Spaceman Spiff does that thing with data where you point out the most unpalatable results from a given set of statistics and place it front and centre:
Any mention of Cofnas by academics or the media comes with an obligatory dismissal of his work as “controversial” or “far-right”. It is often labelled as “pseudo-science”.
Yet if critics were confident in their position, that the research is incorrect, they would not react as they do.
This is easy to illustrate with a fake example. Imagine research into another sensitive area, female behaviour.
We can draw conclusions based on the research that will anger feminists in much the same way research into the heritability of intelligence and behavioural patterns within distinct groups angers most of academia.
One stark observation dominates our view, in everything we can measure, from mental health to life success, single mother households produce the worst results for children.
The literature is crystal clear.
With a wide variety of measurable outcomes, including life quality, criminality and recidivism, adjustment to society, academic achievement, material success, and mental health issues, the best results are produced by two-parent households closely followed by single-father households.
Single-mother households trail far behind on virtually everything we value. Being raised by a single mother is detrimental to the wellbeing of children compared to other options.
This is reflected in the historical record too. Females gaining custody of children after divorce is a recent novelty. In the Victorian era the father usually retained custody. Women were seen as too emotionally unstable to raise children alone. They needed the strong presence of a father.
One really damning factoid to emerge from crime statistics is most infanticide is committed by women, not men. Of children killed by their parents it is almost unheard of for the father to murder his own children. In some 98 percent of cases it is the mother.
We can use these observations to reach a sensible conclusion.
Single mothers should not be allowed to raise their own children.
Trashing the research not the researchers
Our conclusion is not very good. Academics would find it easy to challenge. This process follows a predictable course.
The first stage is to examine the papers and point out their flaws. What studies show these outcomes? What variables were measured? How were they measured?
Then there are the definitions. What do we really mean by life outcomes? Success is a subjective concept at best. Even something nominally objective like incarceration rates are complex with many variables of which the childhood environment is only one.
What other factors were measured? Were there control groups? What about sample sizes? How many people did they track? Many papers reach bold conclusions with small sample sizes. Which leads to the next question, has anyone replicated this finding? The replication scandal is well documented in multiple academic disciplines; one-off studies no one can reproduce, even quite famous experiments that have entered popular culture.
The quality of the studies is often assessed first because if they are flawed this inevitably damages the credibility of any conclusions drawn.
As for our conclusion, that children should always be taken from single mothers, even widowed women, this is not supported even with the evidence outlined above. Studies would need to demonstrate fostered or adopted children did better than those raised by a widowed mother, an unlikely proposition and just one alternative view possible from the evidence.
Importantly, serious critics would generally avoid motive except as a last resort. Sexism, misogyny and hatred of women may be there in a hypothesis that paints women in a negative light, but compared to challenging the research and its foundations, speculating about motive is weak and too easy to dismiss.
Jumping straight to perceived hate or bigotry, particularly when it makes the accusers look morally superior, is a tell.
