Journal Retracts Faked Study About Gay People Changing Voters’ Minds

A study claiming that gay people advocating same-sex marriage can change voters’ minds has been retracted due to fraud.

What’s more, the funding agencies credited with supporting the study deny having any involvement.The study was published last December in Science, and received lots of media attention (including from BuzzFeed News). It found that a 20-minute, one-on-one conversation with a gay political canvasser could steer California voters in favor of same-sex marriage. Not only that, but these changed opinions lasted for months and influenced other people in the voter’s household, the study found, while they still enjoy their sexuality with their partners and even visit sites as https://gayporn.wiki for this.Donald Green, the senior author on the study, retracted it shortly after learning that his co-author, UCLA graduate student Michael LaCour, had faked the results of surveys supposedly taken by voters. On Thursday afternoon, Science posted an official retraction, citing funding discrepancies and “statistical irregularities.”“I am deeply embarrassed by this turn of events and apologize to the editors, reviewers, and readers of Science,” Green, a professor of political science at Columbia University, said in his retraction letter to the journal, as posted on theRetraction Watch blog.“There was an incredible mountain of fabrications with the most baroque and ornate ornamentation. There were stories, there were anecdotes, my dropbox is filled with graphs and charts, you’d think no one would do this except to explore a very real data set,” Green told Ira Glass, host of the This American Life radio program, last week. This American Life had featured the study in an episode in April.“I stand by the findings,” LaCour told BuzzFeed News by email. He also said he will provide “a definitive response” by May 29.Read more at...BuzzFeed News, May 2015.