Ron Bailey: 'Kill Pixels, Not People'

Exploding the fake scientific consensus on violent video games

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For decades it has been a shibboleth among some social psychologists that increasingly violent media-television, movies, and video games-increase the risk of violence in society. But now the old guard is being challenged by a new generation of researchers who are calling their theories, methods, data, and sweeping assertions into question. How did social science go so wrong? Ideology, writes Ron Bailey. As one parses the research, it becomes apparent that the old guard actually cannot see how their experiments and studies are a massive exercise in confirmation bias. 

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[F. Stupidity, Jr.]

For decades it has been a shibboleth among some social psychologists that increasingly violent media-television, movies, and video games-increase the risk of violence in society. But now the old guard is being challenged by a new generation of researchers who are calling their theories, methods, data, and sweeping assertions into question. How did social science go so wrong? Ideology, writes Ron Bailey. As one parses the research, it becomes apparent that the old guard actually cannot see how their experiments and studies are a massive exercise in confirmation bias.

As a gamer myself, this introductory paragraph really speaks to me. The rest of this article should really shed some light on the subject.

What? That’s all of it?!