Is it proper for a "scientist" to be seen with an advocacy group

[gejohnston]

47. that would require a long post

Last edited Wed May 30, 2012, 05:40 AM - Edit history (1)

In your post, you made a claim, but did not point anything about his methodology. About false positives, that would be one percent of positives, not one percent of all responses. Out of 100 people, 10 say yes, a one percent false positive would mean 0.1 instead of 1. Correct?
external validation checks, such as?

Finally, even if one ignored these logical fallacies, H's argument still fails, because it depends on an erroneous factual assumption. H states that "from the NCVS, we know that there were fewer than six million burglaries in 1992,"[36] and makes similar statements about rapes.[37] In fact, we do not "know" any such thing. No competent criminologist believes that the NCVS provides complete coverage of all burglaries, or any other crimes, occurring in the U.S. And once one concedes that there may be far more crimes than the NCVS estimates, H's argument collapses, since it becomes impossible to argue that the number of DGUs linked to a given crime are implausibly high relative to the total number of crimes of that type¾we simply do not know the latter number.

In a second variety of this fallacious line of reasoning, H cites estimates of the number of gunshot wound (GSW) victims treated in emergency rooms and falsely claims that "K-G report that 207,000 times per year the gun defender thought he wounded or killed the offender."[38] In fact, we did not compute or report this 207,000 estimate, and we specifically cautioned against using our data on GSWs because they were based (unlike our estimates of DGU frequency in general) on a small sample. Moreover, we cautioned because we had done no detailed questioning of RS regarding why they thought that they had wounded their adversaries.[39]

In any case, there is nothing even mildly inconsistent between this GSW estimate and emergency room data on persons treated for GSWs. H again makes the implicit assumption that DGU-linked woundings are entirely a subset of woundings treated in medical facilities. If one more plausibly assumes that substantial numbers of less serious GSWs are not treated in such facilities, the number of medically treated GSWs cannot be used as an upper limit on the number of [Page 1454] DGUs that result in a GSW. If, for example, the total annual number of GSWs, treated or untreated, were 400,000, there would obviously be nothing even mildly implausible about 200,000 of them being DGU- linked, especially in light of the fact that the vast majority of victims of known assault GSWs are criminals.[40]

One more thing:

Fortunately, though, Hemenway has actually looked into the question of what fraction of reported DGUs are actually "good". He did a phone survey similar to Klecks, but also recorded descriptions of the alleged DGUs. He then showed the reports to a panel of judges, who found more than half to be likely illegal, and a to a group of criminology students, who found that only about 25% were socially desirable. In other words, even if we were to accept the huge DGU estimates, that does not translate into a net benefit for society.

Here is honest question, who were these judges? Were the familiar with the laws with that place at that time for individual gun use? What exactly was deemed illegal?
How was "socially desirable" defined? What basis did they define what was and what was not socially desirable? What information did they have to come to these conclusions?

I did quick search, and yes I did but not with you.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=118&topic_id=376715&mesg_id=431714
Did I go in depth, no. Hemenway's speculation is a problem. And no, I was not lying about your willingness or ability to have civil conversations. You had one with one person or two. Big fucking deal. Can you do it with most of the folks here? Me specificlly? No. Not once. Every post of yours to me has been anything but civil or reasoned. In DU2, you posts directed at me specifically, were deleted because of personal attacks directed at me specifically. Can you show one or even two posts to me that were civil and reasoned? I seriously doubt it. Granted I responded in kind. Then it was my intellect, and now my honesty. Of course you will demand to see the DU2 deleted posts as evidence, and then claim I was lying when the impossible can't be done.
So I think your hero is a shill and not the "respected scientist" you claim he is. Fucking deal with it. So some Criminologists came up with results they did not expect and you don't like. Fucking deal with it. Science should have no ideology.