Update on a Flawed Study of Homosexuality and Child Abuse

The expression of concern is correct, but the article should be retracted and my 2009 blog post should have been cited.

On February 24 of this year, the Archives of Sexual Behavior published an important Expression of Editorial Concern (EEC) about a 2001 study of homosexuality and sexual abuse.* The EEC begins as follows. 

A reader alerted the Editor-in-Chief that there were concerns regarding some of the data reported by Tomeo et al. (2001), namely that data in Table II did not correspond to discussion in the text and that there were minor numerical errors in Table III. In particular, Table II shows that 68% of the homosexual men self-identified as homosexual before molestation as did 62% of the homosexual women, but in the discussion Tomeo et al. (2001) stated that 68% of the homosexual male participants and 38% of the homosexual female participants did not identify as homosexual until after molestation.

The EEC then describes some additional problems with the study, including the fact that the dissertation by Tomeo which originally reported the results of the study, also contradicts the Archives report on several critical points.**

Although I was glad to see this EEC, the article is so flawed that I believe it should be retracted. The contradictions between the tables and the text (in both the Archives article and the dissertation) make the article useless and call into question the entire research project. And I have more than a little knowledge of those contradictions since I was the first one to publicly point them out in a popular 2009 blog post, titled, “A major study of child abuse and homosexuality revisited.” (click the link to read it) In that blog post, I reported my contacts with Donald Templer, Marie Tomeo’s dissertation advisor, and my belief then that article should not be used. Over the years, I have tried to find Tomeo without success.  

The Rest of the Story

Funny story, when I first read that a “reader alerted the Editor-in-Chief” in the EEC, I wondered if the reader was me. See, back in 2009, I alerted Archives Editor Ken Zucker about the main contradictions that he pointed out in the current EEC. While I thought it would be a very strange way to address my work from back in 2009, I was hopeful that Zucker had finally come around to the view that the study was flawed. Academia sometimes moves slowly, but 14 years slow? I also wondered why he used the vague term “reader” instead of citing me directly since we had exchanged emails about the contradictions back in 2009.

On a lark, I decided to search my emails for any correspondence I might have missed about the article and found a 2020 email from a reader of my blog that I had overlooked at the time. As it turns out, this individual, Ethan E., told me in 2020 that he had sent my 2009 blog post to Ken Zucker and the Springer editors responsible for the Archives with questions about the accuracy of the Tomeo et al article. Apparently, his questions along with my 2009 blog post triggered the investigation which led to the EEC.

A reading of the EEC and my blog post will show that the information is substantially the same. Zucker adds some additional calculations which I didn’t provide, but the main contradictions are the same as I pointed out in 2009. He was aware of the problems then, and then again in 2020 because of my work. So why not cite it?

After getting no explanation from Zucker about why I was not cited, I contacted Springer editor Teresa Krauss. She replied that she referred the matter to Springer’s “research integrity group.” Here is the reply from Krauss and the integrity group:

They [research integrity group] have read the post and the Editorial Expression of Concern (EEoC), and while the same data being used, they do not see this as plagiarizing the blog post. Additionally, it would be inappropriate to have cited your discussion of this article since an EEoC is the Editor's way to alert the readers and as such it does not contain references.

Actually, the 2023 EEC has two references. Would one more have hurt?

When I let “reader” Ethan E. know Springer’s response, he replied, “Yes very strange that Ken [Zucker] ignored these points over 10 years ago, but suddenly gets to play the good guy because I emailed others at Springer.”

Ethan believes the article should be retracted saying, “Very unprofessional crowd. All these publishers sign up to these guidelines for when to retract but rarely follow them because they find it embarrassing to retract.”

No References in an EEC?

As to the claim it would have been inappropriate to cite my work in an EEC, it isn’t hard to find other corrective editorial actions which contradict that. For instance, the journal Personality and Individual Differences recently retracted an article and linked to a blog post which brought out the issues warranting the retraction. In the retraction, the editors included a link to the blog post which highlighted the problems, thus giving appropriate credit.***

As well, we considered the reviews by a Ph.D. senior geneticist and a Ph.D. neuroscientist (neither have any connection to the authors of the paper or to either PAID or ISSID, and a medical researcher who initially drew our attention to the issue in a letter to the PAID Editor-in-Chief and which can be currently found at: https://medium.com/@evopsychgoogle/a-critique-of-rushton-and-templers-2012-paper-b334ed8db5ae

Bottom line, the Tomeo et al article is trash and should be retracted. I may lose some friends over it, but I hope this post raises awareness about the Tomeo article and why it should never be used in political material or conversations about correlates of sexual orientation. I hope Ken Zucker and Springer do the right thing and retract it completely.

Concerning citation, I know what I think, but I want to know what readers think. Leave your thoughts in the comments below. Should the Archives have provided more background and linked to my blog post?

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* Tomeo, M. E., Templer, D. I., Anderson, S., & Kotler, D. (2001). Comparative data of childhood and adolescence molestation in heterosexual and homosexual persons. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 30, 535–541.

**Tomeo, M. E. (2000). Sexual orientation development. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, California School of Professional Psychology, Fresno Campus, Fresno, CA.

***Thanks to David Thyssen for the example.

The Tomeo et al article has been cited 71 times in APA’s data base and 182 times in Google scholar. I have been told that Joe Rogan referred to it in 2017 when speculating about molestation being a cause of homosexuality. If anyone can confirm that, let me know. (UPDATE: See the first entry in this compilation)

To see how irresponsibly this study has been used, check out the altmetric analysis of Twitter usage and this compilation of material from Ethan E.