Congressman Moskowitz, whose sarcasm is becoming well-known, used it to ridicule Chairman Comer.
“I was hoping our breakup would never become public,” he declared. “We had such a great thing while it lasted James. I will miss the time we spent together. I will miss our conversations. I will miss the pet names you gave me. I only wish you the best and hope you find happiness.”
Watch the video above or at this link.
READ MORE: ‘Doesn’t Care if Pregnant Women Live or Die’: Alito Slammed Over Emergency Abortion Remarks
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OPINION
‘Doesn’t Care if Pregnant Women Live or Die’: Alito Slammed Over Emergency Abortion Remarks
Published
 4 hours ago 
on
 April 24, 2024
By
  
The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case centered on the question, can the federal government require states with strict abortion bans to allow physicians to perform abortions in emergency situations, specifically when the woman’s health, but not her life, is in danger?
The 1986 federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), signed into law by Republican President Ronald Reagan, says it can. The State of Idaho on Wednesday argued it cannot.
U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, The Washington Post’s Kim Bellware reported, “made a clear delineation between Idaho law and what EMTALA provides.”
“In Idaho, doctors have to shut their eyes to everything except death,” Prelogar said, according to Bellware. “Whereas under EMTALA, you’re supposed to be thinking about things like, ‘Is she about to lose her fertility? Is her uterus going to become incredibly scarred because of the bleeding? Is she about to undergo the possibility of kidney failure?’ ”
READ MORE: Gag Order Breach? Trump Targeted Cohen in Taped Interview Hours Before Contempt Hearing
Attorney Imani Gandy, an award-winning journalist and Editor-at-Large for Rewire News Group, highlighted an issue central to the case.
“The issue of medical judgment vs. good faith judgment is a huge one because different states have different standards of judgment,” she writes. “If a doctor exercises their judgment, another doctor expert witness at trial could question that. That’s a BIG problem here. That’s why doctors are afraid to provide abortions. They may have an overzealous prosecutor come behind them and disagree.”
Right-wing Justice Samuel Alito appeared to draw the most fire from legal experts, as his questioning suggested “fetal personhood” should be the law, which it is not.
“Justice Alito is trying to import fetal personhood into federal statutory law by suggesting federal law might well prohibit hospitals from providing abortions as emergency stabilizing care,” observed Constitutional law professor Anthony Michael Kreis.
Paraphrasing Justice Alito, Kreis writes: “Alito: How can the federal government restrict what Idaho criminalizes simply because hospitals in Idaho have accepted federal funds?”
Appearing to answer that question, Georgia State University College of Law professor of law and Constitutional scholar Eric Segall wrote: “Our Constitution unequivocally allows the federal gov’t to offer the states money with conditions attached no matter how invasive b/c states can always say no. The conservative justices’ hostility to the spending power is based only on politics and values not text or history.”
Professor Segall also served up some of the strongest criticism of the right-wing justice.
READ MORE: ‘They Will Have Thugs?’: Lara Trump’s Claim RNC Will ‘Physically Handle the Ballots’ Stuns
He wrote that Justice Alito “is basically making it clear he doesn’t care if pregnant women live or die as long as the fetus lives.”
Earlier Wednesday morning Segall had issued a warning: “Trigger alert: In about 20 minutes several of the conservative justices are going to show very clearly that that they care much more about fetuses than women suffering major pregnancy complications which is their way of owning the libs which is grotesque.”
Later, predicting “Alito is going to dissent,” Segall wrote: “Alito is dripping arrogance and condescension…in a case involving life, death, and medical emergencies. He has no bottom.”
Taking a broader view of the case, NYU professor of law Melissa Murray issued a strong warning: “The EMTALA case, Moyle v. US, hasn’t received as much attention as the mifepristone case, but it is huge. Not only implicates access to emergency medical procedures (like abortion in cases of miscarriage), but the broader question of federal law supremacy.”
READ MORE: ‘Blood on Your Hands’: Tennessee Republicans OK Arming Teachers After Deadly School Shooting
 
 
 
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News
Gag Order Breach? Trump Targeted Cohen in Taped Interview Hours Before Contempt Hearing
Published
 6 hours ago 
on
 April 24, 2024
By
  
Hours before his attorneys would mount a defense on Tuesday claiming he had not violated his gag order Donald Trump might have done just that in a 12-minute taped interview that morning, which did not air until later that day. It will be up to Judge Juan Merchan to make that decision, if prosecutors add it to their contempt request.
Prosecutors in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office told Judge Juan Merchan that the ex-president violated the gag order ten times, via posts on his Truth Social platform, and are asking he be held in contempt. While the judge has yet to rule, he did not appear moved by their arguments. At one point, Judge Merchan told Trump’s lead lawyer Todd Blanche he was “losing all credibility” with the court.
And while Judge Merchan directed defense attorneys to provide a detailed timeline surrounding Trump’s Truth Social posts to prove he had not violated the gag order, Trump in an interview with a local television station appeared to have done so.
READ MORE: ‘They Will Have Thugs?’: Lara Trump’s Claim RNC Will ‘Physically Handle the Ballots’ Stuns
The gag order bars Trump from “commenting or causing others to comment on potential witnesses in the case, prospective jurors, court staff, lawyers in the district attorney’s office and the relatives of any counsel or court staffer, as CBS News reported.
“The threat is very real,” Judge Merchan wrote when he expanded the gag order. “Admonitions are not enough, nor is reliance on self-restraint. The average observer, must now, after hearing Defendant’s recent attacks, draw the conclusion that if they become involved in these proceedings, even tangentially, they should worry not only for themselves, but for their loved ones as well. Such concerns will undoubtedly interfere with the fair administration of justice and constitutes a direct attack on the Rule of Law itself.”
Tuesday morning, Trump told ABC Philadelphia’s Action News reporter Walter Perez, “Michael Cohen is a convicted liar. He’s got no credibility whatsoever.”
He repeated that Cohen is a “convicted liar,” and insisted he “was a lawyer for many people, not just me.”
READ MORE: ‘Old and Tired and Mad’: Trump’s Demeanor in Court Detailed by Rachel Maddow
Since Cohen is a witness in Trump’s New York criminal case, Judge Merchan might decide Trump’s remarks during that interview violated the gag order, if prosecutors bring the video to his attention.
Enter attorney George Conway, who has been attending Trump’s New York trial.
Conway reposted a clip of the video, tagged Manhattan District Attorney Bragg, writing: “cc: @ManhattanDA, for your proposed order to show cause why the defendant in 𝘗𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘷. 𝘛𝘳𝘶𝘮𝘱 should not spend some quiet time in lockup.”
Trump has been criminally indicted in four separate cases and is facing a total of 88 felony charges, including 34 in this New York criminal trial for alleged falsification of business records to hide payments of “hush money” to an adult film actress and one other woman, in an alleged effort to suppress their stories and protect his 2016 presidential campaign, which experts say is election interference.
Watch the video below or at this link.
READ MORE: ‘Blood on Your Hands’: Tennessee Republicans OK Arming Teachers After Deadly School Shooting
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