--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
From: "Linda M. Woolf, Ph.D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)" <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [tips] hindsight (20/20) vs. foresight (?/?)
Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 12:23:50 -0600
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I am not sure how familiar you are with experimental design.There is a design classified as an ABAB where A stands for baseline and B the intoduction of the treatment.Behavior will be different under those two conditions.The second A designates a return to baseline.It is obvious that the shooter had returned to baseline due to the absence of the treatment condition(his medication).
As so aptly pointed out by Paul Brandon, this is not a valid (or even close to valid) ABAB design. At best, according to Michael above, this is an ABA design -- off meds, on meds, off meds. Of course, I don't recall reading that the individual under question in this case, committed a mass murder under the first condition or had been previously arrested for planning such a murder. Therefore, this would be at best an AB (on meds; off meds) design.
Michael also wrote:
Not if you use the subject as his or her own control. The interactional variables(ironically) are held constant.
Hmmmmm . . . what would Shadish, Cook, and Campbell (2001) say about this? Michael suggests that this individual lived in a vacuum whereby the only environmental factors impacting the individual are unique to the individual. However, history can act as an experimental treatment and threatens the internal validity of any study that occurs over time without appropriate experimental controls. It could have been the freaky weather that the midwest was experiencing, the historical presidential campaigns, an odd alignment of planets, etc. or a host of factors not unique to the perpetrator that may have lead to the shooting. As Chris Green posits, "this situation is FAR more complicated than whether one takes drugs."
Moreover, as stressed by Steven Specht, the issue of variability is an issue. There are vast numbers of individuals who go off meds and don't shoot people, vast numbers of folks not on meds who don't shoot people, and vast numbers of folks on meds who don't shoot people.
Perhaps, a more important question is why are so many mass shootings are going on in the United States currently? Just in the past couple of weeks, there was a shooting a block or so from my house (one dead, one wounded). Hypothesized rationale is that it was a drug related shooting. In the suburb next to the university, a man shot and killed five individuals at a city council meeting. Hypothesized rationale was that he recently lost a court case in a long standing dispute with the city council. The Lane Bryant shootings--hypothesized rationale is a robbery gone bad. The NIU shooting--hypothesized rationale is the medication theory. These are complex situations and one single variable rarely is the sole cause of a set of behaviors. In each case, other choices in the situation could have been made that would not have included shooting the victims.
Guns do not kill people,people do
Michael Sylvester<PhD
Daytona Beach,Florida
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