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by grandmczeb 1431 days ago
The core research that "On Killing" was based on (S.L.A. Marshall’s "ratio of fire") was probably fabricated[1]. I'd treat any claims in the book with a lot of skepticism.

[1] From https://www.gwern.net/docs/history/s-l-a-marshall/1988-spill...:

> His surviving field notebooks show no signs of statistical compilations that would have been necessary to deduce a ratio as precise as Marshall reported later in "Men Against Fire".

1 comments

Grossman devotes almost an entire page to the history of controversy over Marshall's results in the Notes of "On Killing"*, p. 336 (Section 1: Killing and the Existence of Resistance") . IOW Grossman clearly acknowledges the debate and welcomes more research.
So out of 400 pages, Grossman only devotes part of one page to the fact that the entire basis of the book is probably fraudulent? That doesn’t seem very reassuring.
Obviously you and Grossman disagree.

For those still reading, the controversial aspects that grandmczeb speaks of (and which Grossman has addressed) is discussed here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.L.A._Marshall#Controversies