This is my second blog and while not entirely videogame related, it is inspired by the recent studies and research which have been hitting the front page and various cblogs. I do not claim that any of these studies in particular are well researched nor poorly researched, and am using them more as an example of what to look for when you decide whether a study is believable or not. The main aim of this blog is to look at how to better critique studies and the questions to ask yourself so you can get a better idea what the study is about or where the holes are. For those of you who have done any critical appraisal of scientific papers, a lot of this stuff will be old hat.

This became quite long as I was writing it, so I'm splitting it up into more managable chunks. I don't really want too many tl;dr comments, or wall of text images.



What is the study trying to say, and what does it actually say??

This is the easiest and most obvious question to answer, so we'll deal with it first, generally this should be obvious from the conclusions area of the study. The second part, and more important part of this question, is what does the person quoting the study say?? Do they present the findings as they were found, or are they bending the findings to their own ends and adding leaps of logic to make the findings fit the story??

By way of example, a random member of the public, we'll call him JT, may start claiming that brain scans show increased violence among people exposed to violent games. However, looking at the conclusions of fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) studies shows us videogame players brains are similar during engaging in a violent encounter in a videogame to those of a brain imagining a violent situation. Other brain scans conclude inhibitions and concentration are decreased over the short term following playing violent videogames vs playing nonviolent videogames.

While it could be infered that violence could come as a result of these findings, it is also easy to infer that these findings do not show increased violence rates. In the first example, this is similar to saying those people watching pornography when put into a fMRI scanner, would show similar patterns of brain function to people thinking about sex. Jumping the next step to say these people are potential rapists is obviously further than we would naturally take this argument (although historically, this was not always the case).

Similarly lacking inhibitions and concentration does not necessarily increase levels of violence, and this study has not looked at long term effects, this study has only looked at the short term. In fact the 2006 paper even asserts that the current experiment does not prove whether the rehearsal of such a mechanism can promote aggressive behavior in real life. Any conclusions from this study that extend beyond the short term are not shown by this study, for example, if JT was to tell you that, based on this study, playing CounterStrike 4 years ago would make you a violent person, he's infering something that has not been shown. Which brings me on to the next question which I will post about tomorrow, if anyone is still interested.

That is, how did they come to these conclusions??

Please note, I am unable to tell whether these are in fact the Brain Scan studies that are referenced, as our noble friend will not provide us with links to the articles. I also know I've only got one paper actually linked here, but I couldn't find the other one that is talked about in the New Scientist story. Like I said originally, I'm not out to prove studies right or wrong, just to help people go through the motions to decide for themselves what to believe or not.