Mark Regnerus' study that suggested kids raised by same-sex parents don't turn out well has been discredited several times over in the last three years. Well, now you can add Regnerus' employer, the University of Texas, to the list. UT's student newspaper, the Daily Texan, got its hands on an internal review of Regnerus' work which confirmed what we already know--it was so badly flawed that it's completely unreliable.
Regnerus' normal six-year post-tenure review took an interesting turn when the then-chairwoman of UT's sociology department, Christine Williams, objected to the review committee giving Regnerus an "exceeds expectations" rating. Williams was concerned about the poor methodology Regnerus used in his New Family Structures Study. Per the policy of the College of Liberal Arts, this triggered a college-level review.
The college's senior associate dean for student affairs, Mark Musick, prepared a report as part of that review. Musick found that the Regnerus study's methodology was "fundamentally flawed"--largely echoing the review by Social Science Research, who originally published the study. Specifically, Musick wrote, there was no link between the parents’ sexuality and whether kids who are raised by same-sex parents fare worse than their counterparts who are raised by straight parents.
Musick also found that Regnerus violated a number of ethical standards set by the American Sociological Association. Specifically, his testimony as an expert witness for religious right groups and the fact he looked the other way while religious right groups used it to bolster their arguments even though he himself denied the study dealt with marriage equality. He also suggested that by not disclosing that the link between same-sex relationships and unstable families had been designed into the study, Regnerus may have committed scientific misconduct.
When the post-tenure review committee met again, it found that since the link had been included by design, "it is not possible to conclude that the different life outcomes between the two groups were caused by the parental relationship variable." When the college's dean, Randy Diehl, read this, he concluded that the study was so flawed that "no policy implications about same-sex parenting should be drawn from the study." Translation--it shouldn't be used as a resource for lawmakers on this topic.
Despite this, nothing was said about the ethical concerns Musick raised. This was because Diehl didn't think a post-tenure review was an appropriate venue to debate ethical matters--a suggestion that most of the academics here would find laughable. He asked two vice presidents for research for their opinion, and they concluded there was no scientific misconduct.
While it's good that UT has seen this study as the steaming pile of nonsense that it is, it's disappointing that it didn't address what appear to be egregious ethics violations by Regnerus. The Daily Texan isn't happy about it either; in a scathing editorial, it decries Diehl's inaction on Regnerus' "reckless misuse of his study." I have to wonder if Diehl was afraid of angering the state legislature. But when Regnerus himself says that his study really didn't say anything at all about gay parenting, I would think Diehl would have had an out to put Regnerus through the wringer.