Quote:
Originally posted by 4thTimeLucky
geep
You are indeed being over knitpicking in some ways, but not in all.
Firstly, that is not just any old URL. The article was published in Trauma a peer reviewed journal. That is normally one of the first things we look for in an academic study. It does not mean that it is the final word (other refuting articles could have been written - that is the point of such journals), but it means that it has a lot more credibility than just any old URL.
As for your "in the home" / "around the home" distinction, it is an abstract. By its nature an abstract will over-simplify things - it is trying to summarise a ten page article in two lines. You would need to read the full article before being able to jump to any conclusions.
However the abstract does raise questions. For example, the study finds 10 self-defence shootings, 118 suicides and 54 unintentional shootings. From this it says that for every self-defence shooting there are 11 suicides (11.8 rounded down) - fine. It then says that for every self-defence shooting there are 4 uninentional ones - but why not 5 (5.4 rounded down)?
So the abstract raises questions, but no more. The chances are that Drs. Kellermann, Somes, Rivara, Lee and Banton are, between them, quite capable of dividing 54 by 10. So we should really read the full article.
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Good catch on the math! The object of my post was not casting dispersions on the reputation of
Trauma or Drs. Kellermann, Somes, Rivara, Lee and Banton. My point was simply this: Just because a guy has some numbers rolling around in his argument that doesn't make his argument true. With this particular study, which I have debated elsewhere so my opinoin of it may be skewed, the questions I raised about the guns being kept in the home or being brought there are legitimate. Many times, contrary to popular belief, parameters for statistics are set with the specific intent of bolstering the presenters opinion. I'm not saying that this is the case in Dr. Kellerman's study but it does happen. There are other ways to use statistics to lend credence to an argument. Their presence does not gaurantee truth.
Quote:
Originally posted by Sparhawk
Funny how I don't see you as nitpicky regarding the investigation of NBC/WMD in Iraq. Maybe it's because you can't argue with this statistic:
Number of NBC/WMD found: 0
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Your statistic is meaningless to me because IMO we were NOT there JUST to find WMD's. Therefore I will accept your statistic as truth, but it doesn't help your argument.