Medical Journal Bias on Guns (New England Journal of Medicine)

[shadowrider]

Medical journals are not always the objective, purely scientific publications we might think that they are. Their editors have increasingly strayed into politics at the expense of scientific accuracy. For example, the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine has over the last few months published a number of extremely biased and poorly done studies on gun control.

One of the articles, written by Garen Wintemute, Anthony Braga, and David Kennedy, makes the case for extending background checks to the private transfers of guns, arguing that “perhaps the principal reason for the well-documented failure of the Brady Act to lower rates of firearm-related homicide is that its requirements do not apply to private-party gun sales.” But they do so without providing any evidence that these or any other background checks reduce crime. Further, they conveniently overlook the only research that has been done on what they are proposing. For instance, the updated More Guns, Less Crime specifically studied this very issue and found no evidence that either type of law helped reduced crime.

The only “evidence” that “screening works” comes from their claim that, in 2008, 1.5 percent of those having a Brady background check were denied from purchasing a gun. What the authors likely are aware of, though they do not tell the readers, is that virtually all these cases represent so-called “false-positives”: In 2006 and 2007 (the latest data years available), a tiny fraction — just 2 percent of those 1.5 percent — involved possible unlawful possession; just 0.2 percent of the 1.5 percent were viewed as prosecutable — 174 cases in 2006 and 122 in 2007. At least a third of the remaining cases didn’t result in convictions. These are the types of errors that an academic journal shouldn’t let in, but if it does, they should fix it. But it is my understanding that the journal has refused to publish a clarification of these numbers.

Gun shows are not an important source of guns for criminals. Justice Department surveys of criminals indicate that fewer than 1 percent of such guns are obtained at a gun show. Instead, the vast majority of crime guns come from illegal purchases off the street, something exceedingly difficult to control.

A second piece in the same issue, by Julie Cantor, describes the effects on crime from the 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller Supreme Court decision in the following way: “Dire predictions have not yet been realized.” This suggests that there is inevitable misfortune yet to come. The New England Journal of Medicine published articles and editorials prior to the 2008 Heller decision warning about a crime wave, so the journal ought to have a serious discussion about the actual outcome. We can easily understand why such an examination would prove embarrassing. No one would guess from their discussion that D.C.’s murder rate fell by 23 percent in 2009 and continued falling sharply in 2010, several times faster than the drop in murder in the rest of the nation.

Eventually even the subscribers to the New England Journal of Medicine will learn about these facts. Just look at the changes in the climate debate — not even the most prestigious places can get away with biased research for too long.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/250157/medical-journal-bias-guns-john-r-lott-jr

[villager]

1. Whereas, the National Review has no bias whatsoever!

n/t

[shadowrider]

2. The source doesn't matter. The facts do n/t

[villager]

7. well, if the source doesn't matter, we don't need to worry about the New England Journal of Medicine

either, right?

[russ1943]

12. quoting article Written by John Lott Jr???.

As Media Matters for America previously noted, Lott has been caught using fraudulent data, has been accused of lying about it to cover his tracks, and of using a fake Internet persona to hype his own falsified work. Lott claims to have conducted a 1997 survey on defensive gun usage, but evidence strongly suggests he never conducted it. A February 11, 2003, Washington Post article noted that Lott's "critics are asking: What national survey? Lott has been unable to produce the poll data, which he says were lost when his computer crashed." Lott also misrepresented the findings of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights on voter disenfranchisement in Florida during the 2000 presidential election. http://mediamatters.org/research/200601250008
http://mediamatters.org/research/200506300004 http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2006/01/yet_another_attempt_by_lott_to.php

Tom H, Mary Rosh, John Lott... could they be all the same? "Lott" is becoming the official entry for "pathological liar" in the blogosphere dictionary.

Since his American Enterprise Institute stint he's added State University of New York at Binghamton & his most recent failure to gain tenure has been at University of Maryland Foundation.

Lott wouldn't know a fact if it hit him in the back on his way out of so many doors.

[Euromutt]

18. The National Review doesn't claim to be a scientific journal; the NEJM does

The National Review is an opinion magazine, known to have a conservative agenda, and readers are therefore forewarned that its authors may interpret facts in a manner consistent with that agenda.

The NEJM, by contrast, is a scientific journal; the articles that appear in it are supposed to reflect objective fact, to the best of the ability of their authors to discern what that is. Scientific research is not supposed to serve an agenda.

The NEJM in particular has a chequered history in this regard; in the early 1990s, it accepted for publication studies by John Sloan and Arthur Kellermann in which the authors, having had their earlier work thoroughly savaged, sought to insulate themselves from criticism by the expedient of refusing to share their research data, even with the journal itself. Any self-respecting publication should have told them that this was unacceptable. As Richard Feynman put it in his 1974 Caltech commencement address on the topic of "cargo cult science" (http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm):

<...> the idea <in scientific integrity> is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.

When you refuse to let other people look at your data, as Sloan and Kellermann did, you are deliberately withholding that information, and there is no conceivable reason why the NEJM and its peer reviewers would have let them get away with this behavior except that the journal did not want to see doubt cast on their conclusions.

[lawodevolution]

3. There are some idiotic doctors out there

Doctors kill an estimated 44,000 to 98,000'people per year through gross negligence. This means that laziness, greed, hate or substance abuse was involved. There are only 700,000 doctors

Guns are used to kill around 30,000 people and there are somewhere between 270 and 350 million guns and 150 million people living in a household with a gun and 80 million people who admit to being gun owners.



44,000/700,000. /. 30,000/80,000,000
0.06286 / 0.000375

167. Doctors are 167 times more likely to kill someone by an immoral action than a gun owner is by either an immoral action, suicide, accident or cop shoot out.

I think docs need to focus on their own dirty mess than to criticize gun owners

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

9. Good Point. n/t

[Bold Lib]

4. Kick and recommend!!!

[onehandle]

5. nationalreview.com nt

[Name removed]

6. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[RSillsbee]

8. Are you referring to

Republicans such as Sarah Brady or Michael Bloomberg?

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[rrneck]

11. Is gun ownership anti liberal? nt

[proteus_lives]

16. To pseudo-progressives it is.

[X_Digger]

13. Ahh, the genetic fallacy on full display.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_fallacy

Class, when looking for a genetic fallacy, be sure to quote the one above.

[proteus_lives]

15. Really? I'm pro-gun and I've never voted Republican.

:eyes:

[jazzhound]

14. Pro-"control" physicians don't argue their case with any

greater intellect or integrity than the antis on DU do.

Posted once before, here's an amusing e-mail exchange between a pro civil rights physician and an anti physician. As per the usual pattern, the anti argument is faith based and excruciatingly uneducated, while the pro-choice/pro-rights argument is informed and reason based:

http://www.dsgl.org/Articles/exchange1.htm

[jazzhound]

17. Here's an excerpt from the exchange that speaks to

the crowd that argues with phrases such as "it stands to reason", "it's only logical" and "it's just common sense" ---- refusing to consider the fact that many of the facts relating to guns and violence are courterintuitive:

Anti: Some may quote that brandishing guns prevent hundreds of thousands of crimes per year. Where are all of the self-defense homicide statistics where law-abiding citizens are killing the "bad guys?" You would intuitively think that if guns are truly protective, there would be more of these incidences.

Pro: You would intuitively think that turning up the oxygen on Uncle Harry would be good for him, if he is dyspneic, but hopefully as a physician, you'd veto that "intuitive" action on the part of some family member, despite their genuine concern. The difference is that the family would probably acknowledge your expertise in the area, even if they didn't fully understand your explanation of the complexities of the "hypoxic drive" phenomenon.

Physicians who emote so strongly about the bullet wounds we see in the E.R. seem almost arrogantly reluctant to acknowledge the greater expertise of criminologist, sociologists, ballisticians, and so forth, as if our M.D. somehow gives us some inherent knowledge which supersedes that expertise. We don't listen, and just like Uncle Harry, our arrogant ineptitude and intrusion into what is not an area of our expertise causes the loss of life.

Errant public policy on gun control causes many deaths each year; it is almost humorous to see intelligent physicians bemoan the "30,000 lives" affected by guns, then blithely assume that we can "tinker" all we want, with no risk - that is like allowing some guy to administer chemotherapy because he has a permit to use chemicals in his home photography lab!

[Euromutt]

19. Some points concerning crime guns being acquired at gun shows

Lott writes:

Gun shows are not an important source of guns for criminals. Justice Department surveys of criminals indicate that fewer than 1 percent of such guns are obtained at a gun show. Instead, the vast majority of crime guns come from illegal purchases off the street, something exceedingly difficult to control.

Lott's reasoning is flawed in that, while (insofar as can be determined) the "end users" do indeed very rarely acquire firearms from gun shows and the like, there is evidence that the traffickers from whom the "end users" purchase the weapons do acquire them from gun shows, among other places.

However, it should be noted that the traffickers just as readily acquire their stock from licensed gun dealers (FFLs), using straw purchasers to make the actual purchase and pass the NICS check. There is no reason to assume that traffickers who acquire some, most, even all of their stock from gun shows employ different methods, and that the value of imposing background checks on private party sales for the purpose of reducing the number of guns being diverted into the black market may therefore be very questionable.

[Euromutt]

20. Whoops, double post; please ignore (n/t)

[krispos42]

21. So homicide rates dropped sharply after the Brady checks, but it was coincidence?

So then we can do away with all background checks?

[benEzra]

22. This goes way back...here's an article from 1994...

Kates et al, Guns and Public Health: Epidemic of Violence or Pandemic of Propaganda? (61 Tenn. L. Rev. 513-596 (1994).)

The ordinary standards of review are tossed out the window in order to produce the desired conclusion, because the conclusion (Guns R Bad) is foregone. The purpose of the articles is to generate momentum for restrictions, not honest weighing of the pros and cons of lawful gun ownership; in that sense, the articles are basically prestigious editorials backed up by lots of hand-waving and topped with a gloss of epidemiological terminology.

A really, really good example of why people writing outside their areas of expertise are basically writing as laypeople is Trask, Richards, Schwartzbach, and Kurtzke, "Massive orthopedic, vascular, and soft tissue wounds from military type assault weapons: a case report," J Trauma 1995 Mar 38(3):428-31. That article ascribed magic wounding powers to low-energy 7.62x39mm caliber bullets (which is flatly contradicted by the peer-reviewed wound ballistics literature, e.g. Fackler et al), overstated kinetic energies by 40% (that's simple math, folks), and making the absurd claim that low-velocity AK rounds have greater velocity than high-velocity hunting rounds. And of course their blunders weren't even noticed in peer review, because the "reviewers" didn't know beans about the subject either.