…and friend of Dr. Jack Drescher.
I will accept your charge of “pseudo-science” only if you lob the same charge at every study reported on the pages of the New York Times and many other newspapers, many days of the week, based on some new survey done by a reputable survey research firm which operates by industry best practices (in our case, Abt SRBI of New York City), the vast majority of which are not initially reported in peer-reviewed journals and may never be (that includes, my friends, every Gallup poll, every Time-ABC News poll, every poll conducted for political candidates — do you get my drift here?)
Our study was conducted by three investigators, including University of Texas at Austin Ashbel Smith Professor of Sociology Norval D. Glenn, former editor of Contemporary Sociology and the Journal of Family Issues.
Our study was released under the auspices of the Commission on Parenthood’s Future (see page ii of the full report) which includes eminent scholars from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Rutgers, University of Chicago, University of Texas at Austin, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Duke, SUNY-Stony Brook, McGill, Princeton,  Emory University, and the University of Virginia.
Do you want to debate our conclusions? Fine. Do you want to debate the methological decisions we made? Fine.  I think you now know exactly how to reach me.
But if you want to sit safely behind your computer terminal and lob charges of “pseudoscience,” like some kindergartner on a playground, I don’t have time for you.
Categories: My Daddy's Name is Donor
But isn’t the Commission on Parenthood’s Future just a collection of scholars who agree with the IAV. It’s a who’s who of the marriage movement, which is perfectly fine but not exactly an unbiased, cross-section of scholars. It’s very self-selected, self-interested. And of the three investigators, two are outspoken skeptics of the current regime.
It’s not surprising that people are suspicious of the research and demanding more peer review.
Smart people have come together to say something. They spent a lot of time, resources, and care trying to get it right. It’s easy to lob criticisms of people. It’s harder to engage with a document. Let me know what you think of the quality of the document itself, Peter — its contents, its claims, the study on which it is based. Review it. I’m interested in what you think.
Todd Essig’s utilitarian attitude toward human beings is disturbing. Because they are not a majority, he totally disregards the 45% of donor offspring who say that the circumstances surrounding their conception bother them. If the fertility industry is engaging in a practice that harms even one person, there is reason for concern.
That’s my view too Kelly. First do no harm.
Smart people have come together to say something. They spent a lot of time, resources, and care trying to get it right.
And they all have a specific ideological, professional, policy, or research agenda. That’s inevitable for research conducted by, and for, advocacy groups.
The document’s conclusions are consistent with what the co-investigators have been saying before the research was concluded, in fact consistent with what the organization that conducted the study was saying before the first person was interviewed. It’s hard to get beyond that.
The survey, as is pointed out, has limitations and the potential for bias, as do the questions that were asked. That’s why some peer review or further studies from more objective sources would be helpful.
“The document’s conclusions are consistent with what the co-investigators have been saying before the research was concluded, in fact consistent with what the organization that conducted the study was saying before the first person was interviewed.”
Not so. I didn’t know what I thought about banning anonymity until after we did the study. I let the findings about what the offspring said, and what we found out about them, persuade me to take that policy view.
I also went into the study more concerned about the offspring of lesbian moms than I ultimately ended up being, after the study (I’m still concerned, but less so). I came away from the study *more* concerned about the offspring of single moms by choice than I was when I went into the study.
I also was reassured to find that about 40 percent of donor offspring are pretty ok with the whole thing.
And our recommendation that donor offspring should be leaders in national and international debates on the family — you gotta admit, given what we found about their attitudes as a group about reproductive technologies more broadly, that that recommendation is a risk on my part. I want more of their voices out there. But I can’t predict what they’re going to say.
I could go on.
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But you were already pre-conditioned to believe that there would be problems and that was born in out in the research you created and then conducted.
Now, lots of researchers have bias problems and have a preconceived idea of what they want the research to finally say (or what they want their recommendations to be). Especially research done by activist groups yours. That’s the reality of research, whether it’s funded by corporations, interest groups, or whatever. So the research community has created some ways to respond to concerns about bias, and that includes peer review as imperfect as it may be.
Any research coordinated by activists is suspect. It can be overcome, of course, and you’ve tried to do that. There are some problems, on minimum glance, with the kinds of questions you asked but formulating questions is the hardest part of these studies or any survey, especially a survey of self-identified members of donor-offspring groups who already have a specific agenda in joining such a group to begin with.
You acknowledge those problems in your study and they are problems that more research by people not funded by activist groups and without a set policy agenda should consider.
Peter–
We did not recruit the donor offspring from groups of donor offspring.
Here is how we describe, on pp 19-20, how we recruited for the survey:
“We designed this survey instrument to learn more about the identity, kinship, well-being, and social justice experiences of donor conceived adults. The survey research firm Abt SRBI of New York City fielded our survey through Survey Sampling International (SSI). SSI used a web-based panel that includes more than a million households across the United States. Through this method we were able to assemble a representative sample of 485 adults between the ages of 18 and 45 years old who said they were donor conceived. Through the same method we assembled and surveyed a comparison group of 562 similar-aged persons who were adopted as infants, and a group of 563 people of the same age who were raised by their biological parents.
The study is notable for several reasons. The first is the unprecedented large sample. The second is our ability to compare the experience of donor conceived persons with that of people who were not donor conceived – both those who were adopted and those who were raised by their biological parents. ***What is especially notable, however, is that the study employs a representative sample drawn from over one million households. These donor conceived adults were simply among a million-plus American households that had signed up to receive web surveys on, well, anything, and who are mostly targeted by marketers. They were not people who responded to an advertisement about a study or who were found through an activist online message board – people who, critics could argue, might have an axe to grind on this topic.*** Nor were they the young children of parents who agreed to talk about their children, a methodology that has merit but does not really allow donor offspring to speak for themselves. While like all studies our survey method has its limitations , and like any single study it is not definitive, it does present for the first time, for the world to see, profound insights into the lives and feelings of donor conceived adults.”
Meanwhile, take a look at how the respondents were recruited for the studies of donor offspring published in academic journals you’re so fond of. Small, self-selected groups often recruited through advertisements or word of mouth — or off of message boards where donor offspring congregate.
This is our first run at releasing this data. We will keep publishing on it, in all kinds of forums. Right now, with the release of this report, we are making space for real, broad, rigorous national and international debate on this topic, something that has not been faciliated to this point by the editors of those journals you admire.
Tell me what questions we asked that you think were leading or inappropriate. While you’re at it, look at all the questions and possible responses we included which allowed for positive or neutral stories and responses by the donor offspring. And, while you’re at it, read the nuanced discussion in the full report.
You’re a smart guy. Why are you waiting for an editor at some journal to tell you whether our study has something to offer? Take a look at it for yourself.
Why are you waiting for an editor at some journal to tell you whether our study has something to offer? Take a look at it for yourself.
Alas, I don’t have your foundation money or the academic research grants to delve into the minutiae of your research. We’ll let the pros do that. Congrats on your research and let’s see how it holds up under academic scrutiny by research pros not connected to activist groups.
I didn’t see the specifics on who funded the research. Who are your funders and how much did they pay for the research?
The Institute for American Values funded the research, because I tried like hell to interest at least three major foundations in it, and no one would touch the topic — too hot because of the infertility issue, the gay issue, the single mom issue, whatever. Just apparently too hot to even ask about. And I *am* able to raise money. But not on this. Bottom line for me, thank goodness there are places like the Institute for American Values. Honestly I forget right now what the survey costs — I could ballpark it but I’m not sure, because it was two years ago we had an invoice. It was cheaper than a telephone survey but not cheap.
I understand, you gotta day job, you’re not obsessed with my study like I am.
Just don’t tell people we recruited off a message board of donor offspring. Because that just ain’t true. : )