| Again, I really appreciate you engaging and I'm happy for the opportunity to talk dane-pgp. I don't have much time atm so a little rushed. >so you didn't have to trust the writer or editor of the article They're linking to a lot of their other stuff, iirc, and selectively citing things that support the position they want to disseminate. > It says that there are 3 types of laws which have the strongest level of scientific support for their success We have to differentiate between effect size and statistical "significance" (poorly named). The effect sizes (how much of a difference you would expect to see) are small iirc. For instance, the "assault weapons" one, which gets the strongest level coloring, is I believe a 0.9% decrease in murders if it's the study I'm thinking of. The "statistical significance" is, roughly, how much you can believe the effect size you're measuring is real, NOT how important it is. So you can have a 0.9% reduction in murders that is very "significant". I don't know what their coloring is, but my guess is they're using statistical significance, maybe with blending in some effect size. >I wonder, though, what it would take for me to convince you of anything, since you could just dismiss all scientific research as "coming from academia" and therefore tainted by political views that you don't like. I am from academia! I actually don't have a guns axe to grind specifically, it's a "we're going to poison the social sciences via publication bias and p-hacking" axe. Basically, people produce evidence for what's politically palatable (not even what they actually want to believe), and it's a huge problem. Another one is sex and behavior. It's abundantly clear that there are huge differences in behavior between the sexes, and that this is driven by genetics, and we've known this on the basis of good scientific evidence for 100+ years. It's not ~~socially determined~~. >"Importantly, however, where we conclude that evidence for a policy is weak, that does not mean that the policy is ineffective; the policy itself might well be quite effective." > "Still, even relatively small effects of gun policies are important to the people and communities affected." Let me translate: "Guys, we know this doesn't look good, but we promise...there's a way you can talk about it such that we can still keep claiming the things we want to believe are true in spite of the avalanche of evidence coming from researchers that also want to claim the things. Also, jk jk, don't punish us we want to keep our jobs :-) :-D " One of the key problems here (and the reason for my axe) is that it's tough or impossible to do real research on important stuff like this right now. > extending that disapproval to mature ad hominem arguments as well. ;-)
I've enjoyed this :-) |
Thanks for discussing respectfully, and for the work it sounds like you are doing to improve standards in academia.