Research Credibility In the Video Game Violence Debate

An anonymous reader writes "Two researchers who have a history of publishing studies that claim violent video games lead to violence have now published a new study claiming that they've come up with an 'objective' way to measure why violent video games lead to violence. They've taken the names of people who signed an amicus brief on the upcoming Supreme Court case on an anti-violent video game law in California, and decided that if you added up the number of publications by each side the ones who supported 'video games lead to violence' had more publications, and thus that was 'proof' that they had more credibility. Yes, quantity is more important than quality. The fact that the researchers who published this 'study' also wrote the amicus brief that supported the same claim seems to call their objectivity into question as well."

Comments

Re:An earlier Slashdot article...

[Alex Belits]

So it's like goatse -- you aren't shocked anymore to see a stretched anus on the screen, but you still aren't inclined to stretch your anus in front of other people or cameras?

Re:I found this bit interesting...

[maxwell demon]

from here
"The data for the study came from the PsycINFO database, which provides more than 3 million references to the psychological literature from the 1800s to the present, including peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters or essays, and books."

Something's wrong, I think. 3 million references is a lot!

I wonder what the violent video games from the 1800s looked like.