Millennial Star contriubutor Jacob Hess had an opinion piece published in the Deseret News yesterday.
From the article we read:
In 2014, a study appeared in the prestigious journal Science that made almost immediate waves in the national conversation with its conclusion that a mere 20-minute conversation with a gay canvasser telling a personal, heart-felt story led to persistent changes in attitudes — as confirmed by nine-month follow-ups.
When Jon Krosnick, a Stanford social psychologist, was contacted for comment, his response was, “Gee, that’s very surprising and doesn’t fit with a huge literature of evidence. It doesn’t sound plausible to me.”
Nonetheless, a feature piece ran in The New York Times the same week the study posted — the first of many similar commentaries. And the following spring, the radio program “This American Life” amplified these “groundbreaking” findings. Summarizing the cumulative effects of this single study, journalist Jesse Singal states, “It rerouted countless researchers’ agendas, inspired activists to change their approach to voter outreach, generated shifts in grant funding, and launched follow-up experiments.”
To read the rest of the article, please follow the link HERE.
The “LDS gays” research community feels a little bit like the secular version of the “Book of Mormon proofs” research community. It’s awfully easy for we myopic mortals to see what we want to see.
Once again, a very relevant and revealing piece by Jacob Hess.
When science is selectively censored to support political or social activism, we have lost any ability to turn to science for answers in those areas.
Observation and my background in Statistics have taught me that it is very easy to conduct a bad or misleading study. It takes an immense amount of preparation, hard work, time and discipline to complete a valid study, the best of which report openly their limitations.
Keep up the good work, Jacob.