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.'"

Comments

Video games don't have a monopoly on violence.

[Shaitan Apistos]

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.

Re:What about the easy availability of guns ?

[ElectricTurtle]

Well, although nobody in the UK has shot up a school since the Dublane Massacre, that doesn't mean that mass murders at schools in the UK have ceased. They just use other weapons now (improvised flame thrower? I have to say I'm impressed). Just goes to prove that people are going to kill people no matter what tools they have to do it with.

Sometimes that's enough

[Moraelin]

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.