-Caveat Lector-
At 01:52 PM 9/1/2001 -0300, you wrote:
>-Caveat Lector-
>
>http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-000070556aug31.story?coll=la%2Dnews%
2Dcomment%2Dopinions
>
>COMMENTARY
>
>Gun Panel Hears With an Ear Shut
>
>By JOHN R. LOTT Jr.
>John R. Lott Jr., a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute,
is the author of "More Guns, Less Crime" (University of
>Chicago Press, 2000)
>
>August 31 2001
>
>Isn't it obvious that the government should fund academic research?
>
>Yet as clear as the benefits seem, there is a downside: Government
officials simply cannot resist injecting politics into anything
>they touch. Denying that politics enters science is like denying that
politics plays a role in what weapons systems are developed
>by the military. Surely the academics who stand to gain the research money
for stem cell or AIDS research, for example, are
>prone to exaggerate what they hope to accomplish.
>
>But there is a more insidious problem from government funding: Politicians
want research that supports their positions. Only
>certain types of questions get to be studied, with funding restricted to
select, pre-approved researchers or institutions. Take the
>new National Academy of Sciences panel set to study firearms research. The
panel, meeting for the first time this week was
>started during the last days of the Clinton administration. Its report is
scheduled to be released right before the 2004 elections.
>
>The project scope set out by the Clinton people was carefully planned to
examine only the negative side of guns. Rather than
>compare how firearms facilitate both harm and self-defense, the panel was
asked only to examine "firearm violence" or how
>"firearms may become embedded in [a] community." It is difficult to come
up with a positive spin on terms like "embedded."
>
>President Clinton could never bring himself to mention that guns can be
used for self-defense, so it is not surprising that the
>project scope never mentions defensive use. But there are academic studies
showing that people use guns defensively 2 million
>times a year. Failing to consider this makes it difficult to see how any
panel could seriously "evaluate various prevention,
>intervention and control strategies." What if a new law disarms
law-abiding citizens rather than criminals? Might that not
>increase crime?
>
>Moreover, while not everyone on the committee has taken a public stand on
firearms, roughly half the members are known for
>supporting gun control. One member, Benjamin R. Civiletti, attorney
general in the Carter administration, has said, "The nation
>can no longer afford to let the gun lobby's distortion of the Constitution
cripple every reasonable attempt to implement an
>effective national policy toward guns and crime." Another, Richard
Rosenfeld, a criminologist at the University of Missouri-St.
>Louis, wrote that despite there not being any research showing that the
Brady Act had reduced crime, opposition to the act
>rests on emotions that are "immune to scientific assessment."
>
>Also, it is odd that the panel is accepting supplemental funding only from
private foundations, such as the Joyce Foundation,
>that have exclusively supported gun control in the past.
>
>So how well does this panel represent the academic spectrum on this issue?
Pretty poorly. Two years ago, 294 academics
>from universities such as Harvard, Stanford, UCLA, the University of
Chicago and Northwestern signed an open letter on gun
>control asking that Congress "before enacting yet more new laws ...
investigate whether many of the existing laws may have
>contributed to the problems we currently face." These academics concluded
that "new legislation is ill-advised." Yet not a single
>one of them was included on the National Academy of Sciences panel.
>
>Is this how we want government research money spent--on a stacked panel
asked to examine one side of an issue and report
>right before a presidential election? Is this what science really means to
the U.S. government?
>
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That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
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