Confirming Cameron's deceit

The Eastern Psychological Association has basically confirmed that antigay fundamentalist Paul Cameron lied. They confirm the very things this blog contended had happened.

Dr. Phil Hineline, the president of the EPA, said that Cameron is circulating a manuscript “that purports... to be the account of a presentation at the March 2007 meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association.”

What Cameron gave was not a formal paper but a presentation given in what is called a “poster presentation”. And the EPA says that what Cameron is now distributing “was not present in the title nor was it in the supporting materials that were submitted by the Camerons for a poster presentation at EPA.” They also note that the emphasis Cameron is now giving to the alleged “early deaths” of gays “was not present in the materials submitted to EPA.”

Regardless of that they note: “Whatever its content, even the format of the manuscript to which the EPA identification has been affixed -- a manuscript of more than 7000 words plus three tables and six graphs, would have been completely inappropriate as a poster presentation which was the venue in which Dr. Cameron proposed to participate in the meeting.”

Cameron presented them with his conclusions that the number of gay people in the general population is overstated and nothing else. And that material “was accepted as a poster, not as a paper or address” but there “was nothing in the materials submitted by the author for review by EPA that indicated that the work could, or would, be informative with respect to the longevity of homosexuals.”

And what is a poster presentation. Here is one description: “Well, it’s just what it sounds like: a chance for participants to summarize their research findings on a poster displayed in a hall or conference room. People can enter, walk around, look at all the posters — there were sixty-six of them in this eighty minute session — ask a few questions, and move on to the next poster. That’s it.”

Now you see why a 7,000 word manuscript would not qualify. His poster presentation DID NOT include the material he is disseminating to the public. He gave the EPA information on one topic and then writes a paper allegedly based on that but which includes a vast amount of material not related to what he posted at the EPA meeting. He then uses the EPA to give credibility to the paper allowing gullible and ignorant fundamentalists to believe that the paper he is distributing is an address he gave to this organization.

What he is distributing is a false representation of the poster presentation. Cameron is now lying to the public by claiming to have presented something he did not present. He is attempting to use the EPA to give credibility to his bigoted lies. He is dishonest. It is clear why two professional organizations have thrown him out for falsifying data and unethical behavior.

In my original discussion I said that Cameron was using two groups that were not standardized in any way. He compared married gays in Denmark at the time of their death to the average of death for married heterosexuals. He neglected that the average age of married gays in Denmark was quite low at that time and that marriage for gays had only been legal for 10 years. I asserted that most gays who married would have been young.

So the gay group started out with a very young average age. Some will die in any such group. If their average age is in their 30s when they marry then 10 years later the average age of those who have died should be in their 40s if they died equally. In fact they didn’t die equally. The average age at death was in their 50s implying that it those who were much older who died.

This analysis of Cameron actually looked at the records for Denmark and confirms what I was saying. Fully two-thirds of all married gays in Denmark were under 40 years old because “there was no rush of older gays and lesbians to register their partnerships when the law was first enacted.” As this chart shows the average age of gays in legal partnerships was considerable younger than the average age of married straights.



Paul Cameron is deceitful and dishonest. So why do people believe him? Because they want to believe him. It confirms the bigotry they already possess and gives the veneer of an intellectual foundation to it.