When Peer-Review Fails

The peer review process showed flaws of its own when it failed to detect "significant, disqualifying" problems in a study which raised doubts about the parenting abilities of gay couples, according to a highly critical audit. Darren E. Sherkat, a professor of sociology at Southern Illinois University at Carbondalem, was tasked with examining the study's flaws:

Among the problems Sherkat identified is the paper’s definition of “lesbian mothers” and “gay fathers”—an aspect that has been the focus of much of the public criticism. A woman could be identified as a “lesbian mother” in the study if she had had a relationship with another woman at any point after having a child, regardless of the brevity of that relationship and whether or not the two women raised the child as a couple. Sherkat said that fact alone in the paper should have “disqualified it immediately” from being considered for publication.