Connect with us

Opinion: Regnerus Anti-Gay Scandal — Elsevier Corporate Greed Drove Publication?

Published

on

BRIEF STORY BACKGROUND

As previously reported, Mark Regnerus of the University of Texas at Austin took $785,000 — (through his long-time personal friend W. Bradford Wilcox of the anti-gay-rights Witherspoon Institute) — and produced a fraudulent anti-gay “study” that is being used as a political weapon to inflict harm on innocent gay people.

Counter to all science publishing ethics, the study was published without benefit of valid peer review. Indeed, the peer review of the Regnerus study, and of a study by Loren Marks propagandistically paired to it, was marked by corruption and improper insider influence. Wilcox is an editorial board member of the Elsevier company’s journal Social Science Research, which published Regnerus. Wilcox, furthermore, is a paid Regnerus study consultant. It appears he also did some peer review of the paired Regnerus and Marks studies.

Whereas the peer reviewers allowed the Regnerus study’s glaring methodological failures through to publication, a mass of experts in the academy expressed concern that the scientifically invalid study had been published, and at that, on a suspicious rush schedule.

According to Dr. Gary Gates of the Williams Institute, the mere fact that peer reviewers had conflicts of interest means that the Regnerus study did not have valid peer review. Gates is seconded in that opinion by Vanderbilt University Sociologist Tony N. Brown, Editor of the American Sociological Association’s American Sociological Review, who has said: “journal editors should always seek knowledgeable reviewers who do not have any conflict of interest regarding the submitted author or the study’s funder.” (Bolding added).

Gates further says: “We need to get answered the question about why the Regnerus study was published in a rush, with no valid peer review. Other issues surrounding the Regnerus and Marks studies may be interesting, but the core question relates to the fact that the study was published in a suspicious rush without valid peer review. What caused Social Science Research‘s editor-in-chief James Wright to publish this study in a rush, without valid peer review? We need that question answered.”

REED ELSEVIER CORPORATE GREED DROVE THE PUBLICATION OF THE REGNERUS STUDY

In the response to the letter from over 200 Ph.D.s and M.D.s, Social Science Research‘s editor-in-chief James Wright assigned SSR editorial board member Darren Sherkat to an “audit” of the publication process of the Regnerus and Marks studies.

In his audit, Sherkat admits that the Regnerus study is not scientifically valid, and that the peer review failed, yet he exonerates Wright and the peer reviewers from all accountability for their gross dereliction of duty. He says that the unethical process through which the Regnerus study was published is just “business as usual” at Social Science Research.

Sherkat actually analyzes how the publication of the scientifically invalid Regnerus study has harmed Social Science Research‘s scientific reputation, in context of explaining how corporate greed drove the publication of the Regnerus submission. Yet, very disturbingly, Sherkat said that had he been in Wright’s shoes, he may well have made all of the same publishing decisions. In other words, Sherkat is more devoted to his boss James Wright and to his greedy corporate Reed Elsevier bosses than he is to ethical science publishing.

Apparently, other anti-gay-rights organizations such as Regnerus’s personal friends at the Witherspoon Institute could fund an endless series of fraudulent studies booby-trapped against gays or against other minorities, and Social Science Research would publish all of them without benefit of valid peer review.

In his audit, Sherkat explains the role that parent company Reed Elsevier played in pushing greed to predominate over ethical science publishing in the Regnerus scandal.

The Regnerus publishing scandal actually is much broader than just the Regnerus and Marks papers. Three Regnerus study commentaries published alongside the Regnerus and Marks papers were done by three persons without same-sex-parenting science expertise, and with conflicts of interest in commenting on the study. Those three are 1) UT’s Dr. Cynthia Osborne, Regnerus’s co-researcher on the “study;” 2) Dr. Paul Amato, a paid Regnerus study consultant; and 3) David Eggebeen, a Witherspoon bigot crony who supports the continuation of sexual orientation apartheid.

Here is part of Sherkat’s explanation of how Reed Elsevier greed is driving the publication and promotions of the wide-scaled anti-gay Regnerus scandal:

“Controversy over sexuality sells and in only a week after publication these papers have already skyrocketed to the most downloaded papers published in Social Science Research.” (Bolding added). “But neither paper should have been published, in my opinion. Undoubtedly, any researcher doing work on same-sex parenting will now have to address the Regnerus paper, and these citations will inflate the all-important “impact factor” of the journal. It is easy to get caught up in the empirical measures of journal success, and I believe this overcame Wright in driving his decision to rush these into print. The fetishism of the journal impact factors comes from the top down, and all major publishers prod editors about the current state of their impact factor. Elsevier is particularly attentive to this and frequently inquires about what Wright is doing to improve the already admirable impact factor of Social Science Research. As social scientists, popularity should not be the end we seek, and rigorous independent evaluation of these manuscripts would have made Social Science Research a less popular but better journal.” (Bolding added).

In his CYA “audit,” Sherkat further wrote:

“once they were accepted there was an unseemly rush to publication.” He continues: “that was justified based on the attention that these studies would generate. The published responses were milquetoast critiques by scholars with ties to Regnerus and/or the Witherspoon Institute, and Elsevier assisted with the politicization by helping to publicize the study and by placing these papers in front of the pay wall.” (Bolding added).

SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH’S JAMES WRIGHT, BRAD WILCOX AND DARREN SHERKAT GUILTY OF GROSS DERELICTION OF DUTY

The Social Science Research editors contrived an “audit” of the publication of Regnerus’s pseudoscience to create an appearance that they had behaved responsibly when they manifestly did not behave responsibly.

In interviews that Wright and Sherkat gave to The Chronicle of Higher Education, the upshot is that all of the gross dereliction of duty that SSR people committed in relation to the Regnerus pseudoscience scandal can be explained away and shrugged off because people are just so darned busy these days.

Additionally, Sherkat did write in his audit: “scholars who should have known better failed to recuse themselves from the review process.”

That is where the community must demand that Reed Elsevier and Wright do the right thing by retracting the Regnerus study from publication. The study could then be put through valid peer review prior to any future eventual re-publication. It simply must not be allowed to stand, that Reed Elsevier, Wright, Sherkat and Wilcox continue to abet fraudulent attacks against innocent gay people. These malefactors’ admixture of corporate greed and/or indifference to harm their actions are unjustly inflicting on innocent human beings is appalling.

Here is an example — from the Chronicle article — of Sherkat’s cavalier article about the editors’ and the peer reviewers’ gross dereliction of their professional duties. The following quote is in relation to the peer reviewers’ having allowed the Regnerus study through to publication, even though Regnerus made no scientifically adequate determination of whether he study respondents actually had “same sex parents,” as Regnerus claims in his study conclusion.

“At the same time, he,” — meaning SSR’s Sherkat — “sympathizes with the task of the overburdened reviewer inclined to skim. Because of how the paper was written, Sherkat said, it would have been easy to miss Regnerus’s explanation of who qualified as “lesbian mothers” and “gay fathers.”

That is exactly why only gay parenting topic experts can be used to peer review a scientific journal submission on gay parenting.  You do not ask a therapist to peer review a submission about the latest techniques in brain surgery. Here is how Sherkat continues with his duplicitous, self-serving alibis for the peer reviewers’ gross dereliction of professional duty:

If a reviewer were to skip ahead to the statistics in the table, it would be understandable, he said, to assume that the children described there were, in fact, raised by a gay or lesbian couple for a significant portion of their childhoods. In reality, only two respondents lived with a lesbian couple for their entire childhoods, and most did not live with lesbian or gay parents for long periods, if at all.”

In the Chronicle interview, SSR’s editor-in-chief James Wright uses a euphemism to describe how corporate greed led him to publish the Regnerus submission without benefit of valid peer review:

“In his audit, Sherkat reveals that all the reviewers declared that the paper would generate “enormous interest.” Enormous interest leads to citations and downloads, which is how a journal’s relevance is judged. The higher the impact of its papers, the greater its prestige. Wright acknowledges that he was excited about the interest the paper would no doubt inspire, and he wonders in retrospect if “perhaps this prospect caused me to be inattentive to things I should have kept a keener eye on.”

CONCLUSION

The anti-gay-rights Witherspoon Institute funded Regnerus’s pseudoscience out of contempt for gay human beings and their rights.

The Regnerus “study,” 1) propagandistically paired with the Marks study, and 2) unethically pumped up further through Regnerus-and-Marks-studies-related propaganda pumped out by 3) the three non-topic-expert commentary writers with conflicts of interest, was 4) illicitly helped through to publication by the presence of Witherspoon’s Brad Wilcox on the Social Science Research editorial board.

The community now must — with unwavering determination — demand that the Regnerus study be retracted from publication and put through valid peer review prior to any eventual future re-publication.

The Regnerus pseudoscience scandal undermines the trust on which science is based.

This was hardly the first time that narrow-minded bigots ever commissioned a “study” for use as a political weapon against a minority.

We must now step up to the plate and demand that scientific standards be upheld, so that no other minority is similarly victimized through a combination of bigots’ spite and corporate greed in the future.

In 2010, Elsevier reported a profit margin of 36% on revenues of $3.2 billion. Elsevier accounts for 28% of the revenues of the Reed Elsevier group (₤1.5b of 5.4 billions in 2006).

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.

 

 

Continue Reading
Click to comment
 
 

Enjoy this piece?

… then let us make a small request. The New Civil Rights Movement depends on readers like you to meet our ongoing expenses and continue producing quality progressive journalism. Three Silicon Valley giants consume 70 percent of all online advertising dollars, so we need your help to continue doing what we do.

NCRM is independent. You won’t find mainstream media bias here. From unflinching coverage of religious extremism, to spotlighting efforts to roll back our rights, NCRM continues to speak truth to power. America needs independent voices like NCRM to be sure no one is forgotten.

Every reader contribution, whatever the amount, makes a tremendous difference. Help ensure NCRM remains independent long into the future. Support progressive journalism with a one-time contribution to NCRM, or click here to become a subscriber. Thank you. Click here to donate by check.

News

Trump Doubles Down Calling Egg Prices ‘Too Low’ as Costs Soar to Record Highs

Published

on

In the days leading up to Easter, President Donald Trump has repeatedly—and falsely—claimed that egg prices have plummeted to the point of being “too low,” baselessly citing steep double-digit declines—even as Americans face record-high prices at the grocery store.

“The egg prices are down 87 percent, but nobody talks about that,” the President said on Friday. “You can have all the eggs you want, we have too many eggs, in fact, if anything the prices are getting too low.”

Trump campaigned on the promise he would lower the price of groceries “on day one,” a promise that three months later is not only unfulfilled, but in some cases reversed: overall grocery prices have risen.

READ MORE: ‘Taunting SCOTUS’: Concerns Mount Over ‘Openly Contemptuous’ White House

On Thursday, Trump claimed the price of eggs had dropped 92%, while berating a reporter and his Federal Reserve Chairman.

“The price of groceries are substantially down,” the president falsely claimed.

The price of eggs, you know, when I came in, they hit me with eggs. I just got there, I was here for one week, and they started screaming, ‘Eggs have gone through the roof.’ I said, ‘I just got here.’

“They went up 87%, and you couldn’t get them,” Trump told reporters. “They said, ‘You won’t have eggs for Easter,’ which is coming up. Happy Easter, everybody.You won’t have eggs for Easter.”

“And we did an unbelievable job, and now eggs are all over the place and the price went down 92 percent,” he claimed.

READ MORE: Trump’s Latest Target: The Watchdog That Keeps Suing Him

Last week on Monday, Trump had claimed, falsely, that egg prices had dropped 79%.

Egg prices, Newsweek reported on Wednesday, “continued to climb despite recent efforts by the Trump administration to combat the shortage brought about by the ongoing bird flu with imports of Turkish eggs. The CPI egg index jumped by 5.9 percent from February and was up 60.4 percent compared to March 2024, and the average price for a dozen grade A large eggs climbed 5.6 percent to a record $6.23.”

Moe Davis, the well-known retired U.S. Air Force colonel, attorney, and former administrative law judge, posted to social media a federal government chart of egg prices.

“According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,” Davis wrote, “the price of a dozen eggs in March was $6.23, the highest price ever recorded and 26% higher than in January when Trump took office. Of course if Trump says egg prices are down then the MAGA cult is obliged to say egg prices are down.”

Watch the video above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Things Like This Take Place’: Trump Shrugs Off Mass Shooting Despite Once Being a Target

 

Image via Reuters

Continue Reading

News

‘Taunting SCOTUS’: Concerns Mount Over ‘Openly Contemptuous’ White House

Published

on

The Trump White House is coming under fire for what appears to be an attempt to mock the U.S. Supreme Court, the facts in the case of a Maryland man wrongly deported to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador, and The New York Times.

The White House’s official account on the social media platform X posted a “corrected” version of a New York Times story—corrections that have drawn concern and scorn from the legal community and political commentators.

“Senator Meets With Wrongly Deported Maryland Man in El Salvador,” read a screenshot of the Times’ headline.

But the White House’s version (below), complete with red ink and cross outs, reads: “Senator Meets With MS-13 Illegal Alien in El Salvador Who Is Never Coming Back.”

The White House added remarks saying, “Fixed it for you, @NYTimes. Oh, and by the way, @ChrisVanHollen — he’s NOT coming back.”

Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) traveled to El Salvador this week and, after several days, was finally permitted to meet with Kilmar Abrego Garcia—the legal U.S. resident whom the Trump administration has admitted in court it wrongly deported. Multiple courts, including the Supreme Court, have ordered the administration to “facilitate” his return. Yet the Trump administration appears to be refusing.

Friday’s claim that Abrego Garcia is “never coming back” was taken as a serious statement of intent by some.

Attorney Aaron Regunberg wrote: “The White House is saying he’s ‘never coming back’ — they are explicitly declaring they will violate a unanimous Supreme Court order.” Calling out Senate Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Regunberg wrote: “you said this was your red line that would trigger ‘extraordinary action.’ So…where the f— are you?”

“2 telling things here,” offered The Washington Post’s senior political reporter Aaron Blake. “1) White House crosses out ‘wrongly,’ despite repeatedly acknowledging its error in court. 2) ‘who’s never coming back’ is basically taunting SCOTUS. Signals the opposite of any intent to ‘facilitate’ his return.”

“The White House press shop lies and claims Mr. Abrego was not wrongfully deported, despite having acknowledged that fact at every single stage of the court process; at the district court, the circuit court, and the Supreme Court,” noted attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick. “They are openly contemptuous of the truth.”

Civil rights attorney Patrick Jaicomo, replying to the White House, wrote: “There is a mistake in the headline. You didn’t wrongly deport Garcia. You wrongly imprisoned him without due process. So, fix your mistake, as the courts have ordered. You don’t have to keep doubling down on bad decisions.”

Attorney Dilan Esper added, “I’ll remind you that the federal judges issuing orders see this.”

Veteran journalist John Harwoood called it, “disgusting fascism,” and wrote that “the Trump WH is garbage from top to bottom.”

Opinion writer Magdi Jacobs noted, “They’re moving from evading the judiciary to openly mocking it. This is very dangerous territory.”

Some others addressed what they appeared to suggest was the juvenile nature of the White House’s post.

“When you graduate from 4chan and land your first job at the White House,” wrote Talking Points Memo publisher Josh Marshall.

“The Trump admin really wants to distract people from the fact that it illegally sent someone to El Salvador in violation of a court order & binding law, either out of malice or sheer incompetence. No amount of s—posting will change that,” said Reason magazine’s Billy Binion.

“This is the evil of the Trump White House,” remarked Fred Wellman, an Army veteran, political consultant, and the host of the podcast “On Democracy.”

Journalist and author Robert Lusetich observed: “The White House, an ever-lasting symbol of the power, dignity and greatness of the United States. Now, a trolling meme account.”

Anti-gun-violence activist Fred Guttenberg declared the White House is “staffed by pathetic punk 2nd grade pre pubescent children.”

Journalist James Surowiecki commented, “Your tax dollars are paying for this childish cr–.”

See the White House’s social media post above or at this link.

 

Image via Reuters

Continue Reading

News

Trump’s Latest Target: The Watchdog That Keeps Suing Him

Published

on

From the outset of his 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump signaled that a central focus of his presidency would be targeting and exacting retribution against his critics.

“In 2016, I declared, ‘I am your voice,’” Trump told attendees at CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference in March 2023. “Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”

In keeping his retribution vow, Trump in just three months—often with the use of the power of his executive orders—has targeted for retribution numerous top law firms, revoked the security clearances of dozens of top national security experts, former government officials, and former political opponents. He has targeted top universities, threaten to defund millions of dollars or more in critical research grants, and declared top news outlets CNN and MSNBC “corrupt” and “illegal.”

Just days after the 2024 election, NPR reported that during the campaign, “Trump made more than 100 threats to investigate, prosecute, imprison or otherwise punish his perceived enemies, including political opponents and private citizens.”

READ MORE: ‘Things Like This Take Place’: Trump Shrugs Off Mass Shooting Despite Once Being a Target

On Thursday, Trump threatened to go after one of his top legal critics: CREW, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonprofit legal and ethics watchdog that has been working for years to hold him (and others) to account, often by suing.

Asked by a reporter what group he would like to see have their tax exempt status removed, Trump replied, “Well, we’ll be making some statements, but it’s a big deal.”

“They’re so rich and so strong, and then they go so bad, they’ve earned so much by being a member of this country, you know, a member of this group, this beautiful group of people in this country, and then they go and they abuse their power like that,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office Thursday afternoon. “I think it’s, you know, I think it’s very sad.”

“I have a group named CREW,” he continued. “CREW. You ever hear of it? I think it’s CREW, and they have a guy that heads CREW. It’s supposed to be a charitable organization. The only charity they had is going after Donald Trump. So we’re looking at that.”

“We’re looking at a lot of things, but if you take a look at CREW, what they’ve done, and I think it was a very big abuse, but we’re going to be finding out pretty soon.”

During Trump’s first and second terms, CREW sued Trump or his administration for alleged emoluments clause violations, alleged Presidential Records Act noncompliance, and challenged some of his executive orders. It also represented voters in a lawsuit attempting to use the 14th Amendment to remove him from the ballot, claiming his role in the January 6, 2021 insurrection was constitutionally disqualifying.

READ MORE: ‘Full Time Babysitter’: Treasury Secretary Urges Caution After Trump Fed Chair Threat

In January, CREW was part of a lawsuit suing to “block Trump’s illegal plan to fire government workers,” and in February, CREW sued the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) “to compel transparency.”

CREW, in a statement to NCRM, vowed to continue its work.

“For more than 20 years, CREW has exposed government corruption from politicians of both parties who violate the public trust and has worked to promote an ethical, transparent government,” CREW Vice President of Communications Jordan Libowitz said. “Good governance groups are the heart of a healthy democracy. We will continue to do our work to ensure Americans have an ethical and accountable government.”

Legal experts are blasting Trump’s threat.

“It is literally a federal crime punishable by up to five years in prison for the President, VP, or any senior White House employee, to ‘request, directly or indirectly, any officer or employee of the IRS to conduct … an audit or other investigation of any particular taxpayer,'” wrote attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council.

“The Trump administration has gone after law firms, they’ve gone after universities, and they’re now going after civil society, including groups like @CREWcrew. They want to silence any opposition to their extreme agenda,” added the National Women’s Law Center.

“President Trump is now threatening to weaponize the IRS against nonprofit organizations like @CREWcrew,” wrote Public Citizen. “He is attacking our most basic right: to say what we believe without fear of government prosecution. We proudly stand in solidarity with our friends at CREW.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

Watch the video above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Stunning Admission’: GOP Senator Says Colleagues ‘Are All Afraid’ of ‘Retaliation’

Image via Reuters

Continue Reading

Trending

Copyright © 2020 AlterNet Media.