David Cole February 16, 2021
“Scientists” don’t impress me. I’m the progeny of one of the best of ’em, and I know how the sausage is made. A smart enough “scientist” can finesse any study to reflect a predetermined conclusion. Scientists go where the grant money is. And they go where the government and corporate jobs are. And nowadays, in the Cancellation Age, they go where the lynch mob demands.
I’m not saying that all scientists are bought and paid for; I’m just saying that they’re more likely to be tempted into corruption than a roofer or bricklayer or whore, all of whom have a relationship with customers where poor results are immediate and obvious and unlikely to be explained away by fancy verbiage.
Now, before I get to the meat of this week’s column, a brief diversion, just to put an even finer point on what’s to come. Back in the early 1990s, U.S. cities were experiencing an unprecedented wave of violent youth crime. Reluctant to blame the epidemic on certain demographic populations, “scientists” and assorted experts soon caught on that the best way to get an op-ed on the topic in a major newspaper was to pen a “study” pinning the violence on movies and TV shows.
An analysis of aggressive behavior in ghetto kids from broken homes? No takers. “Hollywood is hypmotizing our children into committing murder”? Hello, New York Times!
In 1994 I was invited by a Hollywood libertarian group to speak on the subject. On the face of it, the “violent media” crusade had problems. If violent movies or cartoons “make” otherwise normal kids violent, Japan would have the highest youth crime rate in the world. But I wanted to go beyond that, and pick apart some of the specific studies that were at the time being widely cited in the press.........To Read More.....
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