[Continued from HERE.]

As I am always quite gung-ho when I start something new, I read the findings and/or synopsis of the findings of hundreds of studies of adoptee behavior and psychology. I pin-pointed forty-five that were focused specifically on comparing the psychological profile, adaptation and behavior of adoptees and non-adoptees. All of the relevant studies I included were concerned with adolescents and adults, although some of them were long-term studies and started when the participants were not yet teens.

There were even a couple of studies about the various studies that I found particularly interesting, but they are not included in the forty-five.

Here is one thing I love about America: there are a gagillion scholarly, scientific, completely ‘valid’ studies on every topic under the sun being done at any given moment of the day … and every study contradicts every other study.

As a matter of fact, if you want to prove a point, try this: hand select a group of people, (the more the merrier,) that you suspect will answer questions in a way that agrees with you or that fit the stereo-type that you want to validate. Give them a questionaire to fill out and interview them. Even better, ask people that know the participants to fill out a questionaire about them instead, like parents and teachers and colleagues, oh my! (Sorry, I did warn you about the Oz-factor, didn’t I?)

Both the questionaire and interviews should be done with leading and limited questions. You know, the kind used in television courtroom/legal dramas to which the yes/no answer does not paint the full picture of truth and the lawyer always cuts off the witness before they can clarify any nuance or fact.

So then, armed with that ‘raw data,’ compile it, write it up, edit it well, include somewhere a disclaimer by indicating some sort of ‘margin of error’ and publish it under some group or another’s acronym, or even better, some group affiliated with a university or institute. If you know of other studies on the same topic that may seem to disprove your point, you can even be pro-active by mentioning the conflicting study and its finding in your analysis … but don’t forget to allude to it’s ‘flawed methodolgy.’ And… there you have it: your point is proven by a scientific study.

No extra charge for the how-to lesson. Digressions are free.

I didn’t want to follow this kind of not-so-objective-path to allegedly objective conclusions, so I decided I didn’t want to prove my point, I just wanted to get the point.

[Continued. Next blog: research on research.]