Hi David,
> Unfortunately, as the reaction to Lott's work demonstrated, that
> perception has very little connection to reality. Opponents claimed
> that the work was funded by the firearms industry--on the grounds
> that the Olin foundation got its money long ago from the Olin
> Corporation, which at one time owned Winchester. It was that, not the
> Chicago connection, that was the main argument for rejecting the work
> as biased.
Whether or not Lott's work is dismissed due to his U. of C. connection, or his
Olin Fellow connection, and whether or not that distrust is fair, the point is
that his work is not trusted outside of pro-gun circles because of his
ideological associations. Wouldn't you agree that had Lott had a collaborator
who gun-control advocates believed to be one of their own, they would have found
it much more difficult to subsequently dismiss his study?
> I doubt your version is doable--because if the study was clearly
> coming out one way or the other, the more ideological people on the
> other side would bail out.
You may be right. However, HEI exists and the participants have not dropped
out.
> What you really need is a piece with
> coauthors, one of whom one side will find it hard to attack, the
> other the other side. You can get that by picking authors who are
> identified with one side or another in general, but are not committed
> on the particular issue. I actually have a project along those lines
> I am trying to get going--and I hope that if it does happen, I'll be
> able to persuade John to be one of the researchers.
This makes sense to me and I wish you the best of luck with the project. My
primary interest is to encourage well-designed studies that both sides of the
gun control debate would find difficult to dismiss due to bias. I think that,
all other things equal, a study funded/managed roughly equally by individuals on
opposite sides of the gun control issue will be trusted more widely than a
study funded/managed by individuals from a single side of the gun-control
issue. Whether such studies are done by a academics at a newly formed
institute or academics at existing institutions doesn't matter to me.
> That isn't at all clear. Suppose you were given the job "design a
> pollution public policy that is in the interest of both the EPA and
> the automobile industry." Do you think it would be that difficult? Do
> you think it likely that it would be in the public interest?
Yes, the EPA and the automobile industry may fund studies to their mutual
benefit. The EPA is susceptible to "capture" by the auto industry. But to
what extent is this happening with HEI? I don't know.
> I would not trust any of them. What I would trust, more or less, is a
> competent scholarly study done by someone who had published lots of
> articles in top ranking peer reviewed journals.
Of course, but given two equally high quality studies, one funded/managed by NRA
alone, the other funded/managed jointly by NRA/HCI which do you think would be
more widely trusted? Which do you think HCI would find harder to dismiss?
Chris
