If you're seeing this topic then another mass shooting hap…

On May 24 2013 07:24 micronesia wrote:

There is a peer reviewed paper that proves, beyond a doubt, that more guns = better, unilaterally. I will give you the name of the paper, the authors, and the website where you can order it. Unfortunately, it costs one million dollars to get a copy of it. However, you are just going to have to accept that I have provided proof of this claim unless you are willing to go through this source material I provided.

Obviously the difference between what really happened (from what I've gleamed) and my extreme example is that the cost of getting the papers that have actually been pointed to in this thread are not exorbitant. On the other hand, providing the name/location of a paper that you need to pay for in order to see is not really presenting evidence in a useful way. There's nothing wrong with offering such information, but it isn't really a good response when someone is asking for evidence pertinent to the current discussion (and that of course goes for each side of the debate).

edit: btw the papa john's example was pretty clear... I'm not sure why you were acting like it was confused somehow

On May 24 2013 06:58 Thieving Magpie wrote:


telling me papa johns has pizzas and if I'm willing to buy them I can get them is exactly what a paywall is...

The reason I'm willing to pay money for a papa johns pizza is because I have faith that the message given to me that papa johns has pizza is true. Now, papa johns informs me by word of mouth and advertisements. Scientific research does it by peer reviews. If I'm willing to get pizza, I pay for it. If I'm willing to get the entire research I pay for it.

What is there to not understand?

On May 24 2013 08:00 sunprince wrote:


It's your job to provide information to back up your own argument, not my job to go out and find it or pay for it. If you have data to share, then share it. Otherwise, you're just claiming it's out there without any relevant proof for this discussion.

On May 24 2013 08:02 Thieving Magpie wrote:


You mean the 22 peer reviewed articles he linked you?

On May 24 2013 07:39 Thieving Magpie wrote:


I understood the intent of his example, and I was just showing that (as an example) it was very unsatisfactory since the example is actually the opposite of what he was trying to say.

When someone tells me that there is pizza/research at _____ place, the fact that I have to pay for it does not make the pizza/research disappear. The *hope* is that we trust the peer review process of scientific research in order for us to not have to doubt whether or not papa johns is lying about pizza.

This is important because his main proof that the arguments are invalid is because the studies have 2 co-authors he doesn't like as if his dislike of their input somehow contradicts the peer review process.

Now, if he doesn't trust the peer review process, then he will need to see the documents for himself to make sure the data was actually reviewed. If he trusts the peer review process, then he should be okay with the fact that a bunch of experts already pored over the studies and found them to be sound. However, he wasn't saying he doesn't trust peer review, he's saying he doesn't like 2 co-authors of a big study with a bunch of other authors in it.

On May 24 2013 08:02 Thieving Magpie wrote:


You mean the 22 peer reviewed articles he linked you?

On May 24 2013 08:22 Campitor wrote:


The peer review process isn't infallible and it's not unusual for two seperate peer reviewed studies to conflict with each other or invalidate an earlier peer reviewed experiment. And it's not unusual for researchers to shop around for the best reviews or submit work to reviewers who are sympathetic to the author's hypothesis (confirmation bias).

I think what he is pointing out is that the 20 sources you cited are from only 2 authors. And since the details of the research isn't accessible unless paid for, he cannot reliably accept them at face value. Papa John's may very well have pizzas. And the claims you make about those pizzas might be the unvarnished truth. But unless I can verify your claim about the pizzas, bringing them up in a pizza discussion is really pointless. He can pay to get the research papers and his unwillingess to do so doesn't make the papers right or wrong. But who is really willing to pay for 20 research papers just to settle an argument on a gaming forum?

On May 24 2013 08:25 FallDownMarigold wrote:
They are not from only 2 authors. Moreover they are published in a wide number of journals. Your point about infallibility would be stronger if it were only 1 paper in 1 journal.

On May 24 2013 08:25 FallDownMarigold wrote:
He can remain a skeptic and ignore them, but he absolutely cannot attempt to dismiss them on grounds of methodology flaws, which is exactly what he tried to do.

On May 24 2013 08:28 Thieving Magpie wrote:


I didn't cite the articles, someone else did. I'm mostly commenting because usually when someone goes around saying Harvard studies that have been peer reviewed is a crock just because he doesn't like 2 of the multiple authors in the articles, it usually is some guy telling me that evolution isn't real.

On May 24 2013 08:18 FallDownMarigold wrote:
@Kim
Are you in school at a somewhat large university? If you are, great, you probably have full access to pubmed. Some of these articles are more likely free in any case.

Goto:
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed

Enter citation information for whichever study that interests you. If you can't get them, then you may remain a skeptic, but you may not dismiss them on methodological grounds or something which would require you to actually read the paper. And in the event you do get access and think you have a legitimate complaint, then your task is to see if this complaint is verified/corroborates by equally authoritative sources. In practice when problematic studies are published you will find peer reviewed responses to the papers, often in the same journal in which they first appeared.

On May 24 2013 09:00 Kimaker wrote:
There are any number of more dangerous activities that could be addressed if public safety was your REAL concern, but it's not. By saying Public Safety is your primary concern, you've automatically relegated -snip-

On May 24 2013 09:06 Campitor wrote:
Here is another interesting paper regarding some faked research they made it past faulty peer review. And coincidentally it's regarding historical gun ownership.

http://www.sfu.ca/~mauser/papers/scandal/Bellesiles18-9.pdf.

On May 24 2013 10:32 FallDownMarigold wrote:



This shows your lack of knowledge in public health, which is absolutely fine, since there is no reason you should be an expert on something you don't do. But please hear this: Public health professionals disagree with you here, and I will pull a quote when I have some time to get one that fits nicely. Just because other activities exist that cause more death does not mean that less deadly activities should be ignored. All activities should be addressed on a level commensurate to the attached morbidity and mortality. Other public health concerns ARE being addressed -- why on Earth should every single person in public health aim only at what causes the biggest problem? That does not make any sense from a public health perspective, and hopefully you understand this now.

Currently firearm injury and death research is not funded, at all. Logically it should receive funding in proportion to its associated death and injury relative to other public health concerns. Larger concerns receive larger funding. Fortunately the current administration is going to be resuming funding into firearm death & injury research, which will enable the current body of dedicated, active investigators to expand from ~6 to an acceptable number.

The author who states this is Garen Wintemute, and I will find his exact quote later if I must. In the meantime please read this Nature article:
http://www.nature.com/news/firearms-research-the-gun-fighter-1.12864



This is interesting, but what direct relevance does it have to the papers listed on the Harvard School of Public Health's page? Are the papers I provided under the lens of international scrutiny with regard to alleged faulty methodology? I am well aware that some peer reviewed papers have been subject to criticism due to cheating in the research. Until *these* papers are shown to be the result of cheating/dishonesty, there is no reason to assume they're shit just because not every paper is genuine. The vast majority are honest, and those that are dishonest get found out by the peers, and this finding out is inevitable when the paper is under the spotlight due to the importance of its purported claims.

You should've picked the story about the South Korean stem cell researcher who faked claims that he cloned a human. That's a fantastic example of academic dishonesty on a major publication. There is no reason to assume any of the HSPH papers are like that though -- is there? Does the data conflict with other researchers' data on firearms and suicide? Are there concerns raised in response articles from the same journals?

On May 24 2013 09:00 Kimaker wrote:

Unless (and I can access similar studies which say much of the same through different databases associated with my college) I don't care?

I never raised any issues with the methodological grounds the arguments were being postulated upon. I take issue with why I should care. The request for the links was solely academic and stemmed out of curiosity, but I'm actually intrigued by this line of reasoning, so fuckit, let's argue!

Fine, I'll concede that gun availability is positively correlated with male suicide. So what? I don't consider public health or safety a legitimate argument in this case, not because I'm unconcerned, but because people who DO consider it a legitimate argument are liars about their priorities and thus, have no rational basis from which to frame their arguments. There are any number of more dangerous activities that could be addressed if public safety was your REAL concern, but it's not. By saying Public Safety is your primary concern, you've automatically relegated yourself to:

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lcod.htm

...essentially EATING HEALTHY as your first priority. If it isn't, and your not going to push for legislation which determines peoples eating habits before that which restricts gun availability, safety isn't your actual concern.


Did I just strawman? Probably. But if public health/safety isn't the foundational axiom behind this argument of, "Gun control because positive correlation with suicide, blah, blah, blah." what is? Could it be simply a matter of, *gasp* emotional preference about the sort of society you want to live in?


For clarification, this is not TOTALLY addressed to you. Partially, but rather it's addressed to the aggregate of this suicide argument I've seen so far.

The whole argument reeks of Marxist dialectical methodology.

On May 24 2013 12:03 FallDownMarigold wrote:
The fact that you truly believe in your heart that all of these researchers are only collecting and analyzing data in order to support the government's alleged plot to diminish personal liberty is frankly ridiculous and disturbing.

That is all. We disagree on some very fundamental things, and I suspect you have not had much exposure to science at all, so naturally it's easy for you to brush it aside as government conspiracy to restrict your 'power' or whatever. Ah well.