Accused of manipulating data

Focus on the Family has been accused of taking research data and manipulating it to attempt to make their socially conservative agenda look more credible.

From Judith Stacey

Judith Stacey, a sociologist at New York University, said her work was manipulated by Focus on the Family in an attempt to show gays and lesbians do not make good parents. (1)

In a guest column published in Time Magazine titled "Two Mommies is One Too Many", James Dobson argued that same-sex couples are unsuitable parents, citing support research by New York University educational psychologist Carol Gilligan. After the article was published, Gilligan accused Dobson of "twisting" and "distorting" the research that she had done. Gilligan has since asked Focus on the Family to never quote her research again and to issue an apology. (2)

Kyle Pruett of the Yale School of Medicine has also accused Focus of the Family of manipulating his research. In a letter to Dobson he wrote, "You cherry-picked a phrase to shore up highly (in my view) discriminatory purposes... This practice is condemned in real science, common though it may be in pseudo-science circles. There is nothing in my longitudinal research or any of my writings to support such conclusions." In fact, Pruett's reseach shows opposite of what Dobson made it out to be. (3)

The organization has been making edits to Wikipedia without disclosing their identity. (4), (5)