Honest mistake? Somehow I doubt it.

Perhaps. But if I read Dobson correctly, he’s saying that a child needs their father and their mother in the same household:

…the majority of more than 30 years of social-science evidence indicates that children do best on every measure of well-being when raised by their married mother and father.

“Raised by their married mother and father” is not the same thing as “in a married two-parent home”. In addition to gay parents, there are also step parents, grandparents, etc.

Chrisler is pointing out that 75% of households don’t meet Dr. Dobson’s standard for “best”. It is rather unfair to now say that what he really meant was married heterosexuals. Not only is that not what he said, that isn’t supported by the studies.

Sadly, the misuse of science is a “wing thing” not just right. Activist groups do this, I wonder if there is an activist training school that teaches this but it happens on both sides. Jennifer Chrisler’s response to Dobson’s piece is a pretty good example of that. She quotes the Census saying that 75% of households are not traditional households. However, if you look at the numbers a little differently you see that 68% of kids live in a married two-parent home. How you use the numbers conveys a different picture. I suspect that was deliberate.

No wonder people are cynical about the professions, if they really think all of us are lined up on sides and we only produce research and speak when the conclusions fit our world view.

Perhaps you are right though in that sense. The right and the left do exist in kind of parallel worlds. I read both and it is amazing how distorted both sides can be about the same thing.

Warren, you say in your original post: “Dr. Dobson cites aspects of the work of these researchers but does not say they agree with his position. This happens all the time in academia.” In academia, perhaps, readers would not leap to the conclusion that the researchers quoted would suppport Dobson’s position. Academics would also be more likely to know the overall work and reputation of the researchers cited, and have access to check the original sources, so they would have some idea of the original context.

But Dobson was not writing for an academic audience–he was writing for in Time magazine for a broad popular audience. And clearly, his intention in cherry picking one isolated statement here and another there from various social researchers was to make it seem that his views on gay parents are based on actual science, rather than his own presuppositions.

Unlike academics, the readers of Time magazine are not likely to know that the researchers and studies he cites actually disagree with his overall conclusions. It’s also highly unlikely that they can go back to the original research to check his accuracy. In this context, Dobson’s citations–with absolutely no qualification to indicate that the cited research does not support his argument overall–seems unarguably dishonest.

The same misuse of science pervades the arguments of the religious right on every topic from evolution to global warming. Scientists are always careful to hedge their findings with qualifications. The religious right seizes on the qualifications to turn the meaning of science and research on its head.