Yesterday, thanks to Gay City News, we learned that Mark Regnerus is under professional review due to the fact that his recently published study about gay parenting did not go through enough peer review before being published. The study in question was funded by anti-gay groups and Regnerus twisted the conclusions in order to fit his beliefs.

All of this is academic malfeasance. Regnerus defiled everything that is held sacred in academia, and I have said so at length that this man needed to be punished for what he did.

Regnerus’ data actually did find that opposite-sex couples where one member is gay and engages in same-sex sexual behaviors outside of that marriage creates problems for the children. His data actually found that same-sex marriage would benefit heterosexual marriage and would benefit children all around.

That is not, however, what Regnerus concluded and now a petition has been started asking that the study be retracted. The petition can be read in full here, but states in part:

Elsevier’s journal Social Science Research published Mark Regnerus’s deceptive submission allegedly — (but not actually) — on “same-sex parents” child outcomes, WITHOUT having put Regnerus’s submission through ethical and appropriate professional peer review.

WE REPEAT — the Regnerus submission was published WITHOUT having gone through ETHICAL AND APPROPRIATE professional-level peer review.

THEREFORE, we, the undersigned, DEMAND that the Editorial Board of the Elsevier journal Social Science Research immediately retract Mark Regnerus’s invalid, defamatory, anti-gay submission titled “Findings from the New Family Structures Study.”

If the submission is to be published at a later date following retraction, it MUST first go through ethical and appropriate, professional peer review and revisions, which were glaringly and appallingly ABSENT before the first publication.

Furthermore, we express a TOTAL lack of trust and confidence that SSR editor-in-chief James Wright would act in good faith, were he charged with overseeing any future, eventual, ethical and appropriate professional peer review of the Regnerus submission.

The obvious scientific failings of the defamatory, anti-gay Regnerus submission are widely recognized by experts, including some SSR-linked sociologists and EIGHT MAJOR PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS including the American Medical Association. Also widely known, is that the Social Science Research editor VIOLATED scientific publishing ethics in publishing the invalid, defamatory, anti-gay Regnerus submission.

SSR Editorial Board Member Darren Sherkat’s audit of the publication process revealed that 1) the peer review process FAILED; 2) editor-in-chief James Wright violated SSR’s own editorial procedures, in order to rush the defamatory Regnerus submission into publication; 3) the peer reviewers were NOT EXPERTS in LGBT matters generally, still less in gay parenting, the purported topic of Regnerus’s submission 4) some of the peer reviewers are anti-gay-rights BIGOTS; 5) some of the peer reviewers had CONFLICTS OF INTEREST, including that i) they were paid consultants on the Regnerus submission, and that ii) they have long-standing personal connections to Regnerus.

At the same time that Sherkat reports mountainous editorial failings, he says that he may well have made all of the same editorial decisions as James Wright. That HARDLY builds public confidence or trust in the journal Social Science Research.