Thread by @NickWolfinger

Thread. In two articles I wrote over the past few weeks, I was highly critical of @profpauldolan's research on marriage & happiness. @graykimbrough & @MarinaAdshade backed me up. Now Dolan has responded in a public statement.

pauldolan.co.uk/wp-content/upl…

/1

My first piece, in @FamStudies, responded to a statement Dolan made at the Hay Festival, where he said that married folks are only happier when their spouses are in the room, & that women shouldn't bother getting married.

web.archive.org/web/2019052514…

/2

In my article, I establish that his data show nothing of the sort. Consider this figure, from Dolan's book Happy Ever After. Marital happiness is measured on a scale of 0-6, so the differences in this figure are tiny.

/3

At the Hay Festival, Dolan said that when a married person's spouse is out of the room, they say they're "fucking miserable." Based on Dolan's figure, the difference between 1.2 & 1.4 (in a 0-6 scale) counts as fucking misery. That is consummate horseshit.

/4

Are they statistically significant? Who knows? Do they adjust for demographic differences between respondents? Who knows? Are same-sex couples included? Who knows? This is sloppy science.

/5

It's worth noting that data consistently show that married people are HAPPIER than unmarried people, contrary to Dolan. Here are data from the General Social Survey, consistent with almost every other study.

/6

After my @FamStudies article, @graykimbrough picked up the ball & ran with it. Well versed in the American Time Use Survey from Dolan's book, Grey pointed out that "Married - spouse absent" means a non-resident spouse, NOT a spouse out of the room.

https://twitter.com/graykimbrough/status/1133468690513563650

/7

Dolan actually apologized for this one in a response to @CharlesFLehman.

/8

Otherwise he continued to stick to his guns, as I chronicled in a follow-up article.

quillette.com/2019/06/10/hap…

/9

This included a painful interview with the BBC, where the interviewer eventually said "“Well, the interview went on for a long time, but I’ll spare you, because I never did manage to get Paul Dolan to produce any evidence that married women were flipping miserable.”

/10

This sigh of journalistic exasperation came at 8:08, after Dolan dissembled for a couple of minutes. The interview is here:

bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0…

/11

So, what's new? Dolan released a statement responding to his critics, although not by name. To his credit, he does own the error pointed out by @graykimbrough.

pauldolan.co.uk/wp-content/upl…

/12

But his statement is problematic on three counts.

First, he assumes his American critics are all motivated by ideological bias against single people. To be sure, I've written with @WilcoxNMP about marriage & happiness, but we're two different people.

/13

I can't honestly say I'm a pro-marriage ideologue; Dolan's other critics, @graykimbrough & @MarinaAdshade, certainly aren't. But then Dolan goes on to name-check @belladepaulo, who self-identifies as an advocate for *single* people. Now who's being ideological?

/14

Next Dolan again tries to make the claim that single people are better off. To do so he cherry-picks research results from FOUR different countries on FOUR different dependent variables; this includes a sample of Australian septuagenarians!

/15

Finally, Dolan actually thinks his critics are making causal claims about marriage and positive outcomes using cross-sectional data. That's the kind of criticism I'd make of an undergraduate student, not another academic. Of course I'm not.

/16

Be that as it may, if survey after survey shows married women being happier, it's pretty likely that unhappy people aren't being selected into marriage. Cross-sectional data can tell us this much.

/17

In sum: Dolan's recent statement just continues the pattern of denials & evasions he's become known for since he was first quoted spouting his bad science a month ago at the Hay Festival.

/end