Truth and Fraud: An Introduction

• Post by: Allan C. Carlson
• October 13, 2023

This special issue of The Natural Family focuses on the frequent corruption of scientific research that deals with family questions. The problem is actually not new. In a 1966 article for the academic journal Social Problems entitled “False Criteria of Causality in Delinquency Research,” sociologists Travis Hirschi and Hanan C. Selvin expose the errors of analysis and logic used to deny that broken homes, father-absence, working mothers and poor housing have any causal effect on rates of criminal youthful behavior. They open with a manufactured quotation from another field of study to show how the denial works: Smoking per se is not a cause of lung cancer. Evidence for this statement comes from the thousands of people who smoke and yet lead normal, healthy lives. . . . Whether smoking is a cause of lung cancer, then, depends upon the reaction of the [individual’s] lung tissue to the smoke inhaled. . . . These facts point to the danger of imputing causal significance to superficial variables. In essence, it is not smoking as such, but the carcinogenic elements in tobacco smoke that are the real causes of lung cancer.[1] The authors hold that truthful social and scientific research has two minimal requirements: (1) “the independent variable is causally prior to the dependent variable”; and (2) “that the original association does not disappear” when other variables “causally prior” to the two original variables are eliminated. They then show how an array of research articles on youthful delinquency from the 1950’s and early 1960’s systematically violated these criteria. Regarding “broken homes,” for example, they cite conclusions such as: “In essence, it is not that the home is broken, but rather that the home is inadequate, that really matters”; or “the structure of the family itself does not cause delinquency. . . . But it is more difficult for a single parent to provide material needs, direct controls, and other important ele