It's not only in the world of education research that ideology sometimes trumps scientific evidence; the folks who study drug-prevention programs for children can be hostile to research-based practices as well. Case in point is the treatment that American Enterprise Institute scholar Christina Hoff Sommers received last month at a conference on a drug treatment program called "Boy Talk," which is the counterpart of a program called "Girl Power." Girl Power encourages girls to shoot, hunt, and play drums, among other things, on the assumption that making girls less traditionally feminine will make them less likely to take drugs. Sommers, author of the well-received book The War Against Boys, had been invited by HHS's Center for Substance Abuse and Prevention to speak at the conference, but when she tried to suggest that scientific studies ought to be used to evaluate Girl Power's effectiveness in preventing drug use, she was interrupted by an HHS official, commanded to end her talk, and then insulted by another panelist using language that we can't repeat in this family-friendly publication. Not long after Stanley Kurtz broke this ugly story in National Review Online, the new (Bush-appointed) head of the division of HHS that oversees the Center for Substance Abuse and Prevention personally apologized to Sommers and promised to take corrective action. See "Silencing Sommers," by Stanley Kurtz, National Review Online, December 5, 2001, and "Abolish CSAP!" by Stanley Kurtz, National Review Online, December 11, 2001. For a copy of a statement Sommers has issued, further detailing what transpired at the conference, email [email protected].
