2012 Research Paper Linking Video Games And Violence Finally Retracted Over Massaged Data Accusation

from the boom,-headshot dept

For all of the studies that often appear almost fervent in their attempts to find any thread of a link between violent video games and real life tendencies to violence, one of the standouts in the crowd has been Brad Bushman. Bushman last graced our pages showing how some combination of candy and loud noises showed that teenagers who had played a violent video game ate more bad food and were aggressive towards others in the immediate aftermath. This was used to essentially claim that violent video games were bad for teenagers, despite longer-term studies involving more participants coming to the opposite conclusion.

More to the point for this post were accusations from Bushman's peers that his research methods were generally flawed and that he was known to pick and choose which results from his experiments he wanted to include in the final analysis. It seems the study we discussed in that last post wasn't the only study in which Bushman has done this, as a 2012 research paper Bushman authored, delightfully entitled Boom, Headshot!?: Effect of Video Game Play and Controller Type on Firing Aim and Accuracy, has finally been retracted by the journal Communication Research.

Now, the stated reason for the retraction is that there were some questions from peers about the data used in the paper and that Bushman could no longer produce that data for analysis, hence the retraction. That's a barely accurate description of what actually happened regarding the paper.

The two outside researchers mentioned in the notice are Patrick Markey, psychology professor at Villanova University and Malte Elson, a behavioral psychology postdoc at Ruhr University Bochum in Germany. They began questioning the results when Markey noticed some statistical inconsistencies that suggested the data were positively skewed. Bushman has claimed that the push to retract the paper was a smear campaign. But, ultimately, he agreed with the retraction.

It stretches credulity that research done a mere few years ago and the resulting data would disappear in this way, and only after criticism of it arises. And Bushman's agreeing to the retraction should tell you the whole story here. But what's crazy about this is that Markey and Elson have been lodging complaints against Bushman's paper for years. That the paper was allowed to stay in its published form for all this time doesn't say much for Communication Research's standards. Elson, in particular, appears to be happy, but exasperated.

I am pleased to see the paper is finally retracted almost 3 years after the authors were first notified of the concerns (and 2 years after it was first reported to the Ohio State University). The public record has now been corrected, which is the only thing Patrick and I ever wanted after we found evidence of severe errors in the data on which the now retracted paper was based.

Who knew the peer review process actually took so long?

Filed Under: brad bushman, research, retraction, video games, violence

Study Says Police Body Cameras Have Contributed To Increased Uses Of Deadly Force

from the not-so-fast dept

The Wall Street Journal is reporting on a study that claims to show an increase in shootings by police officers is related to the increase in officer-worn body cameras. The heart of the study's [PDF] claims is this:

Our empirical analysis produced several interesting findings. First, we found that in police departments that conduct statistical analyses of digitized crime data, there are 2.15% fewer fatal shootings, substantiating our theoretical prediction that criminal intelligence can prevent police officers from using lethal force. Similarly, the use of smartphones by officers for intelligence access is related to 2.72% fewer deadly shootings. We obtained similar results from the alternative data from killedbypolice.net and the FBI. Surprisingly, we found that the use of wearable video cameras is associated with a 3.64% increase in shooting-deaths of civilians by the police. We explain that video recordings collected during a violent encounter with a civilian can be used in favor of a police officer as evidence that justifies the shooting.

While I don't doubt that some officers believe footage may assist them in justifying shootings, there's very little here that suggests anything more than a statistical blip. No such increase was noted in 2013 or 2014, and a 3.64% increase would seem to be a fluctuation, rather than anything correlative.

The authors of the study note one issue that may be skewing the numbers slightly upward: there's very little data available to differentiate between justified shootings and unjustified shootings. Without this, it's difficult to draw the conclusion that officers have made conscious or unconscious decisions about the perceived exculpatory value of capturing deadly force incidents on tape. And yet, such a conclusion is being tentatively drawn.

The professors found almost no link between cameras and shooting deaths in 2013 and 2014. The difference between those years and 2015, they surmise: Officers grew more comfortable using the devices in the field. “It could take a while for police officers to realize how helpful evidence from body cameras can be in justifying the use of lethal force,” they write.

Maybe. Maybe not. A lot more data is needed to determine whether this tick upwards indicates a trend or just a mild diversion from the mean. There's lots of anecdotal data out there that suggests body cameras are having zero effect on limiting excessive force simply because many officers treat the devices as optional.

Here are just a few reports involving shooting by police where footage hasn't been recorded.

A Spokane police officer involved in the shooting of a domestic violence suspect last weekend was wearing a body camera but did not have it turned on, according to an initial investigation.

[Source]

Chittenden County State’s Attorney TJ Donovan announced Monday morning that two police officers have been cleared of any criminal wrongdoing in the shooting of a Colchester man in September. He said at the announcement that the officers were cleared without any body camera video of the incident.

The body cameras were turned off, he said, because officers didn’t want the cameras’ red recording lights or audible recording beeps to jeopardize their safety.

[Source]

A Chicago police officer who fatally shot a black man in the back last week was wearing a body camera during the shooting, but the camera was turned off at the time, officials with the city’s police department said Monday.

[Source]

An Alabama police officer was wearing a body camera that was not turned on when he fatally shot a man who held a “large metal spoon in a threatening manner” as he approached the officer, according to Tuscaloosa County officials.

[Source]

A New Orleans police officer turned off her body cam before opening fire on a man who had escaped from her a week earlier.

Lisa Lewis shot the man in the forehead during a traffic stop, then shot at him again as he ran away, according to the lawyer of the man who remains hospitalized.

If shootings by police are trending up despite the use of body cameras, it's not the cameras that are at fault. It's the culture. Body cameras have been shown to decrease deployments of excessive force and reduce complaints by citizens, but only when used in conjunction with policies that hold officers accountable for not recording their interactions with the public.

A slight rise in shootings may indicate what the officers suggest: that officers are "getting used" to the cameras -- not as a source of exculpatory recordings, but rather as a nuisance that can be ignored without fear of reprisal. A lack of solid policies and punishments would similarly generate a rise in deployments of excessive or deadly force, no matter what tech is forced on officers under the guise of accountability.

Filed Under: body cameras, bodycams, police, violence

American Academy Of Pediatrics Claims Broad Consensus On Violent Media Effect That Doesn't Remotely Exist

from the fake-it-until-you-make-it dept

Search through all of our stories about the supposed link between violent movies and games and real world violence by those that enjoy them, and you should come away with the impression that, at the very least, the science isn't settled on the issue. The more specific impression you should get is that violent media might -- might -- have a short-term impact on behavior, but that there isn't anything like a general agreement on the long term effects, which is obviously the vastly more important question.

Yet the American Academy of Pediatrics just released a policy statement on "virtual violence" that recommends legislative action due to a "broad scientific consensus" that violent media increases aggression in children.

Although there is broad scientific consensus that virtual violence increases aggressive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, there has been little public action to help mitigate children’s exposure to it.

As a policy position, the statement goes on to recommend federal control over media ratings and a policy of reduced screen time to be prescribed to parents by pediatricians. We could spend all kinds of time arguing over whether those recommendations are good, bad, or somewhere in between. Instead, let's go ahead and expose the whopper of a false premise that is the so-called broad consensus on the effects of violent media.

Christopher Ferguson, a Psychology professor, wrote at HuffPo about how silly the claim is.

First, the AAP presents the results on media violence as if they were consistent. They argue that “hundreds” of studies show that “…the linkage between virtual violence and aggression has been well supported and is robust.” But this claim is easily contradictedby a whole host of studies that find no effect for media violence on aggression. Other studies have examined links between media violence consumption and societalviolence and found that media violence is, if anything, associated with reduced societal violence. This is not to say evidence is consistent against effects either. Some studiesdo find some evidence for media effects (although typically small and usually for minor behaviors) yet others do not. Claiming consistency in either directly merely discredits the claimant as a credible source of information.   

This claim also ignores increasing controversies about media effects’ role in psychology’s replication crisis. Scholars have identified “questionable researcher practices” in this realm, and have had difficulty replicating old studies, and studies using preregistered designs (where scholars publish their methodology in advance of collecting data, making it harder for them to monkey with analyses to get the results they want), generally found little evidence for effects.

He goes on to note that, despite the AAP's claim of broad consensus on the topic, the policy paper cited very few studies to back this claim. Those it did cite, of course, agreed with its position. But ignoring the multitude of studies that don't is. in itself, a form of citation bias, particularly given that the paper's two chief cited sources cited are generally considered controversial on the topic of media violence. Included in the post is a wonderful graph going back twenty years showing that as violent media consumption by youths has gone up, youth violence reports have gone in the opposite direction. It would be hard to square that graph with the AAP's claim, never mind with its claim of broad consensus on the topic.

But this is more than a mistake. The AAP should know better than this, and does.

The AAP claims the presence of a consensus of scholars and practitioners regarding media effects. However, most surveys of scholars and clinicians reveals this to be false. Depending on how questions are asked, surveys indicate that only 10% to 58% of scholars agree some kind of links may exist. Higher numbers are found when undefined “aggression” is used in queries (which could involve fairly minor laboratory tasks like filling in the missing letters of words...”kill” being more aggressive than “kiss” for instance in response to ki__), and drop significantly once questions ask about youth assaults or other significant behaviors. All surveys indicate significant disagreements among experts, with only a minority worried about media effects on violent behavior. Indeed, past claims of consensus have been thoroughly discredited.

Further, a group of 230 scholars, back in 2013, wrote an open letter advising against policy statements on media effects just like this one. That letter was written to the American Psychological Association (APA), but the same principle holds here. How does the AAP pretend this large group of 230 scholars don’t exist?

Combined with a later section of the paper, which laughably misreads a Supreme Court decision from 2011 as rejecting federal oversight on violent media consumption by children on First Amendment grounds when the court actually stated that lower courts have found the claim of a link between media and violence to be meritless, one wonders exactly what the motive is for all of this by the AAP. You have to blink before believing the AAP's recommendation that journalists not talk to "contrarian researchers" who don't see things its way. It's hard to think of a less scientific recommendation than censoring contradictory studies.

But more worrisome, the AAP appear to pressure journalists not to speak to anyone, including “contrarian scholars” who disagrees with their position. This arguably puts the AAP in the bizarre and aggressive position of, in effect, arguing for scientific censorship (whether or not this was their intent). They chide news media for presenting “both sides” of the debate (despite the presence of scientific evidence for both sides and the fact that most researchers do not agree violent media poses a serious risk to society) and offer as a recommendation “The news and information media should acknowledge the proven scientific connection between virtual violence and real-world aggression…”

The point of all of this isn't to fight over the link the AAP suggests. The point is that a policy paper built on a demonstrably false premise that then attempts to silence the work of opposing research isn't a prescription for good scientific output.

Filed Under: pediatrics, recommendation, studies, video games, violence
Companies: american academy of pediatrics

Congressman Wants To Make Attacking A Cop A Federal 'Hate' Crime

from the won't-someone-think-of-the-blue-children?!? dept

We've seen this sort of thing proposed at the state level on more than one occasion. But Rep. Ken Buck, a former DOJ prosecutor, wants to take it national, as Chris Seaton reports for Fault Lines.

Colorado representative Ken Buck is very concerned about the health and well being of our nation's police officers. His concern for officer safety in a world that "hates cops" is such that that he's introduced legislation making attacks on police officers a federal hate crime.

Buck's "Blue Lives Matter Act," H.R. 4760, would make "an attack on a police officer a hate crime," according to the bill's text. The name of the legislation, filed Wednesday, alludes to the "Black Lives Matter" mantra taken up by activists who protest police violence against black people, particularly the killings of unarmed black people at the hands of police.

The bill not only makes an attack on a police officer (or an attack that appears to be motivated by the fact that the person represents law and order) a "hate crime," but it also makes it a federal crime. Buck apparently feels this legislation is going to win hearts and minds, as there's no avoiding it when you visit his website.


The proposal is also accompanied by a heartfelt "Dear Colleague" letter that talks about cops "holding together the fabric of our nation" and how they've been "intimidated" by recent acts of violence. No statistics are cited to back up his insistence that this a real problem that needs to be addressed with legislation… because there aren't any.

The National Law Enforcement Memorial Fund's stats show the number of officers killed in the line of duty has been decreasing over the last several years and appears to have hit a lower plateau of ~120/year for the past four years.


The number of officers killed in the line of duty to date this year stands at 29, which would put year-end totals roughly in the same neighborhood as the past half-decade. And yet, every death is greeted with claims that the law enforcement profession is deadlier than ever.

Law enforcement officers are better protected (by laws and policies, on top of actual physical protective gear) than members of the public but they're apparently not protected enough. Buck's legislation allows officers -- who have made a voluntary choice to pursue a more dangerous career -- to count themselves as an underprivileged class, most of whom have no choice whatsoever in their current status. Back to Chris Seaton:

Why add a job, something a person applied for and trained to do, to a list of concepts like "religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability?" If you're a logical, rational person (and we'll assume you are, since reading Fault Lines puts you in that bracket), you should be able to spot the flaws with Buck's rationale right away…

People can't choose their race, gender, disability or sexual orientation. Cops choose to be cops. If officers don't like the increased risk inherent to their profession, they can always quit. Most of the other groups routinely covered by hate crime legislation don't have that luxury.

The bill's broad wording would allow federal prosecutors to bring hate crime charges for even the simplest of assaults -- provided the action could conceivably be perceived as "anti-law enforcement." Here's Seaton's hypothetical:

The arbitrary nature of the Blue Lives Matter Act is clear when you notice it's a federal offense if someone is attacked because they're "perceived" to be a police officer. There's no need to prove cop status under the Blue Lives Matter Act. If an AUSA has evidence someone yelled "FUCK THE POLICE" at a Rage Against the Machine concert before slugging a security guard, they can make it a hate crime and force the defendant to plead down from there.

Police officers are already a protected class. They have their own Bills of Rights. They have good faith exceptions, immunity that shields them from many civil lawsuits, the power to stop and detain people for almost any pretense and the constant support of hundreds of legislators around the country. They don't need any more help. They're as far away from "underprivileged" as any group could be.

Filed Under: blue lives matter, hate crime, ken buck, police, violence

Loretta Lynch Essentially Says The Ferguson Effect Is Bullshit

from the no-kidding dept

I have to be honest: I have no idea how this whole "Ferguson Effect" became a thing. The general claim by those touting the theory is that, after the backlash over the Michael Brown shooting and several other high-profile deaths at the hands of law enforcement, police are so fearful of the general public that they are no longer taking the risks necessary to do their jobs properly, which is resulting in an uptick in violent crime in several major cities. It's a fascinating theory in that it is so often promoted by those who claim to be champions of the police, even as the theory itself claims that police are abdicating their primary responsibilities. As with any good theory built to draw on division and emotion, it only helps that this theory is essentially made up of a combination of anecdotal evidence and the simplistic reading of statistics without context.

Now, I won't go so far as to say that anecdotal evidence is entirely worthless. Testimony, after all, is a form of evidence. But those touting the theory so vociferously ought to be able to point to some kind of empirical data as opposed to the rumor mill. Unfortunately, as US Attorney General Loretta Lynch indicated before the House Judiciary Committee, no such data-based evidence for the Ferguson Effect exists.

US attorney general Loretta Lynch said on Tuesday there was “no data” to support the idea that law enforcement officers are policing less aggressively because of increased scrutiny of their tactics following a series of highly publicized killings mostly of black men. Lynch spoke during a House judiciary committee hearing on Tuesday and discussed the controversial theory, termed the “Ferguson effect”, in the wake of the fatal police shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in the Missouri city last year.

“While certainly there may be anecdotal evidence there, as all have noted, there’s no data to support it,” she said during an oversight hearing on the Justice Department held by the committee.

Now, I'm sure nobody would want to suggest that we make policy in a climate completely lacking data for that policy, so this really should table any discussion of the Ferguson Effect pending any actual, you know, data coming to light. What data is available suggests that major cities in America, and indeed America as a whole, have ridden a downward trend in violent crime for at least a decade. In that context, a regression to the mean in violent crime shouldn't be treated as particularly extraordinary. Crime can't always trend downward ad infinitum, after all, and it would be trivially easy to associate any uptick in violence with whatever the news of the day might be. Which is exactly what's happening.

Yet this doesn't work in the other direction. Violence in media, for instance, has been on the rise at the same time as the general downward trend in violent crime, yet few want to argue there's a correlation there. Why? There's no real hard data to suggest that a correlation exists. We ought to treat purveyors of the Ferguson Effect theory the same way. It's not enough to claim that police are too scared to do their jobs properly; they have to show their work.

Filed Under: ferguson effect, james comey, loretta lynch, police, violence, violent crime

Thou Shall Not Browse: Comcast Refuses Service Call To Chicago Church Out Of Fear

from the holy-shit dept

Our Facebook, who art on the internet, mashup be thy name. My question's one, will Comcast come, to our church as connectivity has ended? Give us this day, at least one technician, and forgive us our addresses, as we forgive those whose customer service sucks. And leave us not without our Netflix, but deliver us from downtime, amen.

This, I propose, might need to be adopted as a modernized propitiation by at least one church on Chicago's South Side, and offered to the regulation-creating internet lord, Comcast. That's because, as reported by a rather well-known preacher here in my beloved city, Comcast refused to send a service technician to work on a service issue because the neighborhood was way too scary.

On Wednesday, Father Michael Pfleger said that Comcast will not come out and fix the Internet connection at St. Sabina Church because of the neighborhood violence in Englewood. Classes in the St. Sabina computer lab were disrupted in the morning, not by violence outside, but by Internet problems that made doing anything online slow or impossible. The director called Comcast and set up a repair appointment for the afternoon only to have it canceled five minutes later.

“They told me due to the violence in the area, the increased violence in the area, that they were not dispatching any technicians into the area,” said Phil Hunter, who's the Director of the St. Sabina Community Employment Center.

Now, Father Pfleger is a notorious figure here in Chicago, and nationally, for being quite vocal on racial issues, to the point that he can occasionally come off as being ridiculous. Case in point was his insistence that Hillary Clinton freaked out about Barack Obama running against her because she thought she shouldn't have to compete with a black person (whatever you think about Clinton, Pfleger doesn't have mind-reading powers such as this). But we can leave his reputation aside for the moment, because Comcast didn't deny the accusation. Instead, Comcast insisted that it was cancelling all kinds of appointments in the area due to safety issues. Think about that: Comcast is happy to collect money from internet service customers, but not service them. In a city, mind you, that is carved up by ISPs for exclusive areas to such a degree that it's almost funny.

So, how frightened of the violence was Comcast? Well, this ought to give you some idea.

Well guess what after Facebook goes off and calls and media respond...SUDDENLY, calls from Comcast come and two... Posted by Father Michael Pfleger on Wednesday, November 11, 2015

So, either Chicago's violence problem was suddenly solved in a matter of hours, or Comcast cares more about PR than it does the safety of its technicians, which it had invoked only hours previous as to why it wouldn't come. It's frankly difficult to think of a worse tack Comcast could have chosen to follow: refuse service calls due to safety, get smacked with backlash, ignore safety concerns and do the service call. As Father Pfleger rightly points out, not everyone in the neighborhood is a preacher with a platform.

But that's Comcast for you. They're only answering your prayers for internet service that you're paying for if you've got those media indulgences, I guess...

Filed Under: broadband, chicago, repairs, service, violence
Companies: comcast

Police Union Boss: Quentin Tarantino Needs To Patch Up Cop-Citizen Relationships, Not Us

from the pointing-tasers,-guns-and-fingers dept

Late last month, director Quentin Tarantino participated in a rally against police brutality, where he made the following comment:

“I’m a human being with a conscience,” Tarantino said at the rally. “And when I see murder I cannot stand by. And I have to call the murdered the murdered and I have to call the murderers the murderers.”

Similar words have been spoken by other people as they've watched unarmed citizens gunned down by police officers. But when Tarantino says it, it apparently stings a bit more.

New York City's police union boss Pat Lynch was the first to be personally offended on behalf of the officers he (sometimes) represents.

"It's no surprise that someone who makes a living glorifying crime and violence is a cop-hater, too," Lynch said in a statement. "The police officers that Quentin Tarantino calls 'murderers' aren't living in one of his depraved big screen fantasies -- they're risking and sometimes sacrificing their lives to protect communities from real crime and mayhem."

"New Yorkers need to send a message to this purveyor of degeneracy that he has no business coming to our city to peddle his slanderous 'Cop Fiction,'" he added. "It's time for a boycott of Quentin Tarantino's films."

Oh, Pat. You often forget. Lynch's officers killed one man for allegedly selling untaxed cigarettes ("real crime and mayhem") and shot another unarmed man in a stairwell (and delayed calling it in and seeking medical assistance) because a jumpy officer decided to patrol the building with his gun out. Not exactly "protecting communities," but whatever.

The LAPD's union soon joined the boycott, probably due to the LA-NYC connection current NYPD commissioner Bill Bratton brings to the job.

Los Angeles Police Protective League President Craig Lally said comments like Tarantino's encourage attacks on officers and said the union would support the call for a boycott of his films.

We fully support constructive dialogue about how police interact with citizens. But there is no place for inflammatory rhetoric that makes police officers even bigger targets than we already are," Lally said in a statement this week. "Film director Quentin Tarantino took irresponsibility to a new and completely unacceptable level this past weekend by referring to police as murderers during an anti-police march in New York."

First, Lally leans on the fake "War on Cops" narrative ("bigger targets than we already are…") and buttresses it by calling an anti-police brutality march an anti-police march. Lally lumps all of his officers together with this self-serving generalization. Aren't police officers the first to say the actions of bad police officers don't represent the whole of the force? A march targeting the actions of "bad apples" is portrayed by the union boss as being anti-tree. Fine. Have it your way, Lally. Just save us the #notallcops statements when a disgraced officer is indicted for their misconduct.

These two unions have been joined by other smaller law enforcement groups around the nation. It's also been joined by the nation's largest police union, the Fraternal Order of Police. These groups have demanded an apology from Tarantino for his stated opinion. The director has refused to bow to their pressure.

“All cops are not murderers,” Tarantino told The Times in his first public response to the controversy. “I never said that. I never even implied that.”

“What they’re doing is pretty obvious,” he said of his critics. “Instead of dealing with the incidents of police brutality that those people were bringing up, instead of examining the problem of police brutality in this country, better they single me out. And their message is very clear. It’s to shut me down. It’s to discredit me. It is to intimidate me. It is to shut my mouth, and even more important than that, it is to send a message out to any other prominent person that might feel the need to join that side of the argument.”

Tarantino's right. The unions would rather shut him up than admit any wrongdoing. It would rather prominent public figures remain silent or offer their deference than actually tackle law enforcement's myriad problems.

Hopefully, Tarantino's boldness will prompt others similarly situated to push for more accountability from public servants, especially those authorized to use deadly force. As Chris Seaton at FaultLines points out, every little bit helps.

More and more people no longer trust the police as the time-honored public servants we once thought them to be. Because the police refuse to address the problems leading to the self-inflicted black eyes on their respective reputations, the only recourse they have is to attack those who are in positions of prominence that raise awareness of the problem.

Quentin Tarantino is the latest target. He refuses to back down, just as Thabo Sefolosha did. These are gentlemen with influence, money, and the national platform to bring more people to the table that will address police misconduct than have ever before. When those with greater resources than the average citizen decide to join the struggle against the culture of the “warrior cop,” it is highly feasible we will see a major shift in the public’s perception to a degree those of us who speak out against police misconduct never thought possible.

Because Tarantino has refused to back down, the unions seem a bit flustered. Jim Pasco, the executive director of the nation's largest police union (Fraternal Order of Police) said this to The Hollywood Reporter:

"Tarantino has made a good living out of violence and surprise," says Pasco. "Our offices make a living trying to stop violence, but surprise is not out of the question."

"Something is in the works, but the element of surprise is the most important element," says Pasco. "Something could happen anytime between now and [the premiere]. And a lot of it is going to be driven by Tarantino, who is nothing if not predictable.

Take these words out of a police union official's mouth and put them nearly anywhere else and you'd expect that person to be the target of law enforcement efforts. Reason's Scott Shackford does a little recasting of his own in an article titled "Legion of Armed, Upset Citizens Has A 'Surprise' Planned for Quentin Tarantino."

If the organization in question were connected to the militia movement (by way of example) the outrage would be palpable. Is that a threat? Are they going to try to hurt Tarantino? He'd probably hire bodyguards (if he doesn't already have them). He might consider keeping a low profile for a while. There'd probably be a federal investigation to determine whether any actual violence was being planned.

Even though Tarantino appears to be done talking about this (after recognizing he wasn't dealing with a rational adversary), the Fraternal Order of Police isn't. For whatever reason, The Hollywood Reporter has allowed the national president of the threat-uttering Fraternal Order of Police to post an op-ed against the director on its website.

Chuck Canterbury calls Tarantino a "very strange man" who just doesn't understand the complexities of modern-day law enforcement. (It's only the amount of attention paid to police-involved-shootings that has changed, not the tactics, techniques or number of them.) He admits the boycott will probably have very little effect before going on to blame everything wrong with law enforcement on everyone else.

It's not police officers engaging in excessive force or racial profiling. It's the government -- a bigger, badder bad guy completely separated from the world of law enforcement… according to Canterbury.

Police officers are the only manifestation of government that some ever see -- and then only when something’s gone wrong. Tarantino didn’t need to whip up that crowd – they’re whipped up by the colossal failure of their elected officials.

His concluding paragraph, however, is so bad it's almost inadvertent parody.

So Tarantino race baits, and we boycott. No happy ending to this short drama -- rather than trying to help heal the wounds, Tarantino picks at the scabs. Rather than conciliatory, Tarantino is stoking the fires of hate and division that have made him a very wealthy man. I hate that this movie will make him still richer, and that perhaps this boycott and whatever else we may do will be to no avail; but, as long as there are befuddled demagogues like him bashing the police, there will be folks like me trying to get the truth out there.

According to Canterbury, it's the job of private citizens -- especially those whose voices might be heard -- to smooth over the widening gulf between the public and law enforcement. From where Canterbury sees it, the world of law enforcement is pristine and untroubled.

If complaints of profiling and brutality are coming from lower income areas in urban centers, the problem is the "colossal failure" of "elected officials," rather than the actions of the officers patrolling those areas. If a prominent American fails to show anything but devout support from law enforcement, that person is "race baiting" or "stoking the fires of hate," rather than simply pointing out truths that can no longer be ignored.

If Canterbury truly wants conciliation (and I have no reason to believe he does -- he wants concession, which is something very different even if it uses some of the same letters), then law enforcement has to lead the way, not Quentin Tarantino or any other member of the public. The public doesn't have much in the way of leverage, and it certainly doesn't have much it can actually concede. It's the entity coming from a position of power (a power that's abused far too often) that should be making the first moves towards conciliation. Expecting the public to grant you all the respect you feel you deserve (more than what's been earned) before any "healing" takes place only ensures the wound will never fully heal.

Filed Under: pat lynch, police, police brutality, quentin tarantino, violence

Child Development Expert: Playable Female Characters In Call Of Duty Will Harm Girls Just As It Has A Generation Of Boys

from the the-REAL-scare-quotes dept

The Call of Duty series is finally giving players the option to play through the campaign mode as a female soldier. The nod towards the existence of female game fans is every bit as obligatory as the game's campaign mode, but now the game's developers are being accused of pushing girls towards a future as emotionless, jaded killbots. You know, the way it has millions of young men over the past decade.

Someone calling herself a "child development expert" had this to say about Black Ops 3 (as quoted by the Daily Mail, a publication that calls itself a "journalistic endeavour"). [h/t Lizzy Finnegan]

The controversial video game series Call of Duty has been accused of encouraging young women to be more violent by introducing its first female soldiers.

Players of Call of Duty Black Ops 3 kill opponents with an array of weapons or even bare hands. Sue Palmer, a child development expert, said of the 18-rated game: "It will have the same impact on girls as it will have in any child. The evidence is that it will make them more cold and reckless or more withdrawn and fearful."

Not pictured: outcomes not linked to antisocial behavior, evidence backing up Palmer's claims, any other "accusations" other than Palmer's.

Palmer is the kind of "expert" the Daily Mail calls on when it wants to portray video games as the downfall of civilization.

Here's an insta-classic by the Daily Mail titled "Chilling truth about the video games your children got for Christmas," which contains this hilariously terrible picture caption.

If you can't see the embed, the caption says:

Violent: Pay Day 2 includes point-blank shooting not unlike the Kenyan Mall massacre in September

The 2013 article contains a quote from Sue Palmer, who at this point was a mere "educationalist." If you're a fan of anecdotal evidence, Palmer has you covered.

Educationalist Sue Palmer, author of Toxic Childhood, says: ‘One reception teacher told me how, on the day a new edition of Grand Theft Auto was released, one father arrived to pick up his five-year-old son brandishing a copy, and they went joyfully off to bond over the carnage.’

Palmer doesn't seem to care much for the trappings of the modern age and never fails to have the perfect, biased anecdote on hand for any situation. Kids using iPads "too soon?" Palmer has seen it with her own two eyes.

Educationalist and literacy expert Sue Palmer has been taken aback by how quickly iPad use for even the youngest children has become normalised since these gadgets were introduced in 2010. Far from helping children develop, Sue believes overuse of tablets can slow their progress.

“I recently visited a well-heeled nursery where a new mother introduced her three-year-old son by saying what a genius he was on his iPad,” she says. “However those skills came at a cost. Although the child could walk, he preferred to crawl. He had the language skills of an 18-month-old. This boy probably had some underlying developmental problem – but I’m sure long hours on the iPad made it much worse.”

Nothing like having your child pre-judged (along with your parenting skills) by a prominent member of a "well-healed nursery." But that's Palmer for you.

Palmer is also buddies with another tech hater, the Baroness Susan Greenfield, who memorably asserted that Twitter turned adults into infants because it's all about "look what I'm doing" -- a claim she backed up by using the outdated cliche of the social network being filled with nothing but pictures of people's breakfasts. (That's Instagram.)

So, this is the sort of person who sees the introduction of female characters into a very male-dominated series and says to herself -- and then out loud later to a "journalist" -- this game is bad for young, female children. This game, which is rated 18+ should probably not be played by young girls, which is pretty much exactly what the rating on the box says, only without all the additional evidence-less baggage thrown in.

No one is recommending children play this game. Yes, children will play this game. Guess what? Pretty much every single one of them will turn out perfectly fine, even the girls who haven't normally been "targeted" by the purveyors of violent games.

The problem is that -- beyond spouting ignorance in a variety of sensationalist publications -- Palmer's writings on the subject have been cited by UK government publications, which means she's made a few inroads towards making the national conversation about video games and technology stupider. This sort of alarmism makes for spectacular pull quotes and feeds into feelings many legislators have about themselves.

Politicians believe they turned out fine, and they didn't grow up with iPads and smartphones. And today's youths often seem weird and scary… so technology might be the problem. Let's keep a legislative, overly-wary eye on it.

Filed Under: call of duty, females, sue palmer, video games, violence

Bobby Jindal Announces Violent Games/Movies To Blame For All Those Mass Shootings

from the wrong dept

Not long ago, I wrote a post about the aftermath of the Oregon mass shooting and how every media outlet would retreat to familiar stances looking to blame all manner of things on idealogical grounds. That, of course, happened. Left out of that post is how grandstanding politicians would do the same: shifting attention toward familiar punching bags while diverting attention from other targets in their own interests. One of the first to do so, as it turns out, is Bobby Jindal, who certainly doesn't get any points for originality in trotting out the violent media scapegoat to sate some of the public's need to place blame for the shooting.

First on his hitlist was Hollywood.

We glorify sick and senseless acts of violence in virtually every element of our pop culture, and we have been doing that for at least a generation. Our movies and TV shows feature a continuous stream of grotesque killing of every kind imaginable. And this is true of virtually every genre, from horror to drama to comedy. We celebrate and document every kind of deviant behavior and we give out awards to producers who can push the envelope as far as possible. Rape, torture, murder, mass murder, all are cinematic achievements.

This, obviously, is overstating things by several orders of magnitude. First, it's noteworthy that Jindal's suggestion that violent movies, ever ramping up, cause violence within the real world fly in the face of simple statistical analysis. The national murder rate, for instance, is roughly 60% of what it was in the 1970s. Does anyone want to argue that movies have become less violent since the 70s? I didn't think so. But, assuming that Jindal is solely talking about the mass shooting phenomenon, the data doesn't get any better for Jindal. An otherwise dumb opinion piece at National Review at least helpfully included the fact that, when taking the long view and looking at mass shooting incidents over the past century, they are no more common today than in the past. In fact, the high water mark for mass killings looks to have been achieved in the 1920s. Again, anyone want to argue that media in the 20s was more violent than it is today? I didn't think so.

I shouldn't have to say this, but none of this is to suggest that America doesn't have a very real violence and mass killing problem. We do. But it simply doesn't correlate to violence in movies. Nor in video games, which were Jindal's second target.

We have generations of young boys who were raised on video games where they compete with other young boys around the country and the world to see who can kill the most humans. We make it so fun, so realistic, so sensational.

Oh, we make sure that we stop them from bullying at school, but we are completely fine with them watching people get murdered and raped on the internet after school, and we are willing to let them go to the basement and join a fantasy world where they pretend they are killing people for 2 hours after school.

Quick show of hands: who is totally chill with their children watching people get murdered and raped on the internet after school every day? Actually, what the hell is Jindal talking about here? I'm fairly connected in the world of internet-ing, and I'm also a father, and I have no idea what Jindal is referring to. Where is this place where kids go to sit and watch people get raped and tortured? Is he referring to video games here, as he does in his culminating line, where kids are sitting down and super-murdering digital humans for 2 hours every day? Because does that really happen, either? Keep in mind, for all the hand-wringing over violent video games, the average age of the average gamer is going up and currently stands at something like "probably balding or in mid-management by now." For youths that find themselves playing games meant for adults, that's strictly a parenting issue, not a culture issue (for all the reasons described for violent movies above). And, regardless, there's nothing even remotely close to a scientific consensus that violent video games have any negative effect on children at all. In fact, many studies indicate there is no link between gaming and violence at all.

So what is this? Well, it's a politician employing the aftermath of tragedy to gain support, headlines, and attention so as to better compete with a god damned reality show host in a presidential election cycle. And if that doesn't make you sick, no amount of violence in movies or games will either.

Filed Under: blame, bobby jindal, mass shooting, moral panic, movies, oregon shooting, video games, violence

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