Research Linking Violent Entertainment To Aggression Retracted After Scrutiny (sciencemag.org) 97
Science magazine: As Samuel West combed through a paper that found a link between watching cartoon violence and aggression in children, he noticed something odd about the study participants. There were more than 3000 -- an unusually large number -- and they were all 10 years old. "It was just too perfect," says West, a Ph.D. student in social psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University. Yet West added the 2019 study, published in Aggressive Behavior and led by psychologist Qian Zhang of Southwest University of Chongqing, to his meta-analysis after a reviewer asked him to cast a wider net. West didn't feel his vague misgivings could justify excluding it from the study pool. But after Aggressive Behavior published West's meta-analysis last year, he was startled to find that the journal was investigating Zhang's paper while his own was under review. It is just one of many papers of Zhang's that have recently been called into question, casting a shadow on research into the controversial question of whether violent entertainment fosters violent behavior. Zhang denies any wrongdoing,
but two papers have been retracted. Others live on in journals and meta-analyses -- a "major problem" for a field with conflicting results and entrenched camps, says Amy Orben, a cognitive scientist at the University of Cambridge who studies media and behavior. And not just for the ivory tower, she says: The research shapes media warning labels and decisions by parents and health professionals.
The investigations were triggered by Illinois State University psychologist Joe Hilgard, who published a blog post last month cataloging his concerns about Zhang's work. Hilgard was initially impressed when he came across a 2018 paper of Zhang's in Youth & Society, another study with 3000 subjects. "I was like, holy smokes!" he says. The study found some teenagers were more aggressive after playing violent video games. Given the huge sample size, it had the potential to be a "powerful chunk of evidence," Hilgard says. But he found the paper's statistics mathematically impossible. Zhang and his co-authors reported high levels of statistical significance for their finding, but the reported differences in the effects of violent games versus nonviolent games were too small for that high statistical significance to be possible. Hilgard alerted Zhang and the journal, and Zhang submitted a correction. Hilgard says that made the statistics seem more plausible, but they were still incorrect. Hilgard says he found problems in other papers of Zhang's, such as nearly identical results reported in three different papers. He emailed Zhang and asked to see his data, but he says Zhang refused. Hilgard then contacted Dorothy Espelage, a psychologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and co-author with Zhang on multiple papers. She told Hilgard that Zhang had refused to send her the data, too. It was only after Hilgard asked Southwest University to investigate that Zhang sent Hilgard data for a Youth & Society paper on movie violence. But the data were odd, Hilgard says, and missing features normally found in similar experiments.
The investigations were triggered by Illinois State University psychologist Joe Hilgard, who published a blog post last month cataloging his concerns about Zhang's work. Hilgard was initially impressed when he came across a 2018 paper of Zhang's in Youth & Society, another study with 3000 subjects. "I was like, holy smokes!" he says. The study found some teenagers were more aggressive after playing violent video games. Given the huge sample size, it had the potential to be a "powerful chunk of evidence," Hilgard says. But he found the paper's statistics mathematically impossible. Zhang and his co-authors reported high levels of statistical significance for their finding, but the reported differences in the effects of violent games versus nonviolent games were too small for that high statistical significance to be possible. Hilgard alerted Zhang and the journal, and Zhang submitted a correction. Hilgard says that made the statistics seem more plausible, but they were still incorrect. Hilgard says he found problems in other papers of Zhang's, such as nearly identical results reported in three different papers. He emailed Zhang and asked to see his data, but he says Zhang refused. Hilgard then contacted Dorothy Espelage, a psychologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and co-author with Zhang on multiple papers. She told Hilgard that Zhang had refused to send her the data, too. It was only after Hilgard asked Southwest University to investigate that Zhang sent Hilgard data for a Youth & Society paper on movie violence. But the data were odd, Hilgard says, and missing features normally found in similar experiments.
Good (Score:5, Funny)
Now can we give Elmer Fudd his shotgun back?
Re:Good (Score:4, Interesting)
Now can we give Elmer Fudd his shotgun back?
Is it wabbit season? Or is it duck season?
Re: Good (Score:1)
It seems, dick season just ended. :)
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WABBIT SEASON!
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DUCK SEASON!
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Now can we give Elmer Fudd his shotgun back?
Yes, but she prefers to go by "Ethel Fudd" now.
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Apparently, Biden issued an executive order prohibiting cartoon shotguns. Next, he's going after the real guns.
Re: Good (Score:2)
Bah! To heck with Elmer Fudd... bring back Yosemite Sam! I loved watching that hot headed train wreck as a kid.
Whoah camel! Whoah camel! Whoah! ... when I say whoah !*<bam>*! .. I mean whoah!
Impossible. (Score:2, Funny)
Scientists are paragons of objectivity. They would never cheat in order to further a political agenda.
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Agreed! Although, there may be some survivorship bias [schlockmercenary.com] involved.
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The issue is rarely political agenda. Its the publish or perish setting.
Re: Impossible. (Score:2)
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from the duh-huh-shyeah department (Score:2)
Amazing! We would never have expected this sort of behavior from human beings operating in a complex social group.
Of course if they weren't scientists they would have just pushed on forward with the deceit and name called anyone who disputed them. Maybe go as far as spend weeks on talk shows describing their detractors as part being of some Chinese-controlled liberal agenda.
The fun thing about real science, once you've been proven wrong you get to sit down and STFU. Doubling down on stupid isn't possible, u
Re: from the duh-huh-shyeah department (Score:2)
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It really hits hard for those who can't function day to day without absolute truths. For them, even lies assumed to be absolute truths is better than the constantly shifting sands of reality.
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Re: Impossible. (Score:1)
Are you posting this contrived "interpretation" on *every* article about science now?
Talk about a political agenda! You are certainly the anuspiece of some asshole who's got one.
PROTIP: Scientists are not thinking like the likes of *you*, even if the likes of you sometimes get into "science".
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Quite simply trying to force the wrong conclusion to the data. The correct conclusion, Violent Entertainment does attract more Aggressive Genes, it if course can not create them, it draws them from the crowd.
So audience for violent content, will have a higher proportion of aggressive genes than is represented in the general populations. In MMO more aggressive genes will play the games more psychopathically, it will be directly measurable, not just in gaming interactions (good choices versus bad choices) bu
Re:Impossible. (Score:5, Interesting)
Scientists are paragons of objectivity. They would never cheat in order to further a political agenda.
Depends. Social sciences research is usually pure garbage, particle physics is usually not.
This is why the social science consensus on various stuff usually contradicts itself: the researchers can hold two conflicting "facts" in their head at the same time without realising that it is conflicting: "violent video games don't make people violent" and "sexist video games make people sexist".
Exhibit B, "pedophiles need treatment" and "you can't pray the gay away" are in direct conflict with each other too - the latter position is that sexual orientation is fixed and can't be changed, while the former indicates that it can be mitigated in some way!
There's many more examples of accepted positions in the social sciences which conflict with other accepted positions in the social sciences ("diversity of viewpoints and people are a strength" vs "We'll cancel anyone who says differently!")
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Exhibit B, "pedophiles need treatment" and "you can't pray the gay away" are in direct conflict with each other too - the latter position is that sexual orientation is fixed and can't be changed, while the former indicates that it can be mitigated in some way!
As written here, there is no conflict. Your own word choice contains the answer. If a pedophile's sexual orientation can not (ethically*) be changed, as the latter assertion certainly indicates, still it may be treated in order to mitigate harm to children. In particular, the sexual desires of male pedophiles can be assuaged by illustrations and 3D models of fictional children. Male sexual desire is notoriously easy to short circuit, as many feminist screeds against porn have lamented. The sexual desir
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While it is entirely true that some fields are worse than others (I believe cancer research is supposed to be incredibly bad, but this is me trying to remember from a decade ago now), analyses of all scientific fields finds problems in all of them.
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While it is entirely true that some fields are worse than others (I believe cancer research is supposed to be incredibly bad, but this is me trying to remember from a decade ago now), analyses of all scientific fields finds problems in all of them.
I hedged my bets with "usually" :-)
Re: Impossible. (Score:2)
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All that research into nonsense, all that research that is never replicated, all the crazy theories they advance based on ... nothing.
You don't mean to tell us that psychology is bullshit and NOT A SCIENCE and should NOT be used to decide who stays in prison or who is freed to murder again ?
Most research is done to keep people employed. If you're researching a hot topic, it's much easier to find funding.
Re: Wait, you mean psychology is bullshit ? (Score:2)
Oh shut up with that idiotic US pop-culture meme! This is not the 80s and Freudian crap anymore.
NEWSFLASH, for those who have been living behind the moon or, well, equivalent, for the last 30 years:
Psychology nowadays is a hard science, based on neurology, which is probably the hardest science of all medical sciences.
Sure, in more primitive places, there might still be pre-historic therapists running around, who haven't gotten the memo that pretty much everything Freud ever said has been disproven, to a poi
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Psychology is a science. What we have, hindered by the difficulty in getting good sample sizes and multiple rounds of trials, may not be. And of course, even if it is, what questions it can answer and what questions people think it can answer are not the same thing.
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Agreed, and the bar for results to called significant needs to be raised.
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Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar... and sometimes its a big brown dick and youre sucking on the wet end of it - George Carlin.
I would be very wary of ever thinking anything is absolute because current science says so. In 30 years the consensus might be different. I gave up counting how many times the FDA/AMA changed their position on consuming eggs. The phrase - it goes against our c
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You say "diagnoses"; I believe you are thinking of psychiatrists.
No Comparison with drugs = not real. (Score:2)
Wow, it's like the myth of magical mind control is not true.
I always wonder how people look at certain illegal drugs (which do cause increased violence) and then look at entertainment and think "we have to stop this entertainment:
Speed type drugs cause you to do things. Sometimes those are violent.
Entertainment causes you to sit on the couch, eat junk food, and get fat.
Re: No Comparison with drugs = not real. (Score:2)
Hey, watching ads about sitting on the couch, eating junk food and getting fat made me quite aggressive!
Maybe ... *scratches chin* ... :D
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This just in (Score:5, Funny)
Research linking aggressive behavior to violent video games retracted after angry gamers threatened to kick lead author's ass.
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Domestic Abuse No Longer A Problem, Say Bruised Female Researchers [theonion.com]
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Didja completely miss the obvious manufacturing of data in the retracted papers?
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Re: This just in (Score:2)
Now the question is, why exactly you would listen to the public?
I mean as some kind of leader over these researchers too.
Don't you realize that bullies will bully you more, the more you give in? It teaches them that it works. If you would ignore them in public discourse, they would die down and be ridiculed after a while. As they say: Don't feed the trolls!
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I get what you mean, but, hey, humanity just landed another robot on another world today, hooray!
Violent movies make people cuddly.. (Score:5, Interesting)
it's not so much the violence - it's the narrative.
if you're a student of history you can look back at domestic tv/films from any period they were produced in, and there's a very noticeable amount of foreign policy and civil policy narratives not just reflecting what is going on at the time, but attempting to influence society with narratives that support those policies.
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it's not so much the violence - it's the narrative.
if you're a student of history you can look back at domestic tv/films from any period they were produced in, and there's a very noticeable amount of foreign policy and civil policy narratives not just reflecting what is going on at the time, but attempting to influence society with narratives that support those policies.
What was The Wizard of Oz trying to influence, exactly?
Re: Violent movies make people cuddly.. (Score:2)
Well that one was one of the easier ones. Just look up any critic's interpretation.
If all else fails, watch South Parks "The Tale Of Scrotie McBooherballs", focus on the with behind the crassness, and have a good laugh. (I promose it will be right up your alley :)
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The Wizard of Oz was clearly a plea to people to do more drugs.
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The Wizard of Oz was clearly a plea to people to do more drugs.
Yeah, that's a pretty fair explanation for it.
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But if I watch Starship Troopers does that mean I come out with an anti-bug bias? What if I watch Shawshank, do I come out with anti-prison bias? Hell, if I watch The Imitation Game, do I come out with a pro-gay bias?
The fact is: If humans are that easily influenced that watching a movie can change their moral, political, ethical position on a matter... it means they were uneducated to begin with. If they then cling immediately to that swung opinion and never change it (and, say, can't be swayed if they
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it's not so much the violence - it's the narrative.
if you're a student of history you can look back at domestic tv/films from any period they were produced in, and there's a very noticeable amount of foreign policy and civil policy narratives not just reflecting what is going on at the time, but attempting to influence society with narratives that support those policies.
Perhaps the most insane example of this that has caused massive harm, is the creation of the narrative around hemp and "marihuana" in the 1930s in order to protect the paper industry. Reefer Madness wrote the narrative that smoking weed would result in "manslaughter, suicide, conspiracy to murder, attempted rape, hallucinations, and descent into madness from marijuana addiction."
Ask any seasoned cop if that bullshit is even remotely true. This insane narrative also practically pre-criminalized black jazz
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I think it's not the violence or the narrative; I think it's the awareness that you're watching something that is fantasy.
It's really *news* and public affairs programming that portrays the world as dangerous and requiring violent measures that are dangerous.
But it was so plausible (Score:4, Funny)
I know that after a Mario binge, I keep fantasizing about jumping on people's heads and I keep trying to take shortcuts through sewer pipes.
And there was that time I ran as fast as I could through a shopping mall grabbing hoops and rings. Fortunately the jury accepted my "Sonic" defense.
Re: But it was so plausible (Score:2)
Uuum, bad example.
Because as a kid, that was exactly what I did after playing Mario!
Literally including jumping into sewer pipes!
(They were laying new huge pipes and had stacked them up next to the path to the forest behind our house. It was an obvious playing ground for young boys. :)
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I tried playing Pac Man but had to stop after food poisoning, busted teeth and a court order. Apparently, eating food lying in street corners does not make you invulnerable and able to eat people around you.
Research linking Chinese to Retracted Studies (and (Score:3, Informative)
China catches 2,440 cheating students in high-tech scam
https://edition.cnn.com/2014/1... [cnn.com]
Chinese cheating rampant in U.S. college applications, and in classrooms
https://www.campusreform.org/?... [campusreform.org]
A Chinese Cheating Ring at UCLA Reveals an Industry Devoted to Helping International Students Scam Grades
https://www.lamag.com/citythin... [lamag.com]
Families from China are alleged to have been the most lucrative clients of William âRickâ(TM) Singerâ(TM)s growing college admissions scandal, in which he has admitted to taking tens of millions in parental payoffs to get wealthy children into some of the top colleges in the U.S, according to a source familiar with the ongoing probe.
One Chinese family allegedly paid Singer $6.5 million to get their child into a leading school, the source told ABC News, confirming an earlier report in the Wall Street Journal.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/lucr... [go.com]
https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle... [scmp.com]
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The lower rung Chinese in China and other Chinese cities hate the rich cheaters just as much.
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It's not just that, it's a general feeling in China that you have to cheat to get ahead, and there's nothing wrong with that unless you get caught. If you cheat and don't get caught, the shame is on the person who failed to catch you, not you.
It's not universal, and it's not a rule, but if you do enough business with China you'll understand that over there it's okay to cheat people (*especially* foreigners) that are not part of your family or some other fraternal group. It's a side effect of the Cultural Re
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It's not universal, and it's not a rule, but if you do enough business with China you'll understand that over there it's okay to cheat people (*especially* foreigners) that are not part of your family or some other fraternal group. It's a side effect of the Cultural Revolution, which destroyed most established social orders outside of the family (it tried to destroy that too but failed).
Again, the stories I've heard about Amazon, Google, Microsoft, just being on Slashdot, tells me that it exists probably just as much in the West.
Everything from Amazon straight up stealing designs from the original (Western) inventors so they can get things made cheaper, to Google and Microsoft pretending to give jobs interviews to people who have developed something only for those people to later find out Microgooglesoft basically stole the idea and patented it behind their backs.
There is a culture o
/.'s broken again (Score:2)
Another Research Paper Required (Score:3)
Reading this, I find myself thinking about something not yet explored in the OP, namely, if the insinuations of the OP are proven [that Yang fabricated or distorted the evidence - and when a fellow researcher asks to see the evidence but the request is refused things do start to look a bit suspicious] then what were the motives for Yang claiming that this was valid research?
Could he have some form of personal and negative experience relating to video game violence? Could it be that he wanted recognition for something, decided he needed a headline-grabbing thesis and then fabricated evidence? Could it be somewhat less ruthless but maybe a little self-serving: was he researching as part of a further academic qualification and needed to generate some actual research and thesis as part of that process?
Beyond this somewhat invasive and almost voyeuristic curiosity about the psyche of someone, if as alleged has basically falsified this research... the next obvious question would be to ask if there are any lessons that can be learned from this? Two possible areas to consider for that would be: are there any useful techniques [beyond the obvious of looking at the data] to help detect fabricated research? Maybe exploration of the developmental timeline of the paper? Did evidence suddenly appear in significant bulk? We’re there claims being made without evidence of research being done? But then, beyond that, maybe a second look at the motivations of the individual to take this approach to their work? What prompted them to go this route? Was there one thing that ‘pushed them over the edge’, or was it part of a broader plan with deliberate intent? Was it a sudden, shocking realisation that a hoped-for approach was doomed to failure, leading to desperation... or was it cold, ruthless calculus?
From time to time we get stories reported in the technology press about the almost farcical conduct of publishing scientific papers. We learn about companies that accept papers for publication which are utter garbage, discovering in the process that these businesses care only about the revenue they can generate. We hear about other companies that strike deals with universities to put their research behind paywalls, even though in some cases I believe the research is publicly funded. If you take all these things together you can come away with the impression that there is something increasingly corrupt and ugly taking place in further education. A general field in which integrity and honour were watch-words has become completely corrupted over time. Which in turn makes it harder for the genuine researcher, since now they have to fight against this headwind of negative perception.
I do hope there is a follow-up here. If as suggested there is some disreputable work at hand, then a better understanding of how it came about might help us spot and prevent it in future.
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"Publish or die"? Also, controversial results more likely to be published.
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Here's a possible motive (Score:2)
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But it opens the door to a couple of extra questions... First: how did this become more widely accepted if it was being pushed by the local regime? Second: isn't there a better way to be able to judge a paper by the quality of the peer review process?
Entirely happy to accept the premise of your reply, but doesn't that make it "shame on us" for glibly accepting the assertions when requests for the actual evidence were rejected?
Oh, and: why am I getting flashbacks to the
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It probably gained the traction it did for the same reason the Chinese regime pushed it - people wanted it to be true. Good ol' confirmation bias.
We should be very suspicious of Chinese research. It should not be trusted. Communists don't see science as a way of building knowledge, but as no more than a tool for enforcing their will. The results will alway
Somewhere... (Score:2)
Somewhere, Jack Thompson is curled up in a corner, crying and muttering to himself, "Not so! Not so!!!"
Re: Somewhere... (Score:2)
Proof that violent entertainment causes violence! It hurt poor old Jack very much! ... ;)
Meta-studies always seemed like re-bundling to me. (Score:3)
You know: To hide bad studies like you'd hide bad whateveritwas that Goldman Sachs rebundled, sold, didn't see others re-bunde, and bought back, shooting itself in the foot. ;)
Re: Meta-studies always seemed like re-bundling to (Score:2)
The concept of Mortgage-Backed Securities made a lot of sense on paper at the time. The problem is that financial markets often contain feedback loops -- "the more I drink, the more I drink" sort of thing. This whole GME short squeeze was basically the same kind of effect. As the price went up, the price went up, because it got stuck in a feedback loop that lasted literally till that one company just up and died.
Anyhow, this fella's meta-a
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I get what you getting at. But, what a proper meta study does is summarize findings (i.e. people don't have the time to read/find /every/ paper in a field) or combine statistically insignificant studies (e.g. case studies) into something statistically significant (i.e. useful).
peer review doing it's job (Score:2)
Note to climate deniers: this scientific process is coalescing against you. In a decade or two, you will be viewed as flat-earthers.
Note to the Chinese government and scientific establishment: You crave the legitimacy that western-style scient
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Note to climate deniers: this scientific process is coalescing against you. In a decade or two, you will be viewed as flat-earthers.
You're more than a decade behind here. The science already coalesced, got challenged repeatedly by the deniers, who had their assertions proven false.
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Though I think the actual problem here is that Zhang works for Marxists who won. Science contradicts everything about Marxism, so they must force it to serve them.
These studies go back at least to the Nixon Era (Score:3, Insightful)
I've seen studies like this, maybe not with video games but with TV content or whatever, going back at least as far as the Nixon era. Come to think of it, even in the 50s when I was a kid there were complaints about the influence of Rock and Roll on children.
Apparently its a political culture thing. The self-appointed guardians of morality assume there's a connection and, I think it's a reasonable, legitimate concern. So yes, a study is justified. My problem is that when the study gives answers the guardians of morality don't like, they reject it. I mostly remember there was a big stink during the Nixon administration when one of these studies didn't give the conservatives the answers they wanted. (BTW, I think liberals are just as prone to get in a snit when studies don't support their preconceived notions either. This is a Human Nature thing, not a liberal vs conservative thing.)
So, there is a motive to fudge the results to give the sponsors of the study the answers they want.
Science (Score:2)
Uhh... (Score:1)
After publishing peer-review FTW (Score:3)
It's these people who are keeping science credible.
Interesting graph (Score:2)
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