Today's Zeitgeist points to a cute editorial cartoon.
The cartoon's joke is that all the studies that have been done connecting violent media to real youth violence, or soda consumption to childhood obesity, are just a big waste of money because it's obvious these things are connected. Now I have to agree that these things all seem quite obvious to me, but given the huge number of comments our posts on the impact of violent media always seem to generate, clearly this isn't a cut and dried topic.
We've also discussed some violent games which don't appear to lead to violent behavior. If all we paid attention to was "common sense," would we just throw babies like this one out with the bathwater?
If all scientists did was listen to common sense, instead of testing their assumptions and questioning everything, wouldn't we still live in a world where the stars were fixed, where the sun revolved around the earth, and where our eyes shot out rays in order to see?
I realize this is just a cartoon, but thinking like this is dangerous, plain and simple.
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On other hand the cartoon makes an excellent point because there is so much research that do not make any real contribution to science. There is is so much money spend in this type of research that it is important to be more careful about the type of research we support.
I think that your main point is a good one. The great ground-breaking discovieries tend to be based on counter-intuitive approaches - i.e. they go against what we might think of as 'common sense' thinking - take relativity for example. Beyond this, it's easy to say 'oh, that's obvious' after someone has explained it to you in a simple way..the trick is to work it out in the first place!
"...all the studies that have been done connecting ... soda consumption to childhood obesity, are just a big waste of money because it's obvious these things are connected. Now I have to agree that these things all seem quite obvious to me...."
This makes the point even more. Just because something seems obvious doesn't make it true. Recently I read a research article (darn, where did I put that reference) which reviewed the issue in detail, looking at several tens of studies examining whether there was a link between soda consumption and childhood obesity.
It was split fairly evenly between studies that found a small link and studies that found no significant link. From that article, a fair summary is that if there is a link, it's likely to be only a small link, and its significance is debatable. That's a long way from "it's obvious".
Ah. Got the reference.
Malik et al. "Intake of sugar-sweetened beverages and weight gain: a systematic review" Am J Clin Nutr 84 (2): 274
Don't just read the abstract, look at the data. Also see
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,207870,00.html
Half of all survey's are incorrect.
Common Sense did not lead to the theory of relativity. And taking from the bad joke Relativity is the study of Relatives. Which leads into my next assertion.
Violent games are everywhere and yet we don't have incidents such as Columbine on a national scale.
Why one chooses to play a violent game and another not.
-Is one aspect.
Of those whom play violent games.
-Which ones use it as a form of venting and which ones think of it is enabling is another.
-Of those whom have a previous disposition twards violence and treat the gaming experience as training/ inhibition reduction/ moral deconstructor. Can one say that the gamining experience lead to the violence directly or that other factors were at work?
Violence is part of culture. We may not accept it as that but Violence is part of the human condition. The world has a long history of violence and violent acts. Young men have always trained for warfare although the muse has been to protect the society in the past. Society has often sent young men off to war to keep them from the society while they work thru the testosterone stage. Without an interpersonal bond to a community and no foriegn land to send young men to. they are left with the same testosterone in the same community. Animals in the wild such as Lions send the males out of the community to wander untill they develop the strength skill to enter a new community and take the prize of the herd by force.
Knowing that genetics plays a crucial part of the human condition can we expect that humans are capable to escape thier own biology?
"Violent games are everywhere and yet we don't
have incidents such as Columbine on a national scale."
That is such a straw man argument, as no one
(at least in the science community) is arguing
that violent video are the one and only cause of
Columbine type incidents. Instead the argument
is that exposure to violent media increases aggression.
That is, if someone already is very aggressive,
they will be even more aggressive after exposure
to violent media (the more the exposure, the greater
the increase). For those who aren't aggressive, exposure
will also increase their aggression level.
"We may not accept it as that but Violence is part
of the human condition." That's very true, which is
why there is such a huge market for violent video
games and violent TV & movies. This, and the fact that
violent TV is so easy and cheap to produce also increases
it's availability.
http://www.fradical.com/violence_finds_a_niche_in_childrens_cartoons.htm
All this exposure of almost the entire population
of Americans (and increasingly of the world) to
huge amounts of violent media is having a deleterious
effect.
For more info see:
http://www.psychology.iastate.edu/faculty/caa/abstracts/2000-2004/01BA…
http://www.tvsmarter.com/documents/aggression.html
I think that Iraq has demonstrated that a populous that
is too violent become ungovernable except by the most
vicious dictator.
A liberal democracy just doesn't work, when people are
fascinated by the "art of violence", and are more
interested in torture (24), revenge, military conquest,
than cooperation and forgiveness.
http://www.tvsmarter.com/documents/democracy.html