Hmmmm how do you suppose he/she became a doctor without becoming involved with science and scientific methodology ?
The High Road is suppose to be above intolerance, yet seems to have moved to a more intolerant modus with time ... other view seem to be bashed as, 'headquarters of leftist thinking', 'Are doctors really this stupid?', '"That article is so full of misrepresenations and outright lies that I could barely finish it."', 'The leftist extremists want us to believe the nation's civil rights ought to be turned over to doctors.', 'You will be speechless after readings NEJMs latest hack job on guns', 'The article as a whole is bunk.' ....
Why the need to bash another persons view of the world ? It seems to me to be getting more difficult for people to accept people, as people. I found this thread an interesting bashing of the NEJM.
Really? I'm bashing the foolish way in which it was written.
Despite your defense, I am not bashing his "world-view."
I am bashing his methodology. His assertions and fallacies are abundant and evident.
He makes many correlation-causation errors. For example: "In fact, handgun purchasers substantially increase their risk of a violent death." Even if his data is true, he is making one the cause rather than noting that people who purchase handguns may have ALREADY been in substantial risk of violent death.
He counts costs without counting benefits. "This reality is reflected in the fact that the $2 billion annual costs of medical care for the victims of gun violence are dwarfed by an estimated overall economic burden, including both material and intangible costs, of $100 billion" He only states the cost of gun violence without estimating the benefits of gun ownership.
He makes statments from studies that suffer from selection bias. "Young people who commit suicide with a gun usually use a weapon kept at home, and among women in shelters for victims of domestic violence, two thirds of those who come from homes with guns have had those guns used against them." Young people who want to commit suicide AND have a gun present will likely use that gun. If they have to work to find a gun, which will also possibly alert other people, they will choose other means. Secondly, he is also making a correlation/causation mistake in the second part. Simply because women who are victims of domestic violence have had guns used against them DOES NOT IMPLY that those who have guns will use them against their wives (or husbands).
He states statistics without citations: "Gun ownership and gun violence rise and fall together." Here he implies a positive correlation, when, in fact there is, at worst, NO correlation. (I will not cite studies because I'm not writing for a MEDICAL JOURNAL or any other professional journal).
He makes irrelevant comparisons: "Homicides rebounded in the late 1980s with the advent of "crack" cocaine, but today the District's gun-suicide rate is lower than that of any state." Here he talks about "gun-suicides" without commenting on the suicide rate. Is this because suicide with a gun is worse than suicide with pills?
So, we should accept that he has a different view and just move on, rather than commenting on the fact that this is a poorly written, poorly researched, unscholarly article in a (supposedly) scholarly journal?
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