"Science"

By Crispin Sartwell

Recently I expressed in print my doubt that violent video games cause violent behavior. Several readers responded by telling me that "research demonstrates" that playing video games has terrible effects on the adolescent mind.

One reader asks me whether I am "simply unaware" of such studies. I wish I were. Social science research of this kind, which is intended to drive policy, is an all-you-can-eat buffet of balderdash.

Let me endeavor to illustrate this in one case. A reader sent me the abstract of a study from the January 2001 Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine titled "Effects of reducing children's television and video game use on aggressive behavior." The authors studied two similar elementary schools. In one they instituted an "educational" program designed to reduce television and video game exposure. In the other they did not.

They had three ways to measure of aggressive behavior. One was direct observation by the researchers. Another was the reports of parents. And a third asked students about the behavior of one another.

The student reports showed a decrease of 2.4% in aggressive behavior with exposure to the anti-video program. Direct observation and parental reports showed decreases that even by the standards of the researchers were statistically insignificant.

Some of the problems with the design of this experiment are obvious. A thousand other factors could have affected the aggressive behavior of one bunch of kids but not the other by 2.4%: a slight dip in parental employment rates; one bully getting mono. And a thousand things could have affected the reports of students about one another.

But the study in fact has nothing to do with science and everything to do with the ethical values of the researchers. The whole thing turns on the term "aggressive," which is massively value-laden and as vague as a word can be.

In fact, one could restate the results of this study as follows: children who were subjected to the anti-media program showed a tiny increase in docility, as reported by their peers. They were slightly easier to handle in an institutional setting (a large public elementary school) that values mindless obedience.

Even if the you allowed the researchers their terminology (which you shouldn't) and thought that the study supported its conclusions (which it doesn't), the application of these "results" to any given child is impossible, because each child is influenced by a myriad of idiosyncratic factors. What is the effect of violent media on your particular child? For pity's sake ask yourself and your child, not a scientist. No research is going to get you off the hook.

The study as a whole is a covert argument, albeit a pathetic one, for the censorship of video games. And it is an argument for instituting a propaganda program (a la the DARE program) designed by the "researchers" to control childrens' experience of media. But the people making that argument don't have the guts to tell us what they think; they claim to speak merely for the results of Science, on behalf of the Objective Facts.

The social sciences are us studying ourselves. Hence they can never be objective in the same way as the physical sciences. Detecting the presence of argon is nothing like detecting the presence of aggression, because the latter is an ethical term.

We would be much, much better off gathering knowledge of human beings by introspection and empathy than by pseudo-science of this quality. And introspection and empathy are also much better guides for social policy. If you yourself do not believe that a violent movie makes you more likely to commit an act of violence, then extend the same courtesy to others. If you think violent media cause violence, and you oppose violence, then arrange your household accordingly.

No scientist can or should tell us how to live and how to raise our children. These are the deepest moral issues that confront us. It would be nice if there were simple answers. There aren't.

If we allow these saps to tell us how to behave and how to raise our children on the grounds that they have Ph.D's, we are abdicating not only our common sense, but our humanity.

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