I would suggest if you already have strong belief's about the value of
gun control laws, your opinion on the issue is unlikely to be swayed by
statistical studies counter to your belief, regardless of the quality of
the study.
If the issue is close to what A.K. Sen calls "fundamental values" (values which you ultimately have to fight for), you would have the same result.
As a model of how to help break this deadlock, I would like to see more
studies funded by organizations modelled along the lines of the US
Environmental Protection Agency's Health Effects Institute. From a
I don't see how the incentives of government, public-health bureaucrats, or the way they are selected, makes them more impartial. The EPA's manipulation of evidence in the secondhand-smoke case illustrates this quite strikingly. U.S. District Judge William Osteen: “The court is faced with the ugly possibility that EPA adopted a methodology for each chapter, without explanation, based on the outcome sought in that chapter. … The record and EPA’s explanations to the court make it clear that using standard methodology, EPA could not produce statistically significant results with its selected studies” (Flue-Cured Tobacco Cooperative v. EPA, No. 6:93CV00370 at 60, 77, M.D.N.C. July 17, 1998).
Visiting Professor , Université du Québec à Hull
Director of the Groupe de Recherche Économie et Liberté (GREL)
Research Fellow, Independent Institute
http://www.pierrelemieux.org
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Backup: [EMAIL PROTECTED])
Montréal address:
C.P. 725, Tour de la Bourse, Montréal, Canada H4Z 1J9
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"L'homme vivant sous la servitude des lois prend
sans s'en douter une âme d'esclave."
The man who lives under the servitude of laws takes,
without suspecting it, the soul of a slave.
(Georges Ripert, Le Déclin du Droit, Paris, Librairie
Générale de Droit et de Jurisprudence, 1949, p. 94)
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