My kitchen rules

OK, so these aren't really my kitchen rules, they come from the brilliant "Too Many Chiefs Only One Indian" by Sat Bains, chef proprietor of Restaurant Sat Bains in Nottingham. They might as well be mine because there are so many of them that I live by and I believe will improve everybody's cooking and eating for the better.

1. Be the Best. Work hard. Work fast. Work clean.
 
2. Every ingredient we use has to be the best we can afford.
 
3. Seasons have to rule the kitchen.
 
4. Only allow minimal manipulation when necessary.
 
5. Elevate flavors through understanding.
 
6. Cook as if you are eating.
 
7. Waste is poor workmanship.
 
8. Extraction of flavor is our role in life as cooks.
 
9. Balance of menu is our obligation to our guests.
 
10. Health is crucial in menu planning.
 
11. Seasoning is a true skill so taste, taste, and taste again.
 
12. Our goal is to be the best we should act like the best!


One last thing. Sat is currently heading to Everest to set a world record for the world's highest black tie dinner party. They are trying to raise £100,000 for Community Action Nepal. If you buy a copy of the book direct from the publisher here, it will cost you less and the difference will go towards the fund. Win-win.

Mandate for Marriage & Bad religious arguments #marref #yesequality

OK, so just last week I dealt with the religious arguments that might possibly come up in the context of the marriage equality debate. I dealt with those arguments for the sake of completeness. I didn't really expect them to come up in the debate other than as throwaway comments from the NO side. Boy, was I wrong. 

A new website has launched called Mandate for Marriage. It is run by a family of Christian fundamentalists from Mayo lead by Sean Burke. The aim of the website is to defend traditional marriage and to show that:

a)Scripture condemns homosexuality and forbids same-sex marriage

b)Marriage equality threatens religious freedom and will have dire consequences for Christians

c)Legalising marriage equality is bad for parents and children

d)Marriage is a mandate given by God which cannot/should not be altered by the State


None of these four arguments really hold up but it surprised me just how badly defended they are on the website.


1. On scripture and marriage

While a lot of the arguments dredged up by Mandate for Marriage have been dealt with in my recent blog post, there are a few new and really awfully made arguments presented in the Scripture section of the Mandate for Marriage website.

The first problem is that the section opens by arguing that the Bible doesn't present homosexuality as a trait which cannot be changed but rather as a sinful act:

"The Scripture never depicts homosexuality as a trait which one cannot change, such as e.g. skin colour. Homosexuality is never assumed to be a genetic, predetermined condition. Rather, it is presented as a sinful practice which can be forsaken by the grace of God. "

Arguing that the Bible doesn't categorise homosexuality as a genetic condition and therefore it is a sinful practice is idiotic. The Bible is not a scientific text and there are abundant examples that the authors of the various books of the Bible had no idea how genetics or biology actually worked. I mean, if they did, we wouldn't have passages like this:

" Jacob, however, took fresh-cut branches from poplar, almond and plane treesand made white stripes on them by peeling the bark and exposing the white inner wood of the branches. Then he placed the peeled branches in all the watering troughs, so that they would be directly in front of the flocks when they came to drink. When the flocks were in heat and came to drink, they mated in front of the branches. And they bore young that were streaked or speckled or spotted."

Genesis 30:37-39

Nobody who knows anything about genetics could possibly think that if you show striped patterns to pregnant cows then you'll get striped offspring.

As it happens, we don't fully understand the actual factors which come together to determined sexual orientation. We have identified genetic factors, epigenetic factors, gestational and otherwise developmental factors which can influence a person's sexual orientation. In fact, pretty much the one thing that science is confident about is that free choice is not likely to be a factor.

Oh, and before anyone decides to point out that the scientific errors in the Bible are an Old Testament problem, don't bother. There are some whopping scientific errors in the NT too. Just like this for example:

"Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches."

Matthew 13:32

Firstly, mustard doesn't grow into a tree, it grows into a shrub with a maximum height of about six feet. Secondly, the mustard seed isn't the smallest seed. It's not even the smallest seed that would have been known to the people of the time. The black orchid would have seeds much smaller than a mustard seed.

The second problem with the Scripture section is the idea that Jesus condemns gay marriage by referring to the destruction of Sodom. There are two problems with this line of argument.

Firstly, as I pointed out in my previous post, the destruction of Sodom had nothing to do with sexual immorality. Ezekiel 16:49 makes it quite clear that Sodom's downfall was caused by inhospitality.

Secondly, the passage in Luke 17:29, used to demonstrate that Jesus approved of Sodom's destruction is equally wrong. If we look at the overall story in Luke 17, we can see that verse 29 is being taken out of context:

"Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst.”

Then he said to his disciples, “The time is coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, but you will not see it. People will tell you, ‘There he is!’ or ‘Here he is!’ Do not go running off after them. For the Son of Man in his day[d] will be like the lightning, which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other. But first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation.

“Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all.

“It was the same in the days of Lot. People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. But the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all.

“It will be just like this on the day the Son of Man is revealed. On that day no one who is on the housetop, with possessions inside, should go down to get them. Likewise, no one in the field should go back for anything."

Luke 17:20-31

The reference to Sodom in this passage comes from a question from the Pharisees about the coming of the kingdom of God. Jesus uses the examples of both Noah and Sodom to show that when God acts, there is no prior warning. He states that people of Noah's time and people in Sodom carried on about their business oblivious of the impending doom and so it will be with the coming of the son of Man. Not only does Jesus not approve the destruction of Sodom in this passage but nowhere in this passage does it claim that Sodom's destruction was due to sexual immorality.

The only passages which claim this are those written by unknown authors (i.e. 2 Peter, Jude, 1 Timothy) or by Paul, a man who never actually met Jesus. So the idea that we can know whether Jesus would have or ever did actually condemn gay marriage is ridiculous.

Finally, there are two interesting side notes to be made about the Scripture section. Firstly, the section quotes Leviticus 20:13 as a condemnation of homosexuality but conveniently leaves out part of the verse which states that homosexuals should be put to death. Secondly, the last sentence of the section states that Jesus approves of Leviticus through Matthew 19:19, so expect them to call for tattoos, pork, shellfish and astrology to be made illegal any day now.

 2. On marriage equality and religious freedom

The main thrust of the religious freedom section of the website is that the rights and freedoms of Christians will be damaged by marriage equality. Putting aside for the moment that the rights and freedoms of LGBT people are already being infringed, the examples of these persecutions presented are somewhat less than compelling.

a) Brian Barkley, Yorkshire, UK

Brian Barkley, according to the website, is:

" a 71-year-old senior volunteer with the Red Cross, was sacked from his job in November 2014 for holding a placard stating ‘No Same Sex Marriage’

The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, for those who don't know is an organisation dedicated to carrying out humanitarian work worldwide. It was originally founded as an organisation for treating wounded soldiers on the battlefield regardless of whose side they are on. Since its inception in 1863 the Red Cross has been dedicated to a mission of aid to all people regardless of their views or backgrounds. As such in 1965, it outlined its core principles which include:

Humanity

The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, born of a desire to bring assistance without discrimination to the wounded on the battlefield, endeavours, in its international and national capacity, to prevent and alleviate human suffering wherever it may be found. Its purpose is to protect life and health and to ensure respect for the human being. It promotes mutual understanding, friendship, cooperation and lasting peace amongst all peoples.

I don't see how holding a one-man protest against same-sex marriage could in any way be construed to be compatible with the principle outlined above, especially those sections highlighted. Neither for that matter is it compatible with this principle:

Neutrality

In order to continue to enjoy the confidence of all, the Movement may not take sides in hostilities or engage at any time in controversies of a political, racial, religious or ideological nature.

It seems quite clear from the principles above that the views of this volunteer were incompatible with the operating principles of the Red Cross. This could lead, not only to damaging the reputation of the Red Cross, but also negatively impact the ability of the Red Cross to carry out their core mission (i.e. loss of funding).

b) State churches, Denmark
Another example of this threat to religious freedom is that experienced by state churches in Denmark:

"All state clergy in Denmark, following a law enacted in June 2014, must now allow their churches to perform same-sex ceremonies, regardless of their objections."

 I shouldn't need to point out why this argument fails. Under Section 4 of the Danish Constitution, the Evangelical Lutheran Church is established as the state church (referred to as the people's church in the document) and receives state support and funding. As such, there isn't a separation of church and state in Denmark and any changes to law in Denmark automatically affect the Churches. There are two reasons why this cannot happen in Ireland. 

Firstly, there isn't a state Church in Ireland. Well, there was, or at least the Catholic church once held a constitutionally recognised special position in Irish society. However, this was removed with the Fifth Amendment in 1972.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the State is constitutionally prohibited from interfering in the running of religious denominations.

44.5 Every religious denomination shall have the right to manage its own affairs, own, acquire and administer property, movable and immovable, and maintain institutions for religious or charitable purposes.

c,d) Beulah Print & Ashers Bakery, Ireland

I've decided to group these two stories together because they have one thing in common, both are business which refused their services on the basis of opposition to marriage equality. While this controversy still rages in the media and the courts at the time of writing, I'd just like to point out one thing.

Firstly, in both cases, the service was refused because of opposition to gay marriage. Let's suppose, for example, that the customers in either case were instead of different races. Would we be even having this discussion? Of course not. If you are offering a service to the public then restricting that service for any reason is discrimination. Now sometimes, this discrimination may be justified (e.g. a pub refusing to serve an unruly customer) but we have laws in place to prevent discrimination where the basis for the discrimination lacks any rational basis such as in these two cases.

e) Brendan Eich, Mozilla, California
Unlike the example of Brian Barkley above and the other cases which get trotted out in certain sections of the media, Brendan Eich was not a lowly employee cruelly laid-off by a large and uncaring employer. Eich was the CEO of Mozilla. When it came to light that Eich had given a donation in support of Prop. 8 there was a public backlash. This backlash began to hurt Mozilla's operations and damage Eich's effectiveness as CEO. Consequently Eich made the decision to resign. Now, most commentators on the NO side make a point of how Eich was "forced" to resign. While the degree of public pressure may have reduced his options somewhat, the decision to resign was Eich's nonetheless. However, the important point here is not whether Eich was forced by publicity to resign, the point is that Eich was not ordered or compelled by legislation to resign. The argument being made by Mandate for Marriage is that legislating for marriage equality would mean more cases like Brendan Eich. How? How could allowing same-sex couples to get married effect the public outcry that followed Eich's revelation? Eich didn't fall foul of any equality legislation, he simply made a choice which the majority of people didn't agree with and they made this disagreement well known.


3. On Parents & Children

The argument made in this section is that gay marriage would be bad for both parents and children. Within this section there are a number of specific and demonstrably false claims.

"In marriage between a man and a woman, as ordained by God, both parents have a biological connection to the child, increasing the likelihood that the parents will identify with and sacrifice for the child. This connection also reduces the likelihood that either parent will abuse the child. God established this pattern and we do well to follow it."

The quote above argues that man-woman marriage reduces the likelihood of child abuse. In a word, no.

The evidence surrounding the perpetrators of child abuse shows that just over half of all male child abusers are biological fathers (51%) with 20% being non-biological parents (stepfathers etc.) and 25% being non-parents (i.e. teachers, relatives, friends etc.). When we look at female abusers, we see that 86% are biological mothers.
The evidence also shows that one third of male perpetrators acted in concert with the child's mother. In these cases, biological fathers were more likely to act in concert with the mother than other males and that when both parents were involved in abuse, the rate of recidivism (i.e. the likelihood of repeated abuse) was increased.

Male Perpetrators of Child Maltreatment: Findings from NCANDS


"Homosexual couples cannot produce children on their own. This raises the prospect of hopeful couples seeking to “rent wombs” and denying children the right to know their biological parents. This will coincide with the increasing possibility of producing, buying, and selling children because, in addition to adoption, this is the only way in which homosexual couples can have children.

The quote above argues that marriage equality should be avoided because gay couples cannot have children and this will lead to an increase in surrogacy and adoption (which are somehow very bad). There are two problems wrong with this argument.
Firstly, the ability or intention to raise children is not a prerequisite for marriage. Straight couples who are either knowingly infertile (infertility where one partner is unaware is grounds for annulment) or have no intention to have children are not prevented from getting married. So why then should an extra restriction be placed on gay couples?
Secondly, there is the scaremongering tactic of adoption and how gay couples, once married will raid the orphanages and take all the children. This argument is, in and of itself, doubly flawed. For a start, adoptions have been in serious decline for the last three decades:

In 2012, there were just 49 adoption orders granted. Of these, 33 were granted to step-parents (i.e. couples where one parent was already a biological parent). This means that just 16 adoptions were granted to couples where no prior relationship with the child existed. Adoptions in Ireland have been in decline for 30 years with the 2012 level just 4% of that in 1984. This means that those on the NO side are either 30 years behind the times or trying to argue a situation completely unconnected with reality. I'll leave the decision as to which it is as an exercise for the reader.
The other flaw in this argument is the Child and Family Relationships Bill which has just recently passed through the Seanad. This act will update the existing Adoption Act so that same-sex couples can apply to adopt as a couple rather than as individuals under the existing legal framework. This makes any debate about adoption in the context of the marriage referendum irrelevant.
Finally, the adoption statistics above make for interesting reading in more ways than one. Just as adoptions have declined over the last 30 years, the figures show that the number of non-marital births have significantly increased from 5,116 to 25,344. In fact non-marital births now make up 35% of the total, representing a shift away from marriage towards cohabitation. Consequently, I can't see how anyone can argue that allowing a group of people who are clamoring to get married to do so will in anyway have a negative impact on marriage. 


"Whether raised by lesbians or by homosexual men, children of same-sex marriages will be denied either a mother or a father. Lesbian mothers say a father is irrelevant to parenting, and homosexual fathers say a mother is irrelevant to parenting. God says both a father and a mother are relevant, however. Two men can never take the place of a mother’s love and two women can never equal a Dad. God intended that every child have a father and a mother who are an example of commitment, care and love. Not only is such a child given a sense of security but s/he sees femininity and masculinity modelled in a complementary relationship. Though separation and divorce are now rampant, and the ideal is becoming less common, society must work towards the ideal rather than work against it.

The quote above while being very careful not to make any explicit declaration, makes the implicit argument that a straight couple is the ideal environment for raising a child and that gay couples lack certain qualities that will result in bad outcomes for the child.
I have dealt with the evidence on this topic in detail in my previous post.

However, there are one further point I want to make about the quote above. 
Firstly, its not gay parents who claim that a father or mother are irrelevant. Science does. Just as with much of quantum physics, research on parenting has given us conclusions that are out-of-sync with common sense, and yet they are demonstrably true.

For example, in his book "The Role of the Father in Child Development", Michael E. Lamb states:

"First, fathers and mothers influence their children in similar rather than dissimilar ways.

Stated differently, students of socialization have consistently found that parental warmth, nurturance and closeness are associated with positive child outcomes regardless of whether the parent involved is a mother or father.

Secondly, as research has unfolded, psychologists have been forced to conclude that the characteristics of individual fathers - such as their masculinity, intellect, and even their warmth - are much less important, formatively speaking, than are the characteristics of the relationships they have established with their children.


Marital harmony is a consistent correlate of child adjustment, whereas marital conflict is a consistent and reliable correlate of child maladjustment."

This is probably as concise a summary of parenting research and repsonse to this argument as I can think of.


4. On Genesis & The nature of marriage

One of the points that is made multiple times throughout the website is that marriage is an institution established by God (the Christian one) and that the current marriage referendum is just a secular/homosexual campaign to "redefine" marriage. This argument fails for a number of reasons.
Firstly and obviously, marriage wasn't established in Genesis. Although traditional Christian views hold that Genesis was written by Moses sometime around 1700 BCE, modern scholarship tells us that Genesis is an edited work, compiled from a number of different sources around 450 BCE. The established modern theory states that Genesis was compiled from at least four sources, the Jawhist, Elohist, Deuteronomist and Priestly. However, new research suggests that the Elohist is really just a rewrite of the Jawhist, while the Priestly source is intended as a companion work to the Jawhist. This just leaves two primary sources, the oldest of which, the Deuteronomist, was begun no earlier than about the 8th century BCE. So already, Genesis is approximately 1000 years newer than most Christians would like to admit.
Secondly, we have evidence of the existence of marriage ceremonies before the dawn of Christianity, or Judaism for that matter. 1000 years before work began on what would eventually become Genesis a Babylonian king named Hammurabi authored a legal code which would be copied and emualted by civilisations in the region for centuries afterwards. In this code marriage was a legal contract with specific codes relating to dowry, divorce, inheritance etc.

e.g. "137. If a man wish to separate from a woman who has borne him children, or from his wife who has borne him children: then he shall give that wife her dowry, and a part of the usufruct of field, garden, and property, so that she can rear her children. When she has brought up her children, a portion of all that is given to the children, equal as that of one son, shall be given to her. She may then marry the man of her heart."

Thirdly, there is this idea of "redefining" marriage. This argument would only hold if the definition of marriage was always "one man, one woman for life for the purposes of raising children." There are several reasons why this is wrong.

With regard to Genesis above, at no point in the OT is marriage restricted to one man and one woman. In Genesis 4:19 Lamech marries two women with no evident condemnation from God. Among the many polygamists in the OT represent both Jesus' ancestors and key players in Biblical history including Abraham, Jacob, David and Solomon (who had no less than 700 wives and 300 concubines). In fact, God, through the prophet Nathan offers David even more wives in 2 Samuel 12:8. Polygamy is never condemned in the OT and is the dominant family type if you survey all cultures both historically and geographically.

As author Stephanie Coontz outlines in her book Marriage, A History, traditionally marriage had very little to do with love and children and those in the marriage had little or no choice in its formation:

"To understand why the love-based marriage system was so unstable and how we ended up where we are today, we have to recognise that for most of history, marriage was not about the individual needs and desires of a man and woman and the children they produced. Marriage had as much to do with finding good in-laws and increasing one's family labour force as it did with finding a lifetime companion and raising a beloved child"

Coontz goes on to show how much marriage has changed over the centuries. For starters, polygamy as mentioned above was the norm until the Catholic Church eventually prevailed over the monarchies of Europe around the ninth century. 
Further, for over 1000 years the early Church didn't even get involved in marriage. Marriage was seen as a private contract between two individuals in which neither the State nor the Church intervened. It wasn't until 1215 that the Church decreed that prospective couples had to post banns or statements of intent regarding future marriages (as a means to cut down on annulments). Up to this point (and indeed for a few centuries afterwards) the word of the couple alone was deemed sufficient evidence of marriage. No ceremony or witnesses required.
Regarding the Catholic Church, what is even stranger about the Church's historical relationship with marriage, given the current debate, is that for a period of about 600 years, the Catholic Church had official same-sex marriage rites.

"Contrary to myth, Christianity's concept of marriage has not been set in stone since the days of Christ, but has constantly evolved as a concept and ritual. Prof. John Boswell, the late Chairman of Yale University’s history department, discovered that in addition to heterosexual marriage ceremonies in ancient Christian church liturgical documents, there were also ceremonies called the "Office of Same-Sex Union" (10th and 11th century), and the "Order for Uniting Two Men" (11th and 12th century).

These church rites had all the symbols of a heterosexual marriage: the whole community gathered in a church, a blessing of the couple before the altar was conducted with their right hands joined, holy vows were exchanged, a priest officiatied in the taking of the Eucharist and a wedding feast for the guests was celebrated afterwards. These elements all appear in contemporary illustrations of the holy union of the Byzantine Warrior-Emperor, Basil the First (867-886 CE) and his companion John."

When Same-Sex Marriage was a Christian Rite

But, even after we look past the rather fundamental changes in the definition of a traditional marriage we see that, at a practical level, the nature of marriage is constantly changing. As barrister Mark Tottenham points out, the changing legal definition of marriage gives the live to this argument:

Summary

Civil and constructive debate on any topic is good. However, those on any side of a debate should try their best to ensure that their arguments are both logically sound and factual. Mandate for Marriage's arguments are neither of those. Moreover they contain statements which are deliberately inflammatory and of no use in any debate. By all means if someone's got a reasonable argument against same-sex marriage then let's hear it, but you won't find one on Mandate for Marriage's website.

The Paleo Diet - A conspiracy theory of food

Last week I tuned into BBC2 for Giles Coren's magnificent documentary Eat to Live Forever. The documentary focused on a number of different diets whose proponents all claim will help to significantly extend your lifespan. These included calorie restriction, fruitarianism and most interestingly of all, the paleo diet. I say interestingly because of all the diets mentioned, paleo was the one I had heard about before. However, like most fad diets and other nutritional pseudoscience I hadn't looked at in great detail. I had just assumed that the paleo diet was another crackpot idea to be tossed on the mountain of such ideas in the world of CAM. Since the programme aired though I have been doing a fair bit of research into the paleo diet and I have to admit I wasn't prepared for what I found. The paleo diet theory isn't just wrong. It's fractally wrong. The wrongness of each component claim is self-similar with the overall wrongness of the theory. It is, in the words of Linus Pauling, not even wrong. It is so profoundly flawed in such a childlike way that I was surprised, shocked even, at how popular it is. There are all sorts of food outlets from fast food and street food to fine dining which cater for paleo diets. How does such an obviously ludicrous idea gain so much traction? Well here's how.

Firstly, let's have a look, in detail, at the reasons why the Paleo diet is so badly flawed.

The Paleo diet for those who are unfamiliar, is a lifestyle diet which advocates a diet low in carbohydrates, high in animal based protein and fat and free from dairy, processed foods, grains, legumes and basically any food less than 10,000 years old. The reason for this, proponents claim, is that our modern anatomy and genetics which responds so poorly to our modern diet is adapted only to eat foods that our ancestors would have eaten in the paleolithic era (i.e. ~2.6 mya - 10kya). Switching to this "caveman" diet will help you to live longer and be healthier. Yeah, right!

OK, so let's outline the critical flaws in the paleo diet.

1. On the Paleolithic Era

The first fly in the ointment is the concept of the paleolithic era as being the formative era in which our biology was adapted. 

The paleolithic era covers a period between 2.5 million years ago and 10,000 years ago. This creates two problems. Firstly, the reason why the paleolithic era is bookended by these two dates is because 2.5 million years ago is the era to which the earliest discovered tools date and 10,000 years ago represents the advent of modern agriculture. This means that the paleolithic era is a period defined by archaeology and not biology. 

As it happens, the date for the beginning of the paleolithic era is now out of date. While the date range for the paleolithic era remains fixed, we now know that human tool usage dates back at least 3.4 million years 

Evidence for stone-tool-assisted consumption of animal tissues before 3.39 million years ago at Dikika, Ethiopia

Which leads us on to our second problem. 

The idea that our diet was shaped in the paleolithic era is clearly ridiculous to anyone who is familiar with human evolution. 2.5 million years ago our ancestors looked something like this:

This is a reconstruction of Australopithecus Afarensis. 2.5 million years ago was a in the midst of the period when the genus Homo arose from A. Afarensis. 

Of course, the lines between the emergence of Homo from Australopithecus aren't exactly clearly defined and there remains some debate in the literature as to whether H. Habilis, the first species to emerge from the Homo genus should actually be classed as Homo or Australopithecus.

In any case, we went from Australopithecus above through to Homo Habilis:

and Homo Erectus

and Homo Heidelbergensis

and finally Homo Sapiens. 

As we can see from the forensic reconstructions above, the genus Homo changed massively during the Palaeolithic era and the idea that our diet was settled on during this period is ludicrous. There are a number of reasons for this. 
Firstly, our genome is significant to a considerable amount of change every generation. Our current best estimate for the base mutation rate is 128. This means that, on average, each of us is born with 128 changes from our parents genomes. 

Mutation rates in humans. II. Sporadic mutation-specific rates and rate of detrimental human mutations inferred from hemophilia B.

Secondly, there is the fact that we still have very little understanding of certain aspects of our own evolution. There are still topics which are hotly debated such as whether humans evolved simultaneously in different regions or whether we spread out from Africa. 

Recent African origin of modern humans

Multiregional origin of modern humans

There are still gaps in our knowledge regarding key factors in the origin of modern humans. As a result, any claim such as that made by paleo diet advocates which suggests definite knowledge where none can possibly exist is wrong.

2. On the speed of human evolution.

Quite possibly the most glaring error in the paleo diet hypothesis is the failure to recognise the actual capability of humans to adapt to their environment. It is suggested by Paleo advocates that our diet should exclude things like dairy because these things were not in our diet 10,000 years ago. Yes, its true that dairy farming is an activity which humans have been practising for less than 10,000 years. But its also demonstrably false to claim that humans haven't adapted to it. One of the most clearcut examples of this is the evolution of lactose tolerance. Since I'm Irish and Irish people are one of the ethnic groups predisposed towards lactose tolerance I've always been quite interested in the science of lactose tolerance.
The ancestral state of humans (i.e. the default genetic condition of humans prior to 10,000 years ago) was one of lactase non-persistence. What this means is that at birth a gene on chromosome 2 gets switched on which causes the body to produce an enzyme, lactase, which gives babies the ability to digest a particular sugar, lactose, present in milk. However, as the child gets older (between 18 months and 2 years) weaning becomes more likely and the production of lactase in the body gradually diminishes. Eventually it stops altogether resulting in lactose intolerance. There are, however, a number of ethnic groups which do not suffer from this affliction: the Irish, Czech and Spanish as well as a number of tribal peoples such as the Tutsi of central Africa, the Fulani of western Africa and the Bedouin, Tuareg and Beja nomadic peoples. This is quite a diverse bunch but the one thing they all have in common is a long history of dairy farming. 

Evolutionary Genetics: Genetics of lactase persistence – fresh lessons in the history of milk drinking

Phylogenetic analysis of the evolution of lactose digestion in adults.

3. On Artificial Selection

One of the things that escapes most people is just how much we have changed the food we eat by growing it. The Paleo diet ignores this fact and crumbles as a result. 
Let's take the banana as an example. If we compare the banana that everyone is used to buying in the supermarket vs. the wild banana as it would have existed 10,000 years ago we can see the difference:

The wild banana on the right is what bananas looked like before the advent of domestication c. 8000 BCE. It is filled with seeds and is inedible.

Another example of this phenomenon is the common garden strawberry. Prior to the mid 1700s the strawberry that most Europeans were familiar with was the Virigina strawberry:

Then in the 1750s, the Virginia strawberry was crossed with the recently introduced Chilean white strawberry:

The resulting fruit had the large size of the Chilean strawberry combined with the sweetness of the Virginia strawberry.

Almost all foods we eat today bear no resemblance to those which our ancestors would have eaten prior to 10,000 years ago. Since the dawn of farming we have modified all the foods we eat to be more pleasant to eat, higher yield, more flavour etc. So the idea that restricting yourself to any subset of our modern diet resembles a paleolithic diet is ridiculous.


4. On Paleolithic health outcomes

The final damning flaw in the paleo diet logic is the idea that we should return to the diet of our ancestors so that our health will be better and our lifespan extended. The question is though, what was the health of our ancestors like and how long did they live?

Well, as it turns out, the answer is that our ancestors lived short lives with high infant and adult mortality rates. Many children died before they reached the age of 15 and those who reached adulthood could only expect to live until their early forties.


High adult mortality among Hiwi hunter-gatherers: Implications for human evolution

Older age becomes common late in human evolution

OK, so we didn't live that long in the Paleolithic era but surely those short lives must have been full of health, free from modern processed foods. Again, no. Even in this respect the paleo diet is wrong. Just to take one example, the disease atherosclerosis (the arteries being clogged with fatty deposits) is generally considered to be a modern lifestyle-based disease which our ancestors did not suffer from. Indeed, in "The Paleo Prescription" Boyd Eaton uses the absence of atherosclerosis in modern hunter-gatherer societies to buttress his argument. The reality is, as usual, different. It turns out that in a study of ancient populations, atherosclerosis was quite prevalent, with evidence of this disease at least as far back as 4000 years ago.

Atherosclerosis across 4000 years of human history: the Horus study of four ancient populations.


5. On sloppy research

The final section of this post concerns the research upon which the bible of Paleo dieters, "The Paleo Prescription" by S. Boyd Eaton is based. While this doesn't (in and of itself) condemn the underlying logic of the Paleo diet, it does undermine the conclusions reached by Cordain in his book. 
The core problem is the paucity of research on modern hunter-gatherer societies which is presented as the bedrock of the diet's premise. The book studies modern hunter-gatherer societies so as to examine how their diet fits into their health outcomes. However, only six social groups were included in the book: the !Kung, Inuit, Mbuti, Agta, Hadza and Australian aboriginal peoples. This lack of research further creates problems of its own.
Firstly, the conclusions based on the above data are already suspect. The data on the Kung was the result of just one month's record of their diet. The diet of the Eskimos is already highly restrictive through environment, rather than choice. Even if no other groups were looked at, the conclusions based on the six groups studied should have come with a strongly worded caveat.
Secondly, the book fails to account for the actual variety in modern hunter-gatherer societies:

 (Image credit: Jen Christiansen/Sci-Am)

Given the wide variations in actual dietary patterns among modern hunter-gatherer societies, drawing conclusions about the health benefits of a diet based on a cherry-picked view of them is unfounded and downright irresponsible, scientifically at least.
Finally, the book also fails to account for contrary evidence. In particular the Hiwi people of Venezuela which I have referenced in the section on health outcomes above. The fact that there are modern hunter-gatherer societies which have poor health outcomes, in part as a consequence of their diet serves to further undermine Eaton's conclusions.


Conclusions

The Paleo diet is attractive to a lot of people for a number of reasons. Firstly, it offers the prospect of better health outcomes and longer lives, something which traditional diets (i.e. those focused on weight loss alone) don't. Secondly, it offers a semblance of being scientifically grounded (the evolutionary discordance hypothesis) and rooted in common sense (cutting out processed foods). Finally, it offers something that a lot of conspiracy theories also offer, a patchwork theory crafted from disparate and often demonstrably false ideas which those who advocate it seem to think has gone unnoticed by the general population. 
The Paleo diet does contain some good ideas such as reducing your intake of processed foods and carbohydrates (particularly if like most people you lead a less active life) and increasing your intake of fresh food. However, the Paleo diet as a whole is best done with caution. It can and does lead to weight loss but then so do a lot of diets. However, by restricting or eliminating certain food groups (e.g. dairy) the diet can lead to nutrient deficiencies. On the whole it's best to be avoided.

Marriage Equality 2015 - Dissecting the arguments - Part 3: Marriage & Children

As I have said in a previous post, the Child and Family Relationships Bill is due to go through the Oireachtas in advance of the marriage equality referendum and hopefully this will render any arguments about gay parenting moot. However, given the number of times I've had to defend the idea of gay parenting online in the last few years, I don't have much in the way of optimism that the current bill will change things.

The core of the argument is that a child's best interest is to be with his/her biological parents in a stable, low-conflict marriage. Now while the stable, low-conflict marriage is important, what the extensive body of research has shown over the last 40 years or so is that the sexual orientation of the parents has no detrimental impact on the outcome of children. 

A. Positive research

There are many many studies which show that there is no difference between same-sex and opposite-sex families. 

There are small-scale targeted studies:

Biblarz, T., Stacey, J. (2010). How does the gender of parents matter? Journal of Marriage and Family, 72,3-22.http://www.famigliearcobaleno.org/pu...nts-Matter.pdf


Bos, H. M. W., Gartrell, N. K., van Balen, F., Peyser, H. and Sandfort, T. G. M. (2008), Children in Planned Lesbian Families: A Cross-Cultural Comparison Between the United States and the Netherlands. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 78: 211–219http://www.nllfs.org/images/uploads/...ilies-2008.pdf


Henny M. W. Bos, Frank van Balen, Children in planned lesbian families: Stigmatisation, psychological adjustment and protective factors,Culture, Health &Sexuality, Vol. 10, Iss. 3, 2008.http://www.narcis.nl/publication/Rec...:uva.nl:307079


Bos, Henny M. W., Hakvoort, Esther M.,Child adjustment and parenting in planned lesbian families with known and as-yet unknown donors (2007) Journal of Psychosomatic Obstetrics & Gynecology, 28, 121-129http://home.medewerker.uva.nl/e.m.ha...voort_2007.pdf


Henny Bos and Theo G. M. Sandfort, (2010) Children’s Gender Identity in Lesbian and Heterosexual Two-Parent Families, Sex Roles, 62, 114-126http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2807026/


Farr, R. H., & Patterson, C. J. (2009). Transracial adoption among lesbian, gay, and 
heterosexual couples: Who completes transracial adoptions and with what results? Adoption Quarterly, 12, 187–204.http://people.virginia.edu/~cjp/articles/fp09.pdf


Biblarz, Timothy J., Savci, Evren (2010) Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Families, Journal of Marriage and Family, 72, 480-497http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...0.00714.x/full


Bos, H. M. W., van Balen, F., & Van den Boom, D. C. (2007). Childadjustment and parenting in planned lesbian-parent families.American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 77, 38–48.http://www.meerdangewenst.nl/documenten/AJOP.pdf 


Perrin,E.C.,&AmericanAcademyof Pediatrics,Committee on PsychosocialAspects of Child, Family Health. (2002). Technical report:Coparent or second-parent adoption by same-sex parents. Pediatrics,109, 341–344.http://pediatrics.aappublications.or...6c302e03b8d796 


Vanfraussen, K., Ponjaert-Kristoffersen, I., & Brewaeys, A. (2002).What does it mean for youngsters to grow up in a lesbian familycreated by means of donor insemination? Journal of Reproductiveand Infant Psychology, 20, 237–252.http://psycnet.apa.org/?fa=main.doiL...2002-11380-003


Parenting and Child Development in Adoptive Families: Does Parental Sexual Orientation Matter?Rachel H. Farr, Stephen L. Forssell, Charlotte J. Patterson Applied Developmental Science Vol. 14, Iss. 3, 2010

Then there are longitudinal studies:


US National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study: Psychological Adjustment of 17-Year-Old Adolescents , Nanette Gartrell and Henny Bos Pediatrics 2010; peds.2009-3153; published ahead of print June 7, 2010
http://pediatrics.aappublications.or....full.pdf+html


Gartrell, Nanette, Bos, Henny, Goldberg, Naomi, (2010) Adolescents of the U.S. National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study: Sexual Orientation, Sexual Behavior, and Sexual Risk Exposure, Archives of Sexual Behavior.
http://www.familieslg.org/_comun/bib..._Sex_Behav.pdf


Gartrell, N., Deck, A., Rodas, C., Peyser, H., & Banks, A. (2005). The
National Lesbian Family Study: 4. Interviews with the 10-year-old
children. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 75, 518–524.
http://www.nllfs.org/images/uploads/...-olds-2005.pdf 

Finally, there are large scale nationally representative studies which also show no difference:
Blackwell DL. Family structure and children’s health in the United States: Findings from the National Health Interview Survey, 2001–2007. National Center for Health Statistics. Vital Health Stat 10(246). 2010.

Nontraditional Families and Childhood Progress Through School; Michael J. Rosenfeld; Demography, Volume 47, Number 3, August 2010, pp. 755-775 


Finally there is another large scale study (actually touted as the largest of its kind yet completed) which is nearing publication. The interim report of the project found that:
"On measures of general health and family cohesion children aged 5 to 17 years with same-sex attracted parents showed a significantly better score when compared to Australian children from all backgrounds and family contexts. For all other health measures there were no statistically significant differences."


The Australian Study of Child Health In Same-Sex Families (ACHESS) - Interim report



In fact, the volume of research in this field has lead to a robust consensus being adopted by almost every major professional body.


Consensus Positions

American Psychological Assocation


Position Statement in Support of Legal Recognition of Same-Sex Civil Marriage
Amicus brief submitted in support of 9th Circuit Court of Appeals challenge to California Prop 8
Lesbian and Gay Parenting Resource Publication


Canadian Psychological Association


Brief presented to the Legislative House of Commons Committee on Bill
C38


American Academy of Pediatrics


Policy statement - Coparent or second-parent adoption by same-sex parents


Australian Psychological Society


Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) parented families - A literature review

American Psychoanalytic Association


Position statement on Gay and Lesbian Parenting

American Psychiatric Association


Adoption and co-parenting by same-sex couples

North American Council on Adoptable Children


Gay and Lesbian Adoptions and Foster Care

Royal College of Psychiatrists


Submission to the Church of England's Listening Exercise on Human Sexuality

American Academy of Child & Adolescent Pscyhiatry


Children with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender parents

American National Association of Social Workers


Amicus brief - California Supreme Court - Case No. S147999

Child Welfare League of America


Position statement on parenting of children by lesbian, gay and bisexual adults

Furthermore, the quality and quantity of the research in this field has affected court decisions on the topic.


Legal Decisions


Third District Court of Appeal, State of Florida, Docket No. 3D08-3044

"As a result, based on the robust nature of the evidence available in the field, this Court is satisfied that the issue is so far beyond dispute that it would be irrational to hold otherwise; the best interests of children are not preserved by prohibiting homosexual adoption."


B. Negative research

Over the last year or two, a small number of "studies" have appeared in the media which have been seized upon by those on the NO side as if a) they were the most robust and conclusive study ever published and b) there were no contrary studies out there. I thought that in the interest of completeness and sheer bloody-mindedness I would list them. Oh, and I also thought it would be nice to show why they're all wrong.

1. The New Family Structures Study (Mark Regnerus)


1.1. Methodological Problems

The first problem is that the Regnerus study contains several serious flaws in its experiment design.

1.1.1. Population sample

The first problem is the sample of individuals chosen to undertake the questionnaire. The study interviewed individuals only between the ages of 18-39 and questions them on their childhood. This means that the author is only looking at a snapshot of time between 1972 and 2011. There are two problems with this. Firstly, it means that the study has no depth. There is no longitudinality which is something that usually makes for the most robust conclusions. The author even makes an acknowledgement of this fact:

"There are several things the NFSS is not. The NFSS is not a longitudinal study, and therefore cannot attempt to broach questions of causation."Secondly, this snapshot covers an area of massive flux with regard to same-sex parenting. It moves from a time when homosexual parenting was entirely unusual and mostly prohibited to a time when it is becoming an accepted family form and yet seeks to make broad conclusions about the snapshot as a whole.

Also with regard to sample selection, Regnerus opens his study with an attack on previous studies such as the NLLFS (National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study) for their poor sample selection. However, Regnerus used Knowledge Networks to gather his sample data despite having prior knowledge that a) KN had a limited ability to connect him with people who fell under the criteria of the study and b) there were other companies available who could have supplied more rigorous data.


1.1.2. Classification problems

There are several problems in this section in the design of the experiment.

The first problem is the classification of family form. The survey uses the following categories for analysis:

1.IBF: Lived in intact biological family (with mother and father) from 0 to 18, and parents are still married at present (N = 919).
2.LM: R reported R’s mother had a same-sex romantic (lesbian) relationship with a woman, regardless of any other household transitions (N = 163).
3.GF: R reported R’s father had a same-sex romantic (gay) relationship with a man, regardless of any other household transitions (N= 73).
4.Adopted: R was adopted by one or two strangers at birth or before age 2 (N = 101).
5.Divorced later or had joint custody: R reported living with biological mother and father from birth to age 18, but parents are not married at present (N = 116).
6.Stepfamily: Biological parents were either never married or else divorced, and R’s primary custodial parent was married to someone else before R turned 18 (N = 394).
7.Single parent: Biological parents were either never married or else divorced, and R’s primary custodial parent did not marry (or remarry) before R turned 18 (N = 816).
8.All others: Includes all other family structure/event combinations, such as respondents with a deceased parent (N = 406).

The problem here is that while broken homes are included in both types of same-sex families, they are definitionally excluded from heterosexual couples so that the comparisons made later on are fundamentally flawed.

The second problem with the classification above is that any instance of infidelity with a same-sex partner moves the respondent into either LM or GF regardless of the nature of the infidelity (i.e. one night stand vs. long term relationship).

The final problem with the classification above is that a number of respondents were found to fit into more than one category. To resolve this overlap Regnerus makes arbitrary decisions in order to achieve the results he wants:

"That is, a small minority of respondents might fit more than one group. I have, however, forced their mutual exclusivity here for analytic purposes. For example, a respondent whose mother had a same-sex relationship might also qualify in Group 5 or Group 7, but in this case my analytical interest is in maximizing the sample size of Groups 2 and 3 so the respondent would be placed in Group 2 (LMs). Since Group 3 (GFs) is the smallest and most difficult to locate randomly in the population, its composition trumped that of others, even LMs. (There were 12 cases of respondents who reported both a mother and a father having a same-sex relationship; all are analyzed here as GFs, after ancillary analyses revealed comparable exposure to both their mother and father)."That, btw, is as good an example of bad science as you're ever likely to see.

In classifying the data this way, Regnerus creates a homogeneous IBF category and compares it against LM and GF categories which are made up of a number of different relationship types both stable and unstable. That dog won't hunt Monsignor.


1.1.3. Analytical problems

The first problem in this category is Regnerus' idea of what constitutes a bad outcome for children. In particular Regnerus classifies the "current" receipt of public assistance (i.e. social welfare) as a bad outcome.
The problem with this analysis is that America is currently in the depths of one of the deepest economic crises it has faced, yet Regnerus makes no attempt to analyses the other socio-economic factors that play into this in analysing the data.

The second and bigger problem is that the classification errors made by Regnerus in his experiment design leads him to making the wrong comparison. Children in a family where one or both parents were in a same-sex relationship were found to have similar outcomes to those in divorced, cohabiting and step families and markedly different from intact heterosexual families. This is because he designed the study this way. What he actually ended up doing was comparing stable families against non-stable ones and the conclusions don't offer any new insight into the field which is what research is supposed to do. 

To put it simply he analysed bad data with a badly designed experiment to get bad results and ended up with bad conclusions.

1.2. Ethical problems

Herein lies the truly repugnant aspect of this study. Regnerus made some bad choices in even opting to start this study which not only impacts on his conclusions but on science as a whole. Bad science is in and of itself unethical but Regnerus' actions were even more so.

Firstly, Regnerus in a video interview admitted that his study does not work "to the long-term benefit of science". If ever there was a reason for not doing a study, that is it. 

Secondly, Regnerus accepted a grant of $35000 from the Witherspoon Instiute to produce this study, hoping that Regnerus' reputation as a social scientist (which isn't looking great now) would give it an air of authority. Regnerus admitted that because of the grant he rushed it into publication for use in their 2012 election material.

Finally, Regnerus didn't approach the NIH for funding because in his words:

"I had a feeling when we started this project that it would not survive the politics of, in my opinion, the peer review system at the National Institute of Health"I think that sentence speaks for itself.

As a result of this information coming to light Scott Rose, a freelance writer and novelist wrote this open letter to the University of Texas. Consequently, the university has launched an investigation of Regnerus for scientific misconduct.

2. Loren Marks

The next to enter the rogue's gallery is Loren Marks, author of "Same-sex parenting and children’s outcomes: A closer examination of the American psychological association’s brief on lesbian and gay parenting", the study which took a swipe at the APA's amicus curiae brief in support of LGBT parenting. The study was flawed in multiple ways as I have outlined below.

1. In 2010, Loren Marks was called as an expert witness for the defence in a case challenging the legality of California's Proposition 8. Marks testified that children did best with their biological or genetic parents. Under cross-exmaniation Marks admitted that he had cherry picked data from the studies and he had not in fact read most of the studies which he cited in his report (which he later replicated as the study you linked to).

Two other defense experts (social science researchers from McGill University) also admitted during depositions that:

"equal marriage would increase family stability, improve the lives of children, and that gay men and lesbians have faced a long history of discrimination including violence. They also acknowledge broad scientific and professional consensus in favor of equal marriage."

The deposition transcripts and case report can be found here. Marks' involvement is described thusly:

"Plaintiffs’ attorneys last week introduced video of the deposition of Loren Marks of Louisiana State University, who had been expected to testify for the defendants that the ideal family structure is for children to be raised by two married “biological” parents, which Marks said meant the genetic parents. Marks admitted that he only read parts of the studies he relied upon in making his conclusion. It was then pointed out that those studies actually defined “biological” parents in a way that included adoptive parents — not just genetic parents. Marks then stated that the word “biological” should be deleted from the report he prepared for this case, and also admitted he considered no research on gay and lesbian parents, effectively revealing his research as fatally flawed."


2. Mark's main point of criticism is the small sample sizes used in the studies cited by the APA. While Marks portrays this as a problem for the conclusions drawn by the studies, this is not the opinion of other researchers in the field. Meezan and Rauch's literature review of same-sex parenting in 2005 points out that same-sex couples represent a small and geographically diverse population and that gathering a large sample size is a methodological problem rather than an analytical one. Rosenfeld also notes this in his census study in 2010, pointing out that all same-sex couples taken together represent just 1.8% of family forms in the United States.


3. Despite publishing his paper seven years after the brief (and nine years after the latest study included in the report) which he criticizes, Marks makes no attempt to incorporate studies outside those cited in the APA brief to show whether or not they support his claims. There have been large sample-size nationally representative studies conducted subsequent to the APA's brief. Two noteworthy examples of these include the 2010 Rosenfeld study mentioned earlier and the US Dept. of Health & Human Services study in 2010.


4. Marks also, as noted above, fails to account for any research conducted in to lesbian and gay parenting which fatally unhinges any valid analysis.


5. Marks makes no acknowledgement of the many other medical and social work bodies which have issued position statements in favour of equal marriage which makes the entire paper rather redundant.


6. Despite reviewing 59 papers cited by the APA in his paper, Marks fails to point out that there are in fact 65 empirical studies specifically related to gay and lesbian parents and their children cited in the report. He makes no acknowledgement of why excludes the remaining six. Furthermore, the report also cites empirical studies related to the general fitness of lesbian women and gay men as parents as well as many literature reivews, meta-analyses, legal reviews and individual case studies in support of its conclusions. All told there are over 130 publications cited in the report over half of which are ignored by Marks.


When we move past the scientifc flaws in the paper, we see that there are also deeper ethical concerns with Marks and his work. First of all, as noted above Marks admitted under oath that he didn't know any same-sex couples. This is not an area of research in which Marks is actively engaged. In fact since 2002, Marks' research efforts have been on a national qualitative study exploring the links between family and religious faith.Before publishing his study, Marks made a preprint available to the Republican Party committee defending the Defense of Marriage Act. In fact both Marks and Regnerus rushed their research through publication so that it would be available for the 2012 elections. Additionally, Marks, Regnerus and James Wright (editor of the journal where both studies were published) have ties to both the NOM and the Witherspoon Institute and all three are contributors to National Review a conservative political soapbox.  

References:


Press release from American Foundation for Equal Rights

Plaintiff Motion to Exclude the expert report and testimony of Katherine Young, Loren Marks and David Blankenhorn


3. No Basis

The final club in the NO side bag is this publication (can't think of a better word for it) from two researchers Robert Lerner and Althea Nagai. Again we find multiple flaws leading to unsupportable conclusions.

1. Mistakes of fact

The first problem with "No Basis" is that the authors in several places make several basic reporting mistakes displaying some remarkably sloppy fact-checking. This, by the way, is the importance of citing peer-reviewed sources so that we don't have to go through such basic mistakes.

a) Brewaeys et al (1997)

This is a surprising and notable inclusion in the list of studies since it has been mentioned on multiple occasions, even by gay marriage opponents such as Steven Nock as "a well defined analysis that attempted to study entire populations rather than samples of them". It is as rigorous as any study in the field of social science gets.
The first mistake that the authors make is that they report the sample size in Table 6 as 72. However, as you can see from the actual paper:

Donor insemination: child development and family functioning in lesbian mother families

the sample size is 98. Furthermore, Lerner and Nagai criticise Brewaeys for its use of ANOVA as its test metric. However, you can see from reading the paper that multiple statistical tests (including Student's t-test) are used. Furthermore, something that Lerner and Nagai fail to point out is that the study controls for demographic differences in the comparison groups and also corrects for multiple comparisons.


b) Harris and Turner (1986)

Once again the sample size reported by Lerner and Nagai is 27, whereas the actual sample size in the paper is 39.

Gay and Lesbian Parents


c) Chan, Raboy and Patterson (1998)

Psychosocial Adjustment among Children Conceived via Donor Insemination by Lesbian and Heterosexual Mothers

What do you know, another sample size reporting error, this time claiming 77 instead of the 80 used in the paper. Furthermore Lerner and Nagai claim that:

"Chan et al use t-tests extensively. The t-test is a statistical proce- dure that compares the means of two groups to see whether the dif- ference between the two means are likely to be due to chance or statistically significant. "

Well, yes but the authors fail to point out that such t-tests are also supported by multiple regression analysis tests.

Furthermore, Lerner and Nagai, make a bold and rather confusing claim by stating:

"The primary problem in using the Bonferroni correction in these studies, however, is that it introduces a bias in favor of the investiga- tors’ own hypotheses." 

Such a claim makes it plain that Lerner and Nagai are not researchers in any serious scientific field. For those who don't know the Bonferroni correction is a correction for multiple comparisons. Basically, if you compare groups using multiple characteristics, the odds that one group is better than the other by chance alone increases significantly. While the Bonferroni correction is non-conservative when used to affirm the null hypothesis, it is still in line with best practice in the field.


2. Methodological issues

The first issue with the approach taken by Lerner and Nagai is the failure to detail the effect of the flaws they describe. The overall impression that Lerner and Nagai attempt to give to the reader is that the 49 studies included in their document are flawed to the point that the conclusions of these studies are either wrong or unsupported by their results. However, this simply isn't the case. 

Take this paper for example (cited by Lerner and Nagai).

Lesbian mothers who conceived after donor insemination: a follow-up study

This paper does contain a flaw, but is not flawed in the way Lerner and Nagai describe. The issue with the Flaks paper is that while the conclusions hold for the dataset collected, the conclusions are based on a sample size which is too small to be generalised to the entire population. This is a small but important distinction which the authors fail to clarify.


Secondly, there is the illusion of control. For example, when examining the studies for sample size, Lerner and Nagai point out that they excluded one study with good sample size (Riddle et al.) because it lacked a heterosexual control group. However, papers such as Brewaeys and Chan cited above show that a control group may not always be a prerequisite for a solid paper. To explain this further, let's look at babies. Babies at birth are frequently tested using an Apgar score. These scores measure a baby in several categories against well-established norms, birth weight, for example, to determine whether the baby is healthy or not. Similarly, since many of these studies study child outcomes, they can be measured against established psychological norms using standard tests as outlined in the paper by Chan et al.


3. Relevance

This is the single most important reason why Lerner and Nagai's criticisms are not valid. It's not that they were never valid it's that they're not valid anymore. There are several reasons for this.


3a - Best practice.

The primary resource used by Lerner and Nagai in levelling their criticisms is a set of guidelines established by psychometrician Jacob Cohen in 1988. However, in 1999, two years before No Basis, the American Psychological Association issued updated guidelines for conducting psychology research:

Statistical Methods in Psychology Journals: Guidelines and Explanations

These guidelines form the basis of best practice in the field and serve to undermine the criticisms of some of the papers in Lerner and Nagai's work, in particular Brewaeys et al.


3b - Meta analyses

One of the most powerful modern tools in scientific research is a meta-analysis. Unlike a review article where the conclusions and results are cursorily examined, meta-analyses essentially combines the different datasets and reanalyses them as a single dataset to see if the results hold for the larger set. This meta-analysis:

A Meta-Analysis of Developmental Outcomes for Children of Same-Sex and Heterosexual Parents

(published in 2008) uses 19 eligible studies including 16 cited in the Lerner and Nagai document. It finds that:

"In sum, children raised by same-sex and heterosexual parents were found to not differ significantly in terms of their cognitive development, gender role behavior, gender identity, psychological adjustment, or sexual prefer- ences. For the outcome that was significantly different between children of same-sex and heterosexual parents, the finding was in favor of same-sex parents."


3c - Rigorous studies

At this point I should point out that as I have previously stated, this work is badly out-of-date. Although published in 2001, the most recent paper examined dates from 1998. 16 years is a very long time in any field of research but particularly in one with as much political valence and human rights implications as this one.
In any event, since 1998, there have been several studies which not only satisfy the established best practice in the field but the crazy extremes documented by Lerner and Nagai. Examples include:

Psychosocial Adjustment, School Outcomes, and Romantic Relationships of Adolescents With Same-Sex Parents

Children With Lesbian Parents: A Community Study


3d - Large-scale studies

One of the valid criticisms of social science research prior to the millennium was the lack of suitable large-scale studies so that the results which were established on a small-scale basis would hold on a national level. However since 2000, there have been several such studies.

The first of these is the Wainwright study cited above which studied 12,105 adolescents taken from the National Study of Adolescent Health, a government funded program. 

Then of course there are these studies, you know the ones I keep telling you about BB:

• Family Structure and Children's Health in the United States: Findings from the National Health Interview Survey, 2001-2007
• Rosenfeld, M.J., (2010), Nontraditional families and childhood progress through school Demography, 47(3), 755-775
• Crouch, S. R., Waters, E., McNair, R., Power, J., & Davis, E. (2012). ACHESS–The Australian study of child health in same-sex families: background research, design and methodology. BMC public health, 12(1), 646.
• Crouch, S. R., Waters, E., McNair, R., Power, J., & Davis, E. The Australian Study of Child Health In Same-Sex Families (ACHESS) - Interim report

All of these studies represent the gold standard of research in this area. They are large scale and nationally representative. And yet they confirm the same findings documented in the other research previously.

Lerner and Nagai's critisms are flawed and obsolete. However, even had they been valid at the time, we do not need to rely on studies of that type to support the hypothesis. At least not any more.