Scientific Misconduct By Physician Propagandists: A Perspective On Gun
Violence
Martin L. Fackler, MD
September 7, 1999
...learning how to not fool ourselves — of having utter scientific integrity — is, I'm sorry to say,
something that we haven't specifically included in any particular course that I know of. We just hope
you've caught on by osmosis.
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool....I'm
talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is...bending over backwards to show how you're
maybe wrong, that you ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as
scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen.
Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman
(Feynman RP, New York, WW Norton, 1985, pp. 342-3)
The above citation by Richard Feynman illustrates one of the rigors of the scientific
method. Scientists who allow their intellect to be misled by their emotions fall into the
trap of fooling themselves into isolating their preconceived strongly held desires and
opinions from contradictory facts.
When scientists allow themselves to be drawn into political agendas their heretofore
rigorous scientific method is often replaced by a frenzy of fanaticism. Are they fooling
themselves, or is this conscious fraud?. Distinguishing fraud from ignorance is often
impossible, but whatever the motivation, the effect of the misinformation is equally
deleterious. The public is most easily misled by political propaganda from highly
respected sources.
An extensive, carefully documented study by Kates DB, Schaffer HE, Lattimer JK,
Murray GB, Cassem EH., Guns and Public Health: Epidemic of Violence or Pandemic
of Propaganda? published in the Tennessee Law Review in 1995 (62(3):513-596)*
tells a sad and shocking story.
In the late 1970s, physicians from the American public health community apparently
saw the opportunity for publicity (which helps to obtain funding) in the emotionally
charged way the media presents, and dwells upon, violence involving firearms.
Despite lacking expertise about firearms and their effects, and ignoring that crime
(with or without guns) is clearly in the purview of the criminologist, these physicians
declared gun violence an "epidemic,” and entered into a campaign to remove firearms
from the hands of the citizens of the United States.
To further this goal, these physicians allied themselves with anti-gun political lobbying
organizations. Medical journals, including the Journal of the American Medical
Association (JAMA), and the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) became
willing partners in this anti-gun advocacy. Most distressingly, the taxpayer-funded
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has also joined this medical
anti-gun political cabal.
Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the resulting public health anti-gun advocacy
literature is emotionally driven and lacks scholarly detachment. Prominent
"researchers” openly admit an overwhelming "hate” of firearms – yet, contrary to the
basic tenets of scientific method, they continue to do "research” on a subject about
which their "hate” precludes rational evaluation. Grossly inaccurate hyperbole and
failure to adhere to basic scientific method seem to "slip through” any editorial or peer
review process — so long as it supports the anti-gun advocacy. And, when in print,
these abuses are protected from the corrective effects of dissent and criticism – by
editorial refusal to publish corrections (Fackler, ML. JAMA Writes Politically Correct
Wound Ballistics History and Refuses to Publish Corrections Wound Ballistics
Review 1996;2[3]:44-45).
Concrete examples of deception by half-truth, failure to address contrary data,
selecting and manipulating data to validate preordained conclusions, falsifying
references, fabricating statistics, overt fraud, and more, in the medical anti-gun
advocacy literature are explained in detail in Guns and Public Health: Epidemic of
Violence or Pandemic of Propaganda? The first author of this imposing analysis is a
highly regarded criminologist and lawyer, the second is a Professor of Genetics and
Biomathematics, and the other three are physician academic scholars from Columbia
and Harvard Medical Schools.
Any reader who appreciates the necessity for scientific writing to adhere to the tenets
of scholarship and scientific method must read Kates, et al. Readers unfamiliar with
the subject will be shocked. Their first reaction will be disbelief: how could such
disregard for scientific method, scholarship, honesty, and integrity have found its way
into the medical literature? This meticulous analysis by Kates, et al., however, removes
any doubt that the public has been seriously misled by the medical public health
anti-gun political advocates – with the complicity of formerly well respected medical
journals and the CDC.
The literature of modern medicine demands strict adherence to the rigors of the
scientific method: which includes strict intellectual honesty and integrity and avoiding
self-deception. The medical community is well aware of the detrimental effects of self
deception: the standard for evaluation of new medicaments is the double blind study,
in which neither the subject nor the person administering the treatment knows if the
treatment is the medicament or a placebo. This is precisely to avoid the
well-recognized human propensity for believing what we wish to believe, regardless of
contradictory facts.
Why has Guns and Public Health: Epidemic of Violence or Pandemic of
Propaganda? not sparked a public uproar? One would expect the public to hold
physicians to a high standard of honesty and integrity; to demand that they uphold the
fundamental tenets of scientific method. JAMA and NEJM are held up as the most
respected of medical journal; the news media apparently accepts as fact anything they
print. And the CDC has been thought by most to be beyond reproach: That they have
all forsaken their honesty and integrity for the promulgation of political propaganda
demonstrates that they have lost their objectivity and can no longer be considered
members of the scientific community.
In the case of the CDC one must question the legality of their use of taxpayer funds
for this unabashed political advocacy. The media and the public need to be made
aware that the physician anti-gun advocates identified by Kates, et al. have become
politicians and what they say should viewed with that in mind. It must be emphasized:
They can no longer be considered reputable scientists.
The scientific misconduct described by Kates. et al. is of the sort which, ordinarily,
causes its perpetrators to suffer public disgrace, to be ostracized professionally, to
lose any university appointments they might have and to never again have a paper
published in a scientific journal. Yet none of this appears to have happened to the
miscreants singled out by Kates, et al.; one of whom was the Dean of the Harvard
School of Public Health.
The Kates, et al. study is in a form that would lend itself perfectly to one of the cogent
exposures of wrongdoing that John Stossel does so well on ABC TV. Yet the media
are apparently unaware of, or have failed thus far in their duty to expose, the
professional misconduct of these physician propagandists.
Such apparent lack of interest in honesty and integrity in a society that purports to
respect the scientific method should be abhorrent — at least to scholars and
academics – but we have heard nothing from them. Perhaps illustration of some of the
very practical effects of the restrictive laws sought by the anti-gun medical
propagandists might attract some attention. Unfortunately, gun control laws have a
historical record of being worse than ineffective — they have been uniformly
counterproductive to the purpose for which they were intended. Consider the
following examples:
What were the effects of the California ban on "assault rifles”?
In the months before the ban went into effect, rifles that would be affected poured
into the state. The price of these guns tripled – gun dealers made lots of money.
People who had never thought of owning an "assault rifle” were buying three and four
of them. It is estimated that the number of such weapons in California at least
quadrupled.
Then came the time that persons possessing such guns were required by law to
register them. Few — most likely less than one in ten — were registered. So overnight
California’s law produced many thousands of new "technical” felons. Disrespect for
law is certainly not conducive to an orderly society, but many otherwise honest
American people will simply not obey laws that are irrational and violate their basic
rights, for instance, the right to bear arms.
The Congresswoman from Long Island, NY who was elected as an anti-gun
crusader after her husband was killed by Colin Freguson, in 1993, on a Long Island
commuter train, fooled herself.
Had she been able to consider the situation rationally she would have realized that her
husband was killed in an area that already had anti-gun laws that are among the most
restrictive in the United States. His death was, in fact, proof of the inefficacy of these
laws. In addition, a rational person would recognize that these overly restrictive gun
laws were actually counterproductive – they were, in fact, a cause of her husband’s
death.
In states where citizens cannot be denied a permit to carry a concealed handgun if
they meet the qualifications, deaths and injuries from mass public shootings have been
reduced dramatically (Lott JR Jr. More Guns Less Crime – Understanding Crime and
Gun Control Laws. Chicago, U of Chicago Press, 1998, 100-101).
The medical anti-gun propagandists (including the American Medical Association’s
Council on Scientific Affairs) have wildly exaggerated the wounding effects of
military-type "assault rifle” bullets.
Anybody conversant in military history knows that military full-metal-jacketed (FMJ)
bullets were designed specifically to cause minimal wounding. Military FMJ bullets are
prohibited for hunting precisely because of that – they most often wound rather than
kill. A pernicious counterproductive effect of these exaggerations is that many
surgeons believe them. Sadly, most trauma surgeons know no more than the average
layman about firearms and bullet effects.
Believing the propaganda that "assault-rifle” bullets cause "unpredictable damage at
sites far from the wound tract” and that they cause mortality rates "4 to 5 times higher
than…low-velocity bullet wounds” can easily lead the unsuspecting surgeon to remove
excessive amounts of healthy tissue from around bullet wounds if they suspect the
wound might have been made by a dreaded "assault rifle” bullet. Thus a shooting
victim can become more crippled from the damage done by the surgeon than from
that done by the bullet.
In contrast to the vast increase in gun ownership during the 1970s and 1980s, there
has been a steady decline in the United States homicide rate over the past decade. This
undeniable fact disproves the most sacred shibboleth of the anti-gun crusaders, who
preach that more guns lead to more deaths.
To divert attention from this embarrassment, the medical propagandists have padded
the homicide numbers by adding suicides. They have surpassed the irrationality of that
ploy, however, by redefining "children.” to include adolescents and young adults. I
believe that most would agree that counting a 20 year-old gang-member drug-dealer
killed in a gunfight with his competition as a "child” is somewhat misleading.
In opposing the licensing of individuals to carry concealed weapons, the medical
anti-gun political advocates ignore the effect of firearms in the hands of honest,
law-abiding citizens who are adept in their use. Throughout the US, we physicians
cause many times more deaths from medical malpractice than are caused by the use
of firearms. Yet society tolerates us – because we save a great many more lives than
we take.
Firearms do the same: studies by Professor Gary Kleck of Florida State University
show that, in the U.S., as many as 75 lives are protected by guns for every life taken
by guns. The apparently eternally gullible American public has, thus far, allowed gun
prohibitionists to get away with their irrational refusal to recognize that criminals and
the mentally deranged are not affected by gun control laws – such laws make the
world a safer place only for the lawbreaker — by depriving honest and law-abiding
citizens of the means to defend themselves.
In conclusion, I suggest that Guns and Public Health: Epidemic of Violence or
Pandemic of Propaganda? gives the media the "smoking gun” – the documentation
proving they have been duped by the medical anti-gun propagandists. Those who wish
to set the record straight and make up for their part in misleading the American public
will be forgiven if they do so now. If they choose to continue the deception, however,
they must look forward to a future of uncertainty – the American people don’t like
being lied to. The mountain of evidence proving the counterproductive effect of gun
control laws can no longer be denied – and it continues to grow.
Martin L. Fackler, MD, FACS, President,
International Wound Ballistics Association
www.IWBA.com
Violence
Martin L. Fackler, MD
September 7, 1999
...learning how to not fool ourselves — of having utter scientific integrity — is, I'm sorry to say,
something that we haven't specifically included in any particular course that I know of. We just hope
you've caught on by osmosis.
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool....I'm
talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is...bending over backwards to show how you're
maybe wrong, that you ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as
scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen.
Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman
(Feynman RP, New York, WW Norton, 1985, pp. 342-3)
The above citation by Richard Feynman illustrates one of the rigors of the scientific
method. Scientists who allow their intellect to be misled by their emotions fall into the
trap of fooling themselves into isolating their preconceived strongly held desires and
opinions from contradictory facts.
When scientists allow themselves to be drawn into political agendas their heretofore
rigorous scientific method is often replaced by a frenzy of fanaticism. Are they fooling
themselves, or is this conscious fraud?. Distinguishing fraud from ignorance is often
impossible, but whatever the motivation, the effect of the misinformation is equally
deleterious. The public is most easily misled by political propaganda from highly
respected sources.
An extensive, carefully documented study by Kates DB, Schaffer HE, Lattimer JK,
Murray GB, Cassem EH., Guns and Public Health: Epidemic of Violence or Pandemic
of Propaganda? published in the Tennessee Law Review in 1995 (62(3):513-596)*
tells a sad and shocking story.
In the late 1970s, physicians from the American public health community apparently
saw the opportunity for publicity (which helps to obtain funding) in the emotionally
charged way the media presents, and dwells upon, violence involving firearms.
Despite lacking expertise about firearms and their effects, and ignoring that crime
(with or without guns) is clearly in the purview of the criminologist, these physicians
declared gun violence an "epidemic,” and entered into a campaign to remove firearms
from the hands of the citizens of the United States.
To further this goal, these physicians allied themselves with anti-gun political lobbying
organizations. Medical journals, including the Journal of the American Medical
Association (JAMA), and the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) became
willing partners in this anti-gun advocacy. Most distressingly, the taxpayer-funded
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has also joined this medical
anti-gun political cabal.
Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the resulting public health anti-gun advocacy
literature is emotionally driven and lacks scholarly detachment. Prominent
"researchers” openly admit an overwhelming "hate” of firearms – yet, contrary to the
basic tenets of scientific method, they continue to do "research” on a subject about
which their "hate” precludes rational evaluation. Grossly inaccurate hyperbole and
failure to adhere to basic scientific method seem to "slip through” any editorial or peer
review process — so long as it supports the anti-gun advocacy. And, when in print,
these abuses are protected from the corrective effects of dissent and criticism – by
editorial refusal to publish corrections (Fackler, ML. JAMA Writes Politically Correct
Wound Ballistics History and Refuses to Publish Corrections Wound Ballistics
Review 1996;2[3]:44-45).
Concrete examples of deception by half-truth, failure to address contrary data,
selecting and manipulating data to validate preordained conclusions, falsifying
references, fabricating statistics, overt fraud, and more, in the medical anti-gun
advocacy literature are explained in detail in Guns and Public Health: Epidemic of
Violence or Pandemic of Propaganda? The first author of this imposing analysis is a
highly regarded criminologist and lawyer, the second is a Professor of Genetics and
Biomathematics, and the other three are physician academic scholars from Columbia
and Harvard Medical Schools.
Any reader who appreciates the necessity for scientific writing to adhere to the tenets
of scholarship and scientific method must read Kates, et al. Readers unfamiliar with
the subject will be shocked. Their first reaction will be disbelief: how could such
disregard for scientific method, scholarship, honesty, and integrity have found its way
into the medical literature? This meticulous analysis by Kates, et al., however, removes
any doubt that the public has been seriously misled by the medical public health
anti-gun political advocates – with the complicity of formerly well respected medical
journals and the CDC.
The literature of modern medicine demands strict adherence to the rigors of the
scientific method: which includes strict intellectual honesty and integrity and avoiding
self-deception. The medical community is well aware of the detrimental effects of self
deception: the standard for evaluation of new medicaments is the double blind study,
in which neither the subject nor the person administering the treatment knows if the
treatment is the medicament or a placebo. This is precisely to avoid the
well-recognized human propensity for believing what we wish to believe, regardless of
contradictory facts.
Why has Guns and Public Health: Epidemic of Violence or Pandemic of
Propaganda? not sparked a public uproar? One would expect the public to hold
physicians to a high standard of honesty and integrity; to demand that they uphold the
fundamental tenets of scientific method. JAMA and NEJM are held up as the most
respected of medical journal; the news media apparently accepts as fact anything they
print. And the CDC has been thought by most to be beyond reproach: That they have
all forsaken their honesty and integrity for the promulgation of political propaganda
demonstrates that they have lost their objectivity and can no longer be considered
members of the scientific community.
In the case of the CDC one must question the legality of their use of taxpayer funds
for this unabashed political advocacy. The media and the public need to be made
aware that the physician anti-gun advocates identified by Kates, et al. have become
politicians and what they say should viewed with that in mind. It must be emphasized:
They can no longer be considered reputable scientists.
The scientific misconduct described by Kates. et al. is of the sort which, ordinarily,
causes its perpetrators to suffer public disgrace, to be ostracized professionally, to
lose any university appointments they might have and to never again have a paper
published in a scientific journal. Yet none of this appears to have happened to the
miscreants singled out by Kates, et al.; one of whom was the Dean of the Harvard
School of Public Health.
The Kates, et al. study is in a form that would lend itself perfectly to one of the cogent
exposures of wrongdoing that John Stossel does so well on ABC TV. Yet the media
are apparently unaware of, or have failed thus far in their duty to expose, the
professional misconduct of these physician propagandists.
Such apparent lack of interest in honesty and integrity in a society that purports to
respect the scientific method should be abhorrent — at least to scholars and
academics – but we have heard nothing from them. Perhaps illustration of some of the
very practical effects of the restrictive laws sought by the anti-gun medical
propagandists might attract some attention. Unfortunately, gun control laws have a
historical record of being worse than ineffective — they have been uniformly
counterproductive to the purpose for which they were intended. Consider the
following examples:
What were the effects of the California ban on "assault rifles”?
In the months before the ban went into effect, rifles that would be affected poured
into the state. The price of these guns tripled – gun dealers made lots of money.
People who had never thought of owning an "assault rifle” were buying three and four
of them. It is estimated that the number of such weapons in California at least
quadrupled.
Then came the time that persons possessing such guns were required by law to
register them. Few — most likely less than one in ten — were registered. So overnight
California’s law produced many thousands of new "technical” felons. Disrespect for
law is certainly not conducive to an orderly society, but many otherwise honest
American people will simply not obey laws that are irrational and violate their basic
rights, for instance, the right to bear arms.
The Congresswoman from Long Island, NY who was elected as an anti-gun
crusader after her husband was killed by Colin Freguson, in 1993, on a Long Island
commuter train, fooled herself.
Had she been able to consider the situation rationally she would have realized that her
husband was killed in an area that already had anti-gun laws that are among the most
restrictive in the United States. His death was, in fact, proof of the inefficacy of these
laws. In addition, a rational person would recognize that these overly restrictive gun
laws were actually counterproductive – they were, in fact, a cause of her husband’s
death.
In states where citizens cannot be denied a permit to carry a concealed handgun if
they meet the qualifications, deaths and injuries from mass public shootings have been
reduced dramatically (Lott JR Jr. More Guns Less Crime – Understanding Crime and
Gun Control Laws. Chicago, U of Chicago Press, 1998, 100-101).
The medical anti-gun propagandists (including the American Medical Association’s
Council on Scientific Affairs) have wildly exaggerated the wounding effects of
military-type "assault rifle” bullets.
Anybody conversant in military history knows that military full-metal-jacketed (FMJ)
bullets were designed specifically to cause minimal wounding. Military FMJ bullets are
prohibited for hunting precisely because of that – they most often wound rather than
kill. A pernicious counterproductive effect of these exaggerations is that many
surgeons believe them. Sadly, most trauma surgeons know no more than the average
layman about firearms and bullet effects.
Believing the propaganda that "assault-rifle” bullets cause "unpredictable damage at
sites far from the wound tract” and that they cause mortality rates "4 to 5 times higher
than…low-velocity bullet wounds” can easily lead the unsuspecting surgeon to remove
excessive amounts of healthy tissue from around bullet wounds if they suspect the
wound might have been made by a dreaded "assault rifle” bullet. Thus a shooting
victim can become more crippled from the damage done by the surgeon than from
that done by the bullet.
In contrast to the vast increase in gun ownership during the 1970s and 1980s, there
has been a steady decline in the United States homicide rate over the past decade. This
undeniable fact disproves the most sacred shibboleth of the anti-gun crusaders, who
preach that more guns lead to more deaths.
To divert attention from this embarrassment, the medical propagandists have padded
the homicide numbers by adding suicides. They have surpassed the irrationality of that
ploy, however, by redefining "children.” to include adolescents and young adults. I
believe that most would agree that counting a 20 year-old gang-member drug-dealer
killed in a gunfight with his competition as a "child” is somewhat misleading.
In opposing the licensing of individuals to carry concealed weapons, the medical
anti-gun political advocates ignore the effect of firearms in the hands of honest,
law-abiding citizens who are adept in their use. Throughout the US, we physicians
cause many times more deaths from medical malpractice than are caused by the use
of firearms. Yet society tolerates us – because we save a great many more lives than
we take.
Firearms do the same: studies by Professor Gary Kleck of Florida State University
show that, in the U.S., as many as 75 lives are protected by guns for every life taken
by guns. The apparently eternally gullible American public has, thus far, allowed gun
prohibitionists to get away with their irrational refusal to recognize that criminals and
the mentally deranged are not affected by gun control laws – such laws make the
world a safer place only for the lawbreaker — by depriving honest and law-abiding
citizens of the means to defend themselves.
In conclusion, I suggest that Guns and Public Health: Epidemic of Violence or
Pandemic of Propaganda? gives the media the "smoking gun” – the documentation
proving they have been duped by the medical anti-gun propagandists. Those who wish
to set the record straight and make up for their part in misleading the American public
will be forgiven if they do so now. If they choose to continue the deception, however,
they must look forward to a future of uncertainty – the American people don’t like
being lied to. The mountain of evidence proving the counterproductive effect of gun
control laws can no longer be denied – and it continues to grow.
Martin L. Fackler, MD, FACS, President,
International Wound Ballistics Association
www.IWBA.com