Reply #78: Yes, he slides by on a technicality (this time)

[DanTex]

Perhaps he should have said "no evidence by criminologists at FSU whose names start with K". Of course, in other threads he's repeated the "no empirical evidence" lie without this qualification, but yes, this time his statement was grossly misleading, but not technically false (or I should say, it hasn't been proven false, it might still be false, but I'm not going to bother trying to find a reference).

Second, re: gejohnston, I have a request. I think that if you read gejohnston's posts about peer-review, you will agree with me that he is sorely confused. Perhaps the pro-gun people have some kind of omerta where nobody ever points out each other's misconceptions, you only criticize the "antis". But maybe, just this once, you might send a post his way explaining how the peer review system actually works. For some reason, he seems to believe your opinion much more than mine.


As far as your critique, I guess at some point I am inevitably going to end up writing a very long post about gun research, so here goes...

Re: Gorski
Despite the fact that Gorski was talking about medical research in particular, I'm sure you would agree that things like publication bias and politics are just as prevalent in other fields as well. So don't act like research in medical journals is particularly tainted, but research from sociology or criminology journals is A-OK. The fact of the matter is medical research is among the highest profile research in all academia, that's why it receives so much attention and scrutiny. Frankly, nobody really cares about sociology papers outside of sociology (OK that's an unfair generalization, but still...). If anything, the greater scrutiny would tend to imply that medical journals would be higher, not lower quality.

Re:

What is the issue is that a sizable segment of the medical/public health community has succumbed to groupthink where firearms are concerned: they have decided that privately owned firearms are a public health menace, and eagerly produce and publish any and all research that supports that predetermined conclusion.

And there it is: a conspiratorial allegation of community-wide bias. Unlike others here, at least you concede that the mainstream academic consensus is not on your side: it is a fact that there is extensive peer-reviewed research in mainstream, reputable journals supporting gun control. I'll credit you for that, and you should speak up, because so many on your side don't even seem to be aware of this.


But on to your theory of community-wide bias, which, I must note, puts you in the company of every other fringe group whose theories go against mainstream academic opinion. I'm not saying that the mainstream is always right, but usually they are. Everybody who has ever been wrong thinks they are Galileo, bravely standing up against the closed-minded establishment and their biases.

You bring up Wakefield, well guess what the anti-vaxxers say when confronted with the fact that the peer-reviewed evidence is overwhelmingly opposed to their point of view? Something about how mainstream medical researchers have "succumbed to groupthink" and just want to support their "predetermined conclusions". Come to think of it, at least the anti-vaxxers can claim that big pharma has some kind of profit motive for their conspiracy, but on guns, the motivation is nothing by the usual "liberal elite anti-gun bias". So conspiratorial suspicion of gun research is actually more like global warming denial. Or intelligent design.

I hope you realize what you are really suggesting. Because, unlike the Wakefield case, for you to be right, it's not just one fraudulent paper that slipped through and later got retracted. It's not just a couple referees from NEJM. If the gun research were really all crap, then in order to get it all published in the variety and quality of journals in which it has appeared, tens and maybe hundreds of highly accomplished and reputable researchers would have to be involved

Now, I'll be honest, the case for gun control is far weaker than the case for global warming, evolution, and vaccinations. Not even close. Hemenway and the rest of them readily admit that there is a scarcity of good data, partly because of the nature of the field, and partly because so many gun control laws that might be effective on a large scale simply have never been tried in the US. Nevertheless, your conspiratorial accusations of groupthink could be taken verbatim from a global warming denial website.


Re: Your specific critique of those two papers.

Really, save your breath. Because it's all been said before. If you spend a little time with google you will quickly find that what Rachel Maddow calls the "100% pry-it-from-my-cold-dead-hands, all caps, guns forever rabbit hole" of right-wing pro-gun websites will probably have gone over every single gun study word by word and given a "refutation".

You see, the easiest thing in the world is to take a statistical study, crunch some of the numbers in a different way, pick out some wording you don't like, and conclude that it is bunk. I don't know if you thought up this stuff yourself, or if it came from ilovesmesomeguns.com or wherever the pro-gun people are hanging out these days. But it has all the hallmarks of a lone internet loon attempting to discredit mainstream peer-reviewed research. Here are some common signs:
-Mumble something about "causation" and "correlation".
-Claim that the authors forgot to control for something.
-Bring up a past and irrelevant example of improper use of statistics.
The only biggie you seem to have missed is the use official-sounding logical phrases like "modus ponens" or "fallacy of composition".

Even if this is original work, believe me, anyone with even a modest background working with data can very easily whip up a persuasive-sounding critique of a study, enough to seem convincing to a lay audience and send true believers into ecstatic convulsions. And many are even better than yours: I've seen them produce charts and graphs and t-tests and everything. What's more, if you like the pro-gun stuff, you'll positively love the global warming deniers, who are by and large more sophisticated.

That's why the peer review system is necessary. It's not that "correlation/causation" and the rest are not valid concerns. Quite the opposite: everyone who has ever taken an undergrad class in stats knows about them. You see, the people doing this research are not idiots. Neither are the editors or referees at NEJM or elsewhere. If there were really errors as severe as you and the pro-gun sites would have us believe (and not in just one paper, but in every gun paper!), then it would almost surely not have gotten past the referees.

At the end of the day, the peer review system is indeed flawed, but it is far superior to the "some crap I read on the internet" standard. You'll note that gejohnston claimed earlier in the thread that Hemenway has been "exposed" here on DU. That's the real groupthink: the fact that the pro-gun crowd really believes that scores of peer-reviewed studies have been debunked by a bunch of internet "experts" with no expertise to speak of, a clear herd mentality, and an obvious pre-existing bias.