Censored Science?

A contentious topic these days is the censorship of science. Advocates for any number of positions claim their position is being censored. Anti-evolution advocates claim their work is exiled from universities, and people are required to affirm a belief in "Darwinism" in order to be admitted to the halls of learning. Skeptics of the premise that human activity is baking the planet to death assert that their point of view receives no attention or funding.

To be sure, there is a bias in the universities. History departments are biased against claims advanced by, for example, the Institute for Historical Review, claiming the Holocaust either didn't happen at all, or was greatly exaggerated. Science departments are biased against claims that evolution is impossible for the same reason they're biased against claims of perpetual motion devices, "free energy" devices, antigravity devices, or any other claims that oppose long-established scientific facts.

But there are some cases where bias seems due less to the underlying facts than due to an overpowering narrative.

Years ago, I chanced to see an article which listed a number of "Hot Topics In Psychology". Among these were "Race and IQ". I'm sure Professor James Watson can attest to how heated debated on that topic can get. Another Hot Topic is illustrated by this post in Clayton Cramer's blog:

Sexual Abuse & Adult Homosexuality

There's a surprising number of journal articles about this subject. The abstracts alone are pretty telling. Lynda S. Doll, "Self-Reported Childhood and Adolescent Sexual Abuse among Adult Homosexual and Bisexual Men," Child Abuse and Neglect: The International Journal, v16 n6 p855-64 Nov-Dec 1992:

This study of 1,001 adult homosexual and bisexual men found that 37% reported they had been encouraged or forced to have sexual contact with an older or more powerful partner before age 19. Median age at first contact was 10. Ninety-three percent of participants reporting early sexual contact were classified as sexually abused.

Median age at first contact was 10?

Maybe the researchers were computer geeks and the number is base 16.

After citing a few more articles, Clayton writes:

Hmmm. More than one-quarter of gay men reported that they had been sexually abused? That's almost three times the rates of sexual abuse among men in the general population. Isn't anyone noticing what might be an obvious connection here?

And there are lots of other articles out there, again ignoring the elephant in the bathtub--the high rates of childhood sexual abuse among adult gay men.

Given the reaction to Dr. Laura Schlessinger's statement in which she called homosexuality a genetic mistake, I think it's safe to say that any hint that homosexuality is in any linked to pathology is a Hot Topic. If a researcher with the standing of James Watson can be brought down for violating the taboo against linking race and IQ, it's easy to understand why only the bravest -- or most naive -- researcher would risk his career by saying anything negative about homosexuality.