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Researcher Finds No Link Between Violent Games and School Shootings
GamePolitics writes "A researcher at Texas A&M International University has found no link between playing violent video games and school shootings. Prof. Christopher Ferguson cites 'moral panic' and criticizes politicians, the news media and some social scientists for playing up what he believes is a false connection between video games and school shooting incidents. Quoting: 'Actual causes of violent crime, such as family environment, genetics, poverty, and inequality, are oftentimes difficult, controversial, and intractable problems. By contrast, video games present something of a "straw man" by which politicians can create an appearance of taking action against crime.'"
Politician's with a scapegoat? Never!
yeah no surprise here
Wow, something every person who plays games already knows. You don't go shoot people because a game tells you to. Any sane person knows that is wrong. Only a person who has serious mental issues commit crimes like that.
But of course people see violent video games and instantly accuse them. Scapegoat anyone?
But if we can't blame the video games...someone is going to blame my parenting skills! Next they will want me actually monitoring my kids to insure they don't see boobies on the interwebs instead of banning them from the sites! Oy I'm late...
Why is it just video games that are subject to all this scrutiny? Board games cause violence too.
My sister was perfectly capable of flying into a murderous rage if someone else purchased Boardwalk or Park Place in a game of Monopoly when we were kids.
Recession is on.
Politicians don't have idle time to persecute random innocent everyday activities anymore.
Should have sat on it until the economy was well into recovery territory.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Sudden outbreak of ... he'll be completely ignored.
Let's face it, saying "The new shiny thing that you barely know anything about, is the true responsible for all the evils" will always work better for the news than "There's just about the same percentage of bad people as always, nothing to see here, move along."
Monopoly is the closest thing to domestic violence between siblings you can get.
Totopoly just makes you want to throw the game board at the wall out of sheer fucking boredom.
Then we have the game of Whack-a-mole played with people with absolutely no hand-eye co-ordination.
Golf involves swinging metal clubs in a wide swiping motion.
Tennis requires the constant violence against a small furry ball which PETA could easily say represents a small mammal.
Cricket is self inflicted pain, there is a *wrong* way to catch that damn hard ball.
And they're all non-contact sports, don't get me started on Rugby.
Task Mangler
Wow, something every person who plays games already knows.
Well, I was thinking the same thing, except from the opposite direction. I'm was kind of skeptical about how he might have showed no link given the small sample group of school shooters and the difficulty in finding actual video game links, but there's really nothing of the sort here. He's largely just criticizing the methodology (or complete lack thereof) of most people howling about the link between video games and school shootings.
He's basically doing little more than pointing out the obvious, but not really proving his own point. It's very much a, "Here's some common sense, here's where most of the people talking about the supposed connection betray their ignorance, and here's some outrage and politics too" kind of article. Less science than editorial. (One with a decent point mind you, but let's not pretend this is proof of the opposite. He's just calling "BS.")
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Everyone already knows the truth, but it's easier to have something to blame when things go wrong. See: God, Video games, Cartoon porn.
Weaklings can't take responsibility or direct their attention towards better targets like humans, parenting and child predators.
It's all about finding a good excuse rather than doing something useful.
So we need to stop selling cameras.
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
Spot the correlation.
To date the worst school massacre took place in Michigan in 1927. Although it wasn't a student I guarantee it wasn't video games that pushed him over the edge either.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster
What do you think would happen today if someone blew up an entire school wing? They'd have tons of scapegoats instead of focusing on the unique circumstances which made the PERSON who was RESPONSIBLE.
*DrugCheese rants*
And technically, since we're talking science, that's enough disproof. The burden of proof lies on the one who claims to have a proof. Pointing out the holes in his proof is disproof enough. You don't have to prove the opposite, which sometimes is even impossible or unfeasible.
E.g., if I claim to have proof that extraterrestrials live among us in disguise, it's up to me to prove that, not up to you to prove that all 6 billion humans on Earth were born on Earth. The latter would be unreasonably hard a "proof" to do, and frankly it's not your burden to do. (Much as various nuts and fanatics like to pretend that it's your job to prove them wrong, and they're right if you don't.) But if you can find big enough holes in my data or methodology, that's actually disproof enough.
Ditto for games. It's very hard to prove, especially for someone who's already dead, that games absolutely didn't have an influence on him. You can't resurrect him and haul him to a shrink. Now picture doing that for a few hundreds of people. It's unreasonable, and, again, it's frankly not your burden of proof. The ones who claim that the link between games and violence exist, and even use it as a true premise to base further rationale on (e.g., that therefore this or that legislation is needed), those have to first prove it. If you can poke holes in their proof, that's disproof enough.
So to summarize it, the answer to your "let's not pretend this is proof of the opposite" is: he doesn't have to prove the opposite in the first place.
In the end, probably what we actually need is actually less people getting suck(er)ed into the game of accepting that they have to prove the opposite, and more people who just call BS until the ones making the claim presented a good enough proof. Once you accept the burden of proving the opposite, essentially you've accepted that unless you can do the unreasonable !X proof, the bullshitter is right. That's already playing their game. They just need to be slapped silly with the notion of who has to prove what, and that an unproven claim is null and void and not to be taken any more seriously than opinionated gossip overheard on a plane.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Hi,
the article mentions a paper and has a link to it. But the link doesn't work and i can't find the paper by searching for the author on that server.
Has anyone a working link?
Sincerely yours, Martin
Seems like an obvious candidate to me. I mean, you're taught to *throw* something at someone, with the intention of hitting them "out."
Anyone up for a round of Lawn Darts Dodgeball?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Can't have it both ways.
Now I'm not gonna say there is or is not a link, I don't know.
But since when have researchers mapped the behaviour of the brain and the way it reacts to certain gaming or television related stuff?
They are just guessing according to the things they have experienced and learned.
Maybe they are asking themselves the wrong questions and making the wrong assumptions.
Just remember that psychology is not really founded upon exact measurements.
Ohhhh wait, it is just a _single_ judgement, made by 1 person, 1 point of view
I lol'd
since when is genetics considered a cause of violent crime?
First it was comic books, then it was rock n' roll, now it's video games. In a few years, it's bound to be something new and people will stop caring about violent games.
What about factoring background?
My missus works in a playgroup and some of the little freaks she has to deal with, most kids are pretty normal but there are alway one or two who insist on shouting the f-word and c-word at other kids or biting them or boys ordering the girls to dress them or pick things up for them.
If your brought up a certain way by your "guardians", then you will behave like that because at age 4-5 that's the only influences you know. If you are violent by nature due to your upbringing, then certain triggers will work on your whereas most other will not.
One look that that vacuous mouth-breather Paris Hilton and I'm f**king violent!
Lots of these reports comming out lately.
/ The Arrow
"How lovely you are. So lovely in my straightjacket..." - Nny
that is, that violent videogames decrease violence in society
media is catharsis. what i mean by that is: what is seen in a movie, or read in a book, or played on a keyboard, is something that is released harmlessly there, and left there. something that would be expressed in the real world otherwise if there were no means for harmless escape
some people may consider me a ittle radical on the subject, but i am serious: more people should play more violent videogames. more people should consume more pornography. the result would be less violence and less trangressive sexual crimes in real life. i think violent offenders should be given access to violent videogames in prison, and given a copy on their release (if ever). i think sexual offenders should be given hardcore pornography. this would teach them how to cope with their urges and manage them without resorting to victimizing real people in the real world
and for those of us who can "self-medicate", and remove the baser urges we recognize in ourselves, and recognize as socially wrong, by releasing them harmlessly on a keyboard or a magazine, then please, by all means, allow us to do that
because the attraction to violent videogames, or sexual media, is really a HEALTHY instinct: its a recognition for the need to have catharsis on certain asocial urges, something the vast majority of us have. although, some people don't have any sexual or violent proclivities about themselves at all, and that's why they look at people who view pornography or violence as tainted somehow, and they see the media as a cause of this taint. this is a false line of reasoning on their part. the media is merely a symptom, not a cause. and much more than a symptom, it is a treatment. it is catharsis
violent or sexual media does not create monsters. we are already, or are already not, monsters to begin with. its just a question of whether we release in real life, in society, or in fantasy, in media-based pursuits
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
How many people have been going on killing sprees because they said God told them it was a swell idea? Yet nobody discusses outlawing religion, or keeping it away from the feeble minds of small children.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I see no fundamental problem there. Essentially you're legally required to make a claim that your medicine (A) works better than placebo, and (B) you know and disclose the risks and potential side effects. And you're required to prove it.
The requirement part comes from having such bad experiences as someone selling sulpha dilluted in ethylene glycol... which is a very deadly poison, and actually killed everyone who took that medicine. In excruciating pain, over a couple of weeks. So now if you don't or can't make and prove those claims, you're not allowed to market that medicine. Or not as medicine.
But that's largely a legal construct, and has nothing to do with how logic works or how burden of proof works. We as a society decided that you _must_ make and prove that kind of claims.
But burden of proof even there works the old fashioned way. _You_ must prove it. It doesn't work like "it's good medicine unless someone else can prove otherwise."
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I F#CKing kill you all! ... sorry I was just playing GTA. I meant to say, good story.
How many people play violent video games? How many school shootings have happened? There is a very, very low ceiling on the possible effect size there. Even if video games were a causal factor in 100% of school shootings, it's still the case that in 99.999etc.% of cases, video games do not cause people to shoot up their schools.
The flip side to this is that every publicized school shooting was perpetrated by students who were playing violent video games. In essence, not every gamer is a school shooter, but so far every school shooter was a gamer. Is that enough to take it to congress? I don't think so. Again, Halo has sold how many millions of copies? There were plenty of other factors that went into the psychology of the school shooters, but the people in congress have looked at the lowest common denominator between these people, and that's the violent games. Should they be banned for that? of course not! but I do think that it is a point worth exploring and perhaps finding a means of strengthening the disconnect between games and reality; for some people that can get blurry.
Really, all I want to know is which game producer funded the person who wrote this editorial? There's lots of evidence about this topic that he's ignoring. To say there's no evidence is either intentionally misleading, or uninformed: http://culturalpolicy.uchicago.edu/conf2001/papers/walsh.html
What most people don't seem to recognise is that these "school shootings" (or flame throwers, or whatever) and similar "going postal" events are NOT intended as mass murders.
They are intended as loud, messy SUICIDES, that "show the world how much it hurt me by hurting it back".
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
In my opinion, thanks for asking, psychopaths are attracted to violent entertainment, because it is violent and they are psychopaths. For others (normal-ish people) the violence isn't real (because it is a game, after all) and it is fun. Your over or underweight gaming fanatic probably plays vastly more of this stuff than anyone else and killing large swaths of people at school would cut into his gaming time.
And since /. doesn't have a location beacon for posters, you go by what you see.
It would take a SUPERgenius to know where you came from with just your postings to go on.
And criminals still have guns. It's just they target money or opposing criminals, not schoolkids. Whereas if parents had guns, schoolkids have guns and they don't target banks, etc.
So although there ARE guns in the UK, there aren't schoolyard shootings.
Why? Because when you outlaw guns, only outlaws have guns. And they have better things to do than shoot kids in school.
Retard.
Seek the link between bullying and school shootings. It won't be hard to find.
As a casual observer I see that a character named Rocky was the bane of the Trench Coat Mafia. Doubtlessly there were other influences for Klebold and Harris, but those influences are accounted for in a larger bullying dynamic.
Or from the FDA itself: http://www.fda.gov/oc/history/elixir.html
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I recall reading somewhere that it wasn't necessarily the games that made people go postal, the concern was that video games can certainly make you more efficient at it.
(In my apparent desire to be burned at the stake by all other Slashdoters, I would like to make a contradictory statement. It's short, I promise.)
School shootings are the manifestation of some sort of breakdown among a few people because we have a culture of violence. Video games are, without a doubt, part of that culture.
Politicians demonize violent video games and then go attend the latest military parade.
Property is theft.
There is a 99.9% Link between violent crime and schooling. 99.9% of all perpetrators of violent crime have a history of going to school, whether it is preschool, kindergarten, primary, secondary, tertiary, private, or public schools, whether for long or short periods. Therefore I urge you all to Think of the Children, and immediately BAN all forms of school, where no doubt violent criminals of the future are being trained.
im worried about people who vote to go to war in iraq.
These studies are fucking dumb. Actually, most sociological studies a fucking dumb. The "researchers" already had a conclusion and they conducted "studies" until their conclusion was reached in some abstract way. This isn't like the natural sciences where a definitive conclusion can be reached, so despite questionable results, they will never be able to be refuted.
All these "video games cause x behavior" studies are a waste of time and money. Has anyone considered that different people react to video games differently. Some people don't like them at all while some people get addicted to them. Same applies to crochet. Only conclusion I see is that different people are into different shit. For some people, crochet may inspire them to go on a killing spree, but would anyone try to ban crochet as a result? NO. Hell, some people have claimed that the Beatles made them commit hideous crimes, but they're still on my playlist.
In a nutshell, I'm saying that Sociology is a bullshit science and if you ever have the misfortune of taking a Sociology class take everything, especially the statistics they throw at you, with a grain of salt.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
Quoting: 'Actual causes of violent crime, such as family environment, genetics, poverty, and inequality, are oftentimes difficult, controversial, and intractable problems.
Just wait for the academic community to ostracize the author for listing "genetics" among the "[a]ctual causes of violent crime".
As it turns out, violent people tend not to play violent games and people who play violent games tend not to commit violent acts.
However such a large number of young people play games that statistically there is a very small overlap and, it seems, that this overlap is often given as proof of a connection when really the converse serves as counter-proof.
I find it frustrating that studies keep coming out showing a non-casual relationship where each time its treated as "new" news.
For a good read that debunks some of the myths, check out the essay "Reality Bytes: Eight Myths About Video Games Debunked" by MIT Professor Henry Jenkins posted years ago at pbs.org:
http://www.pbs.org/kcts/videogamerevolution/impact/myths.html
My two cents.
--Dave Romig, Jr.