I trust you want to start anew, like this thread does everyday?

RWarehall, I specifically said that my problem with the way you were arguing wasn't your intelligence - it was your lack of training in the field. My opinion on boycotts is just that, my opinion. It isn't something that's right or wrong. While I hope to convince people with my argument, it doesn't mean its the right - or only view. Really, my view would probably be shredded by someone that took philosophy 201. If you control for something, it technically has to be listed as part of your methodology. You specifically have to list it so people know you used it. Its necessary for understanding the statistical experiment. You also obviously didn't read, or are willfully ignoring the fact that you can get anything published if you find the right journal. You claim you found all of these articles that support your view point. One was published in a bad journal. In the article that linked to the emotionally stunted stuff, an author explicitly said the study didn't measure what you said it did. The quote about acting like a jerk was his opinion - and furthermore acknowledges that measures of aggression spike. The third study I remember you linking that you claim as proof, the author actually found an inverse correlation. Then went on to detail how games affected individuals that also possessed certain personality traits. You completely choose to ignore that part.

I just want to go back to that first study. I read it, cover to cover. The control variables used were median household income, policing, population density, youth population, and GDP. Missing - incarceration, abortion, and birth control. His measure of violent crime was homicide rates. So the first party of the study only showed that homicide rates didn't correlate to violence in movies. Which is not the same as saying people aren't more likely to engage in minor acts of violence.

The second part simply took two limited data sets and plotted them against each other. Some youth crime, versus a statistic the author created himself. That statistic on its own would require an entire research paper to be viewed as valid.

At the end of the paper, the author states the limitations, which are significant. I encourage you to read that section yourself because I can't copy and paste.

I was surprised to see a significant typo (childstats.org in body as opposed to .gov in the citations) in the paper. I really wonder how the reviewers of this journal missed that if they gave the paper the thorough review you claim is required for publishing.

I guess writing "you don't know a thing about social science methodology" feels good, up until someone demonstrates that no - the author did not control for these things in their paper. You agree with me that the author really should apparently, but you were unaware that he didn't. You keep trying to insist that I don't know what I'm talking about, when again and again and again you say things you have no proof for and make yourself look like an ass.

Considering my entire point all along was that there was no conclusive proof either way that video games can be responsible for violent behavior, I'm not sure why you are arguing with me. I simply didn't want people to say "It's proven that blah", or "science has demonstrated". Those positions have no support.

You are either arguing with me from such a strong idealogical position that you are blind, or the educational system you attended failed you very, very badly. You made the claim "Of course he controlled for those things in his methodology, he doesn't have to say it" which demonstrates that its yourself who was actually ignorant about social science and research in general. I'm not sure why exactly you would say something so blatantly false unless you were simply making things up to save face to others in this thread.

But - by saying that you are agreeing with me that he should have. I'm glad we came to an agreement about the serious flaws with that paper. Thank you again for proving another point for me.

Did you really look at the methodology of the first paper? The study took popular movies of a given year, rated them for violence and compared them to homicide statistics. They even stated the reason for using just homicide statistics was to eliminate effects for changes in enforcement. Now if you are claiming abortion and contraception, did these spike up and down over these years? Or was it a generally constant decline as a result?

Those are factors which aren't going to fluctuate on a year to year basis so much. Hence, they shouldn't have that much effect on the correlative values of any given year vs. the next. Hence, I stick to my point that those particular factors you claim are accounted for despite being unnamed. Especially in the second study which pointed out that youth violence was itself fairly constant over the time frame studied. Hence, years where the popular video games released were more violent, should've increased youth violence. But apparently it did not.

Like I said, you seem to chose to cherry-pick complaints about various studies, yet if you look at the grand scheme of things, even if some of the studies have minor flaws in controls, they still say something about the topic on hand.

And what it says in the case of long-term violent effects is that there is no extensive discernible effect. And even if you account for a lack of additional controls (which seemingly you know better which controls should be in place than the psychologists themselves), it still is evidence that societal and media claims of violent video games turning people violent are grossly exaggerated.

There are long-term studies. Quibble as you like with the methodology and controls, they still provide evidence. If only to prove there is no great smoking gun of immanent violence from playing video games.

What I really take offense at, is that you seem to imply your own capability of properly reading these studies outside your own field of expertise, yet the rest of us shouldn't try, because essentially you don't believe people on this forum are educated enough to do such a thing.

I think you should take a close look at the high pedestal you put yourself upon....

TB on the refund fiasco : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPUToCNq-iA

Why would I read the methodology? The author doesn't have to state his control variables. Its a given, its how social science methodology works. You said so yourself. Surely, we can all also accept that homicide is an accurate barometer for all violent crime with no explanation. Or that a statistic (created for the second part of the study) is automatically valid.

I'm done arguing with you. You keep moving the goalposts. Hopefully I've provided a good argument that despite your study, you can't use science to verify or disprove the statement that johnny punched timmy in the eye because he played GTA. Or on a more extreme scale that we don't know if video games contributed to sandyhook. Like I said - its only something you can hypothesize about at this point. I also hope I showed the problems with googling for popsci articles.

For what its worth, If someone had trotted out a study that shows a correlational link - I'd be just as critical.

edit:
If it were published under the same circumstances.

So Fox News and Al Jazeera America are entirely the same to you, then? It's really the same difference we're dealing with here: some people are sensationalizing and fabricating to further an agenda (Arthur Gies) while others (let's say Erik Kain) manage to communicate their opinions and subjective experiences without falling into the same pitfalls. But I suppose it's all the same to you since opinions are opinions and nothing can ever be objective. What are words, anyway? Those strings of letters could mean, like, anything, man, so how could anyone possibly judge what is and isn't true? By checking claims against the source material in order to determine the accuracy of the writer's statements? Madness! We should just trust those people to never twist the truth, because who cares about politically-motivated fabrications when it comes to a multi-billion dollar industry?

Remind me again which of us is being silly.

My mind has been doing some terrible things to the world if these "journalists" are to be believed (and I assume they have to be, since they're all equal in your eyes). Are you sure I'm not Green Lantern?

(And I'm confident I've never used the term "femnazi" or "feminazi" or anything of the sort in a serious manner. The word makes me cringe.)

Why all that hate about short "art" style games? I've paid $5 for a 20 minute short story before. What's the difference?

You waste your time and energy talking to that guy. As I pointed out he supported Anita Sarkeesian in a previous thread about a year ago. And I pointed it out to explain it is empossible to reach an agreemint with him since he already took a side. He took it as an ad hominem however.

Yeah, but that could be said of just about everyone posting in here. I'd like to think that we're an itsy bitsy bit more malleable when faced when evidence that contradicts our point of views, but most of us have more or less made up our minds. Still, it's always worthwhile to argue like that. Worst case scenario, someone paints themselves into a corner and says something fun and crazy that we can all collectively enjoy. Best case scenario, the back-and-forth helps some lurker understand the whole thing and figure out where they stand on the issue.

Were we ever not allowed to like games by people we disagree with? Costume Quest 1 and 2 are awesome. Haven't played Fez yet, personally, but I can't help but love Phil Fish for all the amazing comments he's inspired, like this comment chain. Far Cry 3 was fun despite the fact that it was apparently written as some weird commentary on game violence or empowerment or something. Ragnar Tornquist said some things vaguely anti-GG, but The Longest Journey is still one of the best games of all time (rubber duck puzzle up in hurrr). Good times.

Well. On your first reply. I certainly like to attract more neutrals thruogh reason and facts. I was a neutral until two things happened. I saw hostility from antis and I saw Sarkeesian attacking GG.

On your second reply. Some GG supporters call for a boycot on games made by AGG devs, but I believe that is of no use because that won't change their views, reduce their hubris, or make them respect us. In fact I believe if we show them that the only thing we care about is the quality of the game they will realize they face a threat in GG only if their games are bad.

Moved.

You are done, fine, then let me rebut your newly added points.

First, let's talk about moving goalposts shall we? Who exactly is moving these goalposts?
When this started you claimed we shouldn't believe articles we read in the media. You continue to claim you are very skeptical of all studies, YET when it comes to studies about video games causing aggression or studies claiming video games leave the players emotionally impaired, these studies are 100% true and have been replicated dozens of times (with no link or evidence provided by you). Which is it? Are you skeptical of all studies or are they proven to be true? Seems to me, the ones you endorse are 100% truth and any article we mention is 100% crap.

Then you go on about how we are pretty much stupid to discuss them because we just don't have the expertise in psychology to understand what they say or mean. (But later on, YOU, the Computer Engineer seem to know so much about psychology you can tear apart the entire study and show its crap.)

So next, I bring up a study and link it. Lo and behold, you claim that is the exact study you were talking about. That this study is the example of a bad study. It comes from a terrible journal.
Here is the author's bio:
http://www.stetson.edu/other/faculty/profiles/christopher-ferguson.php
Notice this is not a list of "all" his articles, only "selected" ones. I mean what an unqualified schmuck. Right? Do I have to add that this man wrote an open letter to the APA in order to re-open the debate over the effects of video games and had over 200 other respected individuals sign on to his letter?

Journal of Communications, such a crappy journal. My God it ranks 8th out of 235 journals in its category. Not a top 5 so any study in it needs to be completely ignored. Right. Completely sucks, so says the Computer Engineer...
http://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php?category=3315
http://www.scimagojr.com/journalsearch.php?q=15613&tip=sid&clean=0

Then you start questioning his methodology because the author is such a fraud that he's so stupid to not specifically account for abortion rates and birth control use and whatever our great Computer Engineer can throw against the study.

And now you don't trust his use of homicides as a prime variable...um...because the Great Computer Engineer thinks its a bad measure to go by...
Here is the author's reasoning and a citation for it... Hey, you can trust the Computer Engineer or the author I leave it to all of you to compare the qualifications of the two of them...

Look, from before I mentioned this study to now, you went out of your way to attack this article and me. As I addressed each of your concerns, you added another complaint (moving the goalposts). Inexplicibly, when I questioned the validity of studies claiming shorter term ill effects of video games, you all of a sudden were a complete proponent of those studies, no skepticism whatsoever.

In other words, anything I said, you were skeptical...
Anything you said, the complete absolute and incontrovertible truth...

And when it comes to this esteemed researcher, you know far more about making a study than him...

Tell us again, why we should believe what you have to say?

RWarehall, It turns out you are right and I can't read. Study 1 actually found a correlation between media violence and the homicide rate. So depictions of violence in movies correlates to the homicide rate for the period of 1920-2005. The author suggests it was chance because if you drop the earlier data and consider 1970-2005, its not there. However, that's exactly where you run into trouble with the factors I said you would, at pretty much the date I said you would.

I also actually found a citation for that paper by asking a friend with access to lexis nexus! It was cited in that paper as evidence supporting a link between violent movies and the homicide rate. You'll have to take my word for it, or pay $6 to read it. DOI: 10.1111/hcre.12058 if you'd like to read it.

See, I proved my point. Reading research articles is tricky outside your field.

Discussion?

I still want to say that this correlational study neither proves nor disproves a causal link. You understand that right?

Lets be clear, shall we? The author did not claim it to be "chance", he used the term "ecological fallacy". What this means is that when talking about trends which may span decades, two different trends may both be on an upswing or downswing at the same long period of time. For example, violence was on the rise for decades following World War II. It just so happens that this was also the birth of modern media and its rise. So, with violence increasing in a decades long trend at the same time television viewership was rising, its no surprise people attempted to correlate the two. And its no surprise that studies might find a correlation between the two.

But, enter the early 90's when violence went on the downslide continuing to the present, media viewership is still at a high. In the study of video game violence, which actually found an inverse correlation between violent video games and violence (for the uninitiated, that means playing video games makes one LESS violent). Because his data was limited to 1996, the first year he could get reliable game data, he posits that this correlation that video games makes people less violent, is also an ecological fallacy. This seems a fair assessment to me. Essentially, playing video games has no relation to violence in the world...