200-Plus Scholars Speak Out Against American Psychological Association's Violence/Gaming Study

from the dissension-in-the-ranks dept

We've been covering stories here about studies and claims linking real-world violence and video games for about as long as I've been a reader/writer. An even cursory review of our own record can only lead a reader to conclude that such links are, at best, nebulous, and are perhaps less likely than likely to exist. When coupled with some recent and fascinating revelations about just how easy it is to get a study to say exactly what you want it to say, and to get that study published and reported in supposedly reputable arenas, we're left with the troubling impression that such studies linking violence and gaming are more back-patting endeavors than they are true intellectual efforts.

With that in mind, you may have heard of a recent American Psychology Association report that strongly affirms the link between gaming and aggression, which is in this context meant to be synonymous with violence. This was the product of the APA's task force for studying the existence of such a link. It might represent a scientific victory for those who have long claimed that such a link exists, were it not for the predictably massive problems associated with the task force, the studies it took into account, and the methodology for the conclusions it drew. These problems are evidenced by the over two hundred academics who have submitted an open letter to the APA sharing their collective concerns over how this all went down.

One of those signees, Stetson University psychology professor Chris Ferguson, spoke with Game Informer, detailing the problems with the task force. Among those problems are details such as the task force being mostly comprised of scholars who have demonstrated in the past a willingness to link violence and aggression, the measures they used for aggression, and task force members having previously publicly supported legislation aimed at keeping games away from children.

Ferguson tells me that of the seven task force members, four had at anti-media leanings, with another that uses aggression measures that have been called into question by some factions of the psychology community. "To some degree, they're really commenting on their own product," he says. "I think people interpret these things as neutral. You have to remember that they are commenting on their own product. These are people looking at their own research and declaring it beyond further debate. All of us would love to do that, but we don't really get that chance, nor should we."

He also notes that all seven members of the task force were over the age of 50, citing a correlation between views on media and age. "I point that out because there is solid evidence that age is a correlate for attitudes about video games, even amongst scholars," Ferguson explains. "Age and negative attitudes toward youth predict anti-game attitudes."

For those of us that worship at the altar of science, this serves as a welcome reminder that science is only as good as those conducting it. Bias is omnipresent and omnidirectional and it is something we must always be vigilant against. For instance, cited in the open letter is the fact that the APA previously stated as a matter of policy that violent games should see a reduced exposure to children and that the APA had already made recommendations to the gaming industry about exactly how violence should be portrayed in games, specifically suggesting that real-world consequences should be visited upon violent actors in digital media.

In other words, as the letter states, the APA task force essentially reached the conclusion that the APA's previous work and recommendations were on point, using a hand-picked team comprised of researchers perfectly biased to reach just that conclusion. Adding to the letter's concern over some of the sloppy methodology for drawing the task force's conclusions is the kind of simple real-world analysis of data that has me wondering just how any of this made it past the APA's review to begin with.

Ferguson and his colleagues also point to data evidencing a decrease in youth violence, which contradicts assertions that media (video games and non-interactive forms) are a public health concern. Ferguson cites colleagues at Oxford, Villanova, Western Michigan University, and more that have presented recent findings in peer-reviewed journals. These studies indicate that there is no connection between violent video games and aggression. A study by Patrick Markey at Villanova indicates that "participants who were not angry tended to be relatively unaffected by exposure to violent video games."

In other words, at the exact moment that the APA suggests violence and video games are linked, and at the exact moment that violent video games have exploded in popularity and dissemination, violence amongst youth (and the general public) is trending downward. One would think that if a link existed, we might see some evidence of it outside of ham-fisted studies utilizing questionable methodologies.

But, alas, this is the way of things. And you should expect this to continue, probably right up to the point when most of the research of this issue is being done by a generation in which gaming was prevalent in their youth. Then the studies will likely show something more interesting than a self-created echo-chamber of moral outrage.

Filed Under: academics, scholars, studies, video games, violence
Companies: american psychological association

Public.Resource.Org Sued (Again) For Publication Of A Document Incorporated Into Federal Regulations [Update]

from the maybe-sue-the-government-instead? dept

Carl Malamud's project -- the freeing of laws, codes and regulations via Public Resource -- has seen him and his site sued multiple times for copyright infringement. This includes lawsuits brought legal threats by state governments who somehow believe state laws can't be distributed without their permission.

Other entities, like air conditioning contractors and sheet metal manufacturers, have also gone to court to defend their "right" to keep rules and regulations that impact millions of Americans safely locked up behind high-priced paywalls. Malamud's response has been to point out that a) state laws shouldn't be locked up, even the annotated versions stocked by LexisNexis, and b) federally mandated standards that apply to contractors shouldn't be either, even if those creating the documents are commercial enterprises. In the latter case, federal mandates make these documents of public interest, seeing as they apply to millions of Americans, even if somewhat more indirectly.

Now, Malamud is being sued by the three organizations (two of which are all nonprofits) behind the "Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing." Here's what these standards are designed to do, according to the filing.

The Standards are designed to apply to professional test developers, sponsors, publishers, and users by providing criteria for the evaluation of tests, testing practices, and the effects of test use. The Standards have been used to develop testing guidelines for such activities as college admissions, personnel selection, test translations, test user qualifications, and computer-based testing.

In running down the facts of the case, the plaintiffs point to the lengthy process of maintaining and improving these standards, as well as income it generates at $40-50 a copy. (The lawsuit claims $35-40 for a price range, but the American Psychological Association's [one of the plaintiffs] own site sells it for $49.95.) These assertions are both likely true, but it doesn't change one of the most integral, underlying facts.

The Standards were not created in response to an expressed governmental or regulatory need, nor were they prepared in response to any legislative action or judicial decision. However, the Standards have been cited in judicial decisions related to the proper use and evidence for assessment, as well as by state and federal legislators.

This is the plaintiffs arguing that, unlike many other documents posted at Public Resource, this one isn't related to, and hasn't been adopted by the US government or any smaller state entity. The wording here seems to limit the plaintiffs' "exposure" to citations only. The plaintiffs do admit that government bodies have incorporated (although this word isn't used specifically) the standards, but surround it with verbiage that makes it sound as involuntary as possible.This is an attempt to head off Malamud's normal defense of his actions -- that government regulations, ones that potentially affect millions of people, shouldn't be withheld from the public.

Similar sentences are interspersed throughout the filing in the hopes of further separating the plaintiffs from previous entities that have sued Malamud.

There is no mechanism to enforce compliance with the Standards on the part of the test developer or test user…

None of the Plaintiff organizations has solicited any government agency to incorporate the Standards into the Code of Federal Regulations or other rules of Federal or State agencies…

While these parties may not have pushed for federal adoption and may not have implemented mandatory adoption themselves, the fact remains that the "Standards" have been incorporated into federal regulations.

§ 668.148 Additional criteria for the approval of certain tests.

(a) In addition to satisfying the criteria in § 668.146, to be approved by the Secretary, a test must meet the following criteria, if applicable:

(1) In the case of a test developed for a non-native speaker of English who is enrolled in a program that is taught in his or her native language, the test must be

[...]

(iv) Developed in accordance with guidelines provided in the 1999 edition of the “Testing Individuals of Diverse Linguistic Backgrounds” section of the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing prepared by a joint committee of the American Educational Research Association, the American Psychological Association, and the National Council on Measurement in Education incorporated by reference in this section. Incorporation by reference of this document has been approved by the Director of the Office of the Federal Register pursuant to the Director's authority under 5 U.S.C. 552(a) and 1 CFR part 51.

[...]

(2) In the case of a test that is modified for use for individuals with disabilities, the test publisher or State must—

(i) Follow guidelines provided in the “Testing Individuals with Disabilities” section of the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing; and

[...]

(3) In the case of a computer-based test, the test publisher or State, as applicable, must—

(i) Provide documentation to the Secretary that the test complies with the basic principles of test construction and standards of reliability and validity as promulgated in the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing…

So, the Standards are very much a part of federal law. And yet the plaintiffs argue that because it had no active part in the government's decision to incorporate their standards, it should still be able to paywall documents that are used by the US government to determine the suitability of tests.

Locking up something that is part of federal regulations doesn't make sense, even if the regulations wording helpfully includes a (very indirect) link to AERA's cash register. That these organizations didn't approach the government and lobby for inclusion of the standards hardly matters. The standards have been adopted by the Department of Education, which makes them of public interest, rather than solely the property of the rights holders.

The lawsuit also makes this puzzling claim.

In front of the unauthorized copy of the 1999 Standards that Defendant published to its https://law.resource.org/pub/us/cfr/ibr/001/aera.standards.1999.pdf website, Defendant placed a cover sheet or “Certificate,” falsely implying that the publication of Plaintiffs’ Standards to Defendants’ website was somehow authorized or sanctioned by U.S. law.

The added cover sheet simply points to the law governing public records and public records requests, while somewhat dramatically stating that the document below has been "incorporated by reference" into federal law, therefore making it "legally binding." The problem with this claim is that the above federal regulation points to the same part of the US Code that Public Resource's "cover sheet" does.

Incorporation by reference of this document has been approved by the Director of the Office of the Federal Register pursuant to the Director's authority under 5 U.S.C. 552(a) and 1 CFR part 51.

The public records law states that the government must make available any outside document that it incorporates into federal standards. The US holds up its end of the bargain (but not even barely) with this:

The incorporated document is on file at the Department of Education, Federal Student Aid, room 113E2, 830 First Street, NE., Washington, DC 20002, phone (202) 377-4026, and at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)... The document also may be obtained from the American Educational Research Association at: http://www.aera.net…

Once again, the public is left out in the cold. If you don't happen to live in the DC area or don't have the $36-50 AERA is asking, then the document incorporated into federal law may as well not exist. But it does, and Public Resource is making it available. (So is the Internet Archive.)

Through no fault of their own (at least according to the filing), the plaintiffs have had their standards placed into the public domain by the US government in what has to be one of the most oblique instances of asset forfeiture. But that doesn't change the fact that the incorporation of the standards put them under the jurisdiction of public records laws, something they'll likely find themselves arguing against once Malamud responds.

Filed Under: carl malamud, incorporated into federal regulations, public laws, regulations, standards
Companies: american psychological association, public.resource.org

The Intellectually Dishonest Claims Of Those Fighting Against Open Access To Federally Funded Research

from the shameful dept

We've written a few times about the ongoing fight over whether or not federally funded research should be somewhat accessible to the public. This kicked off a few years back when the NIH, which funds a tremendous amount of research, required that any research that was funded by them had to be published in PubMed, its free and open database of such research one year after it was published in a journal. Scientific journals, as you probably know, are basically a huge scam. Unlike most publications, the journals don't pay the people who provide all the material in those journals. Instead, the researchers pay the journals to publish their research. Not only that, but in exchange for paying the journal, the researchers also have to hand over their copyright on the research. This gets really ridiculous at times, as professors I've spoken with have needed to totally redo their own experiments because some journal "owned" their research, and they couldn't reuse any of the data.

On top of that, these journals don't pay people to do peer review. Other researchers in the field are expected to do the peer review for free. Oh, and then did we mention that these journals charge ridiculous sums (thousands upon thousands of dollars) for subscriptions, which many university libraries feel compelled to pay? And that much of the research is paid for by your tax dollars anyway?

So the journals have been complaining about this attempt to actually have federally funded research available to the public who paid for it, where it can actually be much more useful. The American Psychological Association has been the worst of the bunch in dealing with this, trying to (on top of everything else) charge institutions $2,500 to "deposit" papers with PubMed as it's required to do (as if researchers couldn't just upload the paper themselves). On top of that, various publishers lobbied hard for a law to end the requirement to publish such federally funded works. Thankfully, it hasn't passed. Instead, the Obama administration has supported extending the policy beyond the NIH to make all federally funded research publicly accessible after a year.

As this is being debated, it's really rather stunning the level of intellectual dishonesty being pushed by those who want to lock up federally funded research. Glyn Moody points us to the astoundingly ridiculous claim from Steven Breckler of the American Psychological Association, that requiring free access to federally funded research one year after it's published would violate the administrations pledge for transparent government. Yes, read that again. With a straight face, this guy is claiming that a requirement for making federally funded research publicly accessible will violate a pledge for more transparency in government. This is shockingly dishonest.

If you want to understand the specious reasoning, it's as follows: the requirement for transparency from the government says that there are limits on that transparency, and those limits include "national security, privacy or other genuinely compelling interests." And, according to Breckler, one of those other "genuinely compelling interests" is his job. Well, that's not quite the way he put it. But, basically, he claims that if required to publish content after a year, there would be fewer peer reviewed journals. But he presents no evidence to support that whatsoever. In fact, what the research actually shows is that the journals that have chosen to be open are actually doing quite well when it comes to actually having their research being used for scientific advancement. They're cited much more frequently and used much more often in moving research forward. In other words, if the real goal is to promote scientific advancement, opening up federally funded research makes a tremendous amount of sense, totally contrary to Breckler's and the American Psychological Association's claims.

If you're a member of the APA, you should frankly be disgusted with this display of intellectual dishonesty.

And it gets worse. Moody also points us to an attempt by Patrick Ross of the Copyright Alliance to side with the APA as well. Ross, amusingly, always claims he's fighting the fight for "content creators." And yet, when you look at nearly everything that he and the Copyright Alliance seems to work on, it's always working with middlemen who regularly screw over the actual content creators. That's the case here as well. These journals are getting researchers to pay them to take away their copyrights. Defending them and pretending that's defending content creators is sickening.

But that's exactly what Ross does, where he claims that the rule would effectively limit copyright to 12 months. That, of course, is not true at all. But, more importantly, it's worth pointing out, again, that this is federally funded research. US copyright law already says that anything produced by the federal gov't should not get a copyright, and it's silly that this does not extend to research funded by the government as well. Beyond that, Ross' attempt to toe the APA's line is so blatantly misleading, it's amazing anyone takes anything Ross or the APA has to say seriously. In his writeup, Ross quotes new APA research (so that's not biased at all) that claims that only 15% of access to journal articles happen in the first year.

Ross then takes this to conclude that requiring open access after year one is asking a publishers to "forfeit 85% of their economic return." Except that's simply not true at all. Not even close to true. This assumes that all journal revenue is on a pay-for-access basis. But that's not the case at all. First of all, journals make money from the fees researchers and professors pay to submit their articles. Second, the vast majority of their income comes from subscriptions from libraries. Most libraries will continue to pay for subscriptions for important journals, because it'll still be worth having access earlier. The fact that people access the data later doesn't change the economic model very much, and certainly not by 85% as Ross claims.

The whole thing, frankly, is ridiculous. Academic journals are immensely profitable operations, in part because they not only get free labor from peer reviewers, but they also get people to pay them to give them their content. No other publishing business in the world has it so good and so easy. And much of this rides on the back of the American taxpayer. The system, as it stands, is effectively a way to transfer taxpayer dollars to private publishers, and lock up federally funded research in the process. It helps no one other than the publishers. It doesn't help the researchers, who have much more difficulty sharing and building on the research of others. It doesn't help science, which is held back by having such research locked up. And it certainly doesn't help the public or the government who foots the bill.

On top of all that, there's increasing evidence that the traditional peer review journal system doesn't even work very well. More and more frequently, we're hearing of junk science making it through the peer review process. Simply having two people review a work and signing off on it is not a real peer review. A more open system, where lots of experts get to look at the information and weigh in on it is significantly more effective and efficient.

What's amazing is that this is all so painfully obvious to anyone who looks at this stuff, that those who are still trying to defend this ridiculous taking of taxpayer money in an effort to lock up federally funded research for profit are forced to make such laughably intellectually dishonest claims to try to keep such a scam going. It's really quite shameful, but does suggest the lengths to which some people will go to keep cash flowing in their direction.

Filed Under: copyright, federally funded research, journals, open access, research
Companies: american psychological association