scientists fight the radical right
Family Pride on Feb 26th 2007
In December, 2006 Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family wrote a guest article for Time Magazine blasting the decision of Mary Cheney, the lesbian daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney, and her partner, Heather Poe, to start a family. The article misstates and twists social-science research to arrive at a false conclusion: gay parents are bad parents. Outraged by Dobson’s fraudulent accusations, Family Pride executive director Jennifer Chrisler wrote a rebuttal article that was published Time.
The manipulation of social science research by the radical right must stop.
There was a time when the media would hold organizations like Focus on the Family accountable for their misinformation and lies. The times have changed. But the scientific community is fighting back.
Today, Truth Wins Out launched a new website, respectmyresearch.org, where top researchers can speak out and report distortions of their work. Among the researchers featured, Dr. Carol Gilligan, whose research was misquoted by Dobson in his Time Magazine article.
It’s a start. We applaud the academic community for standing up and refusing to let their work be distorted for political gain.
If you suspect that scientific research is being misrepresented, do your homework. Confirm the distortion. Let the researcher know. Report it to respectmyresearch.org, and write an op-ed reporting the misuse. Take a stand for truth.
Filed in action, dobson, mary cheney |
