The odd thing is that when I was in the retail firearms business -- and
when I instructed non-LEOs -- many of my clients were doctors, dentists
and other medical professionals and most of them seemed rational. So, it
must be a portion of the profession that harbors these fallacious views
and foists them off on the public, acting much like the actors in lab
coats who, while saying they aren't doctors, give that impression and
pitch nostrums and patent medicines on TV.
On 6/22/2011 14:21, Guy Smith wrote:
Chapter five of /Shooting The Bull
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0983240701/>/ is devoted to the
issue of bad science and the inadequacy of peer review vis-à-vis gun
control. Indeed, one entry in the book's "catalog of canards" reads:
*The Lie of Peer Review:*Using bands of researchers who share the same
biases to review and approve suspect research.
From my ongoing review of such peer reviewed studies, one recurring
nightmare emerged -- Joyce Foundation funding to medical schools to
produce criminological "research." I've combed through a fair stack
of these studies and have yet to find one that lacked significant
methodological flaws. I personally believe this is part of the Joyce
Foundation game plan because of how it plays with the average voter:
1)People have to trust doctors in order to survive past childhood,
thus people tend to have unfaltering belief in the scientific
studiousness of medical professionals (*The Lie of Universal
Competence:* Using experts in one field of study to opine in a
different field, and having their credibility conceal poor research).
2)Papers on criminology published in medical journals do not receive
the scrutiny they would in criminological journals, and thus get
printed without opposition (and at times, encouragement).
I forget exactly which medical journal I was thumbing through, but it
contained a rather sloppy gun control focused paper. The editorial in
that edition, which referenced the paper, read almost like a Brady
Campaign web page. That I found such blatant editorial bias
unsurprising shows how thoroughly seedy the whole process has become.
At the risk of rudeness and shameless self promotion, this snippet
from /Shooting The Bull/ ties it together:
This iniquity has not gone unnoticed by the rest of the research
community, medical and medicated alike. Robert Higgs, a fellow with
enough letters after his name to start an alphabet soup factory, is
troubled by the bias-induced weakness of the peer review system. He
should know given that he has endured four decades in academia, during
which he has been a peer reviewer for over thirty professional
journals, and a research proposal reviewer for the National Science
Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and a number of private
foundations. "Peer review," he writes, "on which lay people place
great weight, varies from being an important control, where the
editors and the referees are competent and responsible, to being a
complete farce," The main obstacle for a researcher to get published
is to find a journal whose editors share the researcher's bias. "Any
journal editor who desires, for whatever reason, to reject a
submission can easily do so by choosing referees he knows full well
will knock it down; likewise, he can easily obtain favorable referee
reports."
If that doesn't inspire confidence in the scientific peer review
process, then sanity persists.
Guy Smith
Author /Shooting The Bull
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0983240701/>/ and /Gun Facts
<http://www.gunfacts.info/>/
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From:*[email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] *On Behalf Of *Raymond
Kessler
*Sent:* Wednesday, June 22, 2011 12:47 PM
*To:* 'Jamie Fraser-Paige'; [email protected]
*Subject:* RE: Firearmsregprof Digest, Vol 88, Issue 2
Agreed: The JAMA publishes a lot of trash research on the gun issue.
Peer review is, IMHO, very weak in this area. See also
http://www.secondamendmentlibrary.com/10/KESSLER.htm
Dr. Ray Kessler
Prof. of Criminal Justice
P.S. Please feel free to check out my blog at
http://crimelawandjustice.blogspot.com/
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