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from Ethical Issues
If Science is Our Guide,
Why Don't the Conclusions Fit the Evidence?
In an editorial published by the Tampa Tribune and
Times, the Family Research Council described a bizarre discovery:
high-school textbooks often honestly describe the difficulties of
single parenting, including the enormous negative repercussions for
children. However, these textbooks typically then conclude by
saying that "each type of family is as acceptable as another."
If the facts show single parenting is associated with family
stress and poverty, along with greater propensity for crime, poor
school performance and teenage pregnancy among the children, then why
do these textbooks reassure the reader that every type of family
arrangement is equally valid?
The FRC editorial based its information on a new study, "The
Course of True Love: Marriage in High School Textbooks," produced by
the Insititute for American Values.
FRC reported: "Such value-neutral fluff is contradicted by
the weight of social-science evidence, which finds that children
from broken families are at far greater risk of abuse and of
damaging behaviors. Seeking to shield the children of fragmented
femilies from greater emotional pain, they do them a disservice by
affirming the living situations that are harmful to them. In addition,
by offering subjective conclusions that contradict the findings
of social scientists and their own analysis of divorce and
single parenting, the book sends the message that there's no
relationship between fact and conclusion."
On the subject of homosexuality, we often see the same odd
logic: in spite of the overwhelming evidence of health risks and
traumatic, anatomic incompatibility in gay male sex, social
scientists refuse to consider that there is any inherent disadvantage in a
gay lifestyle. Thus educators send the message to children that --
as FRC's Policy Analyst says -- "there's no relationship between
fact and conclusion," while continuing to affirm homosexuality
as equivalent to heterosexuality.
"By offering unsupportable conclusions, presenting factual
inaccuracies and omitting critical information," FRC says of school
textbooks, students are "unprepared for future family and civic
responsibilities."
Looking at the situation from another angle, we might say that
when society has only one moral
absolute--"tolerance"--meaning uncondional approval of every lifestyle choice, then the
conclusions must be made to fit the philosophy, even if the facts
simply don't support it.
Updated: 8 February 2008
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