(I apologize in advance for the profanity-laden rant. But this stuff makes me nuts.)
More from the department of making shit up:
In one of those moments when the NYT decided to provide free advertising to the Heritage Foundation, it prominently features the following from one of our favourite right-wing thinktanks:
Studies Rebut Earlier Report on Pledges of Virginity
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN
Challenging earlier findings, two studies from the Heritage Foundation reported yesterday that young people who took virginity pledges had lower rates of acquiring sexually transmitted diseases and engaged in fewer risky sexual behaviors.
The new findings were based on the same national survey used by earlier studies and conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services. But the authors of the new study used different methods of statistical analysis from those in an earlier one that was widely publicized, making direct comparisons difficult.
Independent experts called the new findings provocative, but criticized the Heritage team’s analysis as flawed and lacking the statistical evidence to back its conclusions. The new findings have not been submitted to a journal for publication, an author said. The independent experts who reviewed the study said the findings were unlikely to be published in their present form.
Okay. Say this with me now. Manipulating the data to make it look like the truth is still considered LYING. (And I still believe that bearing false witness is a big no-no. But what do I know? I’m an unethical atheist.)
Now that certain people have decided that science can be interpreted any damn way you please, and thus, there is TOO scientific proof for Intelligent Design, apparently, you can take a survey and change the data just a little tiny bit and get whole different results. Who’d a thunk?
So, even though the original study was published in a vetted journal, and this one is not going to be published in a journal, doesn’t make this one any less legitimate, right?
Those studies that came out of Texas that showed higher rates of pregnancy among the kids who’d taken abstinence-only education courses must have been bullshit, no?
The team needs to do “a lot of work” on its paper, said David Landry, a senior research associate at the Alan Guttmacher Institute in New York. He said in an interview that it was “a glaring error” to use the result of a statistical test at a 0.10 level of significance when journals generally use a lower and more rigorous level of 0.05.
.10 or .05, what’s the big diff? Sheesh.
I figure there’s going to be lots of explaining to do soon. See, if these kids are not having sex, how are they going to explain those pregnancies? Hmmm. There is a Biblical precedent for such an explanation, but I think that was a one-time occurrence.
I’m deeply distressed that the Times ran with this story. Is there an obligation to report every piece of right-wing propaganda as if it has scientific merit? Where will this bullshit end?
Cross-posted at Stregoneria
