The Sacred Project of American Sociology

by Christian Smith

Let us return first to the Regnerus affair described above to consider one important example. Most obvious in that episode was the attack on Regnerus himself. Less obvious but no less important was the assault on the integrity of the double-blind peer-review process involved in those attacks. Recall that Regnerus’ paper had been evaluated by six blind reviewers, all of whom recommended publication. Recall that the quality of Regnerus’ sample was, though not perfect, superior to any other that had been used to answer this research question prior to his study. Nothing in the review process was unusual or dubious, a fact that even the appointed auditor of it, who was extremely hostile to Regnerus and his work, later had to admit. In short, there was no good reason to subject the review of this paper to any extraordinary scrutiny. Respectable members of the journal’s editorial board should have conferred with the editor to confirm the facts and then stood up to publicly defend the review process, together telling what was by then becoming an academic lynch mob to back off and respect the established process. But that is not what happened. Instead, the political pressures overwhelmed the established system and authorities. The journal’s editor finally agreed to appoint one member of his publication board to conduct a thorough investigation and produce a report. Unfortunately, in order to appease the critics, one of the most (as I will show below) resentful, slanderous, and acti...