All of this is put forth without even a single footnote or citation.  We are just to take Professor Kazdin's word for all this.  He argues that "the science" shows this and shows that, but anyone who reads scientific reports knows that there is nothing so clearly defined as "the science" about just about anything.  The "findings" Kazdin summarizes in the paragraph above appear to be matters of correlation anyway.  When a report suggests that spanking (or anything else) is "associated with" a list of ills and bad outcomes, realize that "associated with" is a very thin argument.  Non-spanking may be just as or even more "associated with" these same issues, under the right conditions and described by the right definitions.

Professor Kazdin laments the fact that "most of us pay, at best, selective attention to science."  He understands that scientists "have not done a good job of publicizing what they know about corporal punishment."  Parents believe that spanking works, at least to some useful extent, and they reject what are presented as arguments based in what "the science" has to say against it.

Kazdin is simply infatuated with "the science."  What case can be made against spanking?  "It can be argued from the science," he assures.  Research "consistently shows" that spanking does not work over time.

Kazdin wants spanking to be outlawed.  He reports that 91 nations have banned spanking in the schools and 23 have banned corporal punishment even in the home -- generally by criminalizing parents who spank.

He also offers this news bulletin sure to attract the ire of America's parents:

Practically nobody in America knows or cares that the United Nations has set a target date of 2009 for a universal prohibition of violence against children that would include a ban on corporal punishment in the home.

Ah, so now parents are up against, not only "the science," but the United Nations as well.  Kazdin does not call for any specific legislative provision that would ban spanking, but "we ought to be able to at least discuss it with each other like grownups."  It is time to question "the primacy of rights that parents exercise in the home."  Thanks for the warning.

Professor Kazdin's confidence in "the science" just demonstrates that scientists often have short memories.  In all too many cases, what is considered "the science" in one generation is laughed off in the next.

In her important book, Raising America: Experts, Parents, and a Century of Advice About Children, Ann Hulbert traces the progression of conflicting advice offered by scientists to parents through the twentieth century.  As she makes clear, these "experts" cannot even agree on the most basic issues.  She lays out two opposite views of parenting that appear in the literature.  The first argues that parents need to assert more authority; the second argues that parents should be more empathetic with their children.  Popular theories based on what has been called "the science" swing on that pendulum.  The "experts" almost never come back to admit they were wrong.