* I can’t reveal the details, but they’re based on very accurate surveys.

No you haven’t. You have typed.

Another typical example of left-wing inaccuracy and misrepresentation.

I heard Eva Cox comment on this issue on RN’s Australia Talks Back.

On this one she is spot on. If you can’t evaluate the methodology and can’t review the questions you should ignore the results. It is as simple as that. Forget they ever existed. It doesn’t matter if they ’sound about right’. If that was a measure you wouldn’t need to do any research.

It is also irrelevant what Ms Cox’s views on other matters and what her manners might be.

So there! I have spoken!

But we should also take into account the ideological and theoretical biases of those who do the evaluation and testing.

And I still think it is wrong that the article you quoted doesn’t seem to mention Eva Cox’s background. By failing to do so, it commits the same sin that the reporters of the survey committed.

I might question your arguments/interpretations based on your lefty ideological bias, but if you are making a factual statement that accords with known evidence I am not going to discount it simply because I disagree with your politics.

They welcome peer reviewing and even defending ones position.

2)I am not aware of christians pouring scorn on peer reviewing.
I have to say I am unaware of this and given my point of view I doubt that I have missed much.
Where does this criticism come from?

The point is this: trust in social scientific or scientific research is guarenteed by its publicity - that is to say, the availability of the raw data for other researchers to attempt to replicate the conclusions, and the availability of the survey questions so that they can be subjected to validation (a statistical process). Universities have protocols which enable this access, and provide for the retention of data for a period of some years in order to facilitate it. This provides a second level of trust in the reliability of the data and the analysis above and beyond the peer review process.

This point can also be made in response to Andrew and Jason - the fact that such protocols are not normally followed in either political polling or commercial market research, and may not be in privately funded research, provides a legitimate reason to prefer academic research to the results of research which cannot be scrutinised by other researchers whose qualifications and experience enable them to evaluate its reliability and validity.

This is the other point of the post - you, and your Bush administration friends and Christians often pour scorn on the ethical and scientific protocols which regulate research - such as peer reviewing. This is in effect a relativist if not postmodernist position. Of course, it’s applied selectively. You’ve claimed that university research is inferior to the marketplace of ideas on the internet. However, if you were to seek medical treatment for a potentially dangerous ailment, you would presumably repose trust in medical professionals whose diagnosis and treatment are predicated on public, open and replicable research tested through clinical trials and peer review. In other words, there is a very important point at stake in the defence of the protocols which produce trust in expert research and its applications, as well as the other issues which I’m alluding to.

If the purpose of this post, and the article it quotes, is to criticise the presumed concealment of the ideological bias of the Southern Cross bioethics Institute — then the failure to mention Eva Cox’s blatant ideological bias is the height of hypocrisy.