I am really amazed at the number of people here who actually think that having or keeping DRM was Apple's choice rather than the record companies' choice at any point in this process. I thought that this was all common knowledge, at least among this crowd. *shakes head*

a) If you'd read the post you're replying to, it has nothing to do with the Europeans currently running Africa and everything to do with the borders they laid down when they did run it and the long-term effects of those borders.

b) they seem to have got over it. Why can't the Africans? And how long, exactly, did it take the Europeans to "get over it"? When was the last time a European country was divided against itself, or contained two ethnic groups that didn't get along? 500 years ago? 200 years ago? 50 years ago? Oh wait... I'm certainly not going to say that Europeans are the source of all of Africa's troubles (simple lack of natural resources is a big culprit that's nobody's fault), but to say they should just "get over" the problems that were caused by Europe when Europe itself isn't all that "over" similar problems makes you sound like an ass.

Okay, we can't possibly know the ramifications 50 years down the line. But there's a big difference between that and "immediately after playing." There are most certainly studies that have followed children over the course of years to see if there was an overall change in their behavior over time.

Oh, so you've read the study and know for a fact that no methodologies were used that can piece apart correlation and causation? And that only immediate reactions were measured, no long-term effects?

Oh boy. I'm going to dispense with the overly-sarcastic opening I was going to use and just address your "arguments," such as they are, one by one, but not in the order you presented them.

If video games have potentially thousands of effects, why would violence be strictly of concern?

Okay, I'm going to try and explain this in the simplest terms possible. The person I was replying to claimed that the study was biased because it did not simply research "What are the effects of video games on children." I said this was absurd because one study cannot capture all of these effects. I specifically did NOT say that every singe potential effect that anyone could possibly imagine is equally worthy of its own study. There are a wide variety of reasons that a researcher would choose one potential effect over another for study - personal bias is one, yes. But others include (but are not limited to) the existence of previous research showing similar effects in a related field, and testing a theoretical framework that would suggest the presence or absence of a particular effect. These theoretical frameworks are generally based on such previous work, but in their infancy might also include some logical thinking and common sense. Which brings us to...

Would testing the influence of video games on the rates of homosexuality make for a good study (cause you know Tetris does have homoerotic undertones)? How about likelihood of video game players to favor volunteer work?

How many violent video games (remember, this study is only on VIOLENT video games, not ALL video games) feature violence, or other factors that have been related to violence in previous studies? How many feature homosexuality, or factors that have been related to violence in other studies? How many feature volunteerism, or other factors that have been related to volunteerism in other studies? I'm guessing the first number will be much higher than the other two. This does not, of course, mean that violent video games cause or are even correlated with violence - but it does mean that one could probably make a sound theoretical argument for studying it. There are probably people out there studying video games and sexuality as well as video games and volunteerism. I myself study video games (and television) and the understanding of scientific practice. You are making a huge mistake in assuming that just because some people study violence, doesn't mean nobody is studying the possible positive effects.

Couldn't violence be completely mitigated by one of the other effects? Couldn't a combination of other effects lead to violence (not specific to video games)?

It's entirely possible. Why don't you go read the 130 studies involved and see if any of them controlled for any of these factors? I'll bet at least a few of them did. Not saying they all do, or do it as well as they could, but this is what these people do for a living.

What you are telling me is the questions the social sciences are conditioned to ask reflect less any discernible data (quite honestly if the social sciences can't differentiate through several different possible responses, it is immature science that should know better than to come to an conclusions on this matter) but merely reinforce cultural norms and stereotypes by the very nature of the questions it asks.

No, that is bullshit that you made up yourself. Please show me where I said that social scientists do not use existing data/studies to formulate their research questions.

I want to give you and parent a hug right now. Being a social scientist on Slashdot feels kinda like being a biologist on a creationism website sometimes.

You have clearly never tried to do social sciences research. Simply asking "What effects to video games have on children?" is FAR too broad a question for any study. Video games potentially have hundreds, thousands of effects. You cannot design a single study that will successfully measure them all. You can't design a GOOD study that measures more than a couple of them at a time. While a super-general study that tries to count a lot of possible effects might be a good idea at the very very beginning of a brand-new line of research, video games have been researched for decades now, and media in general for even longer. We know a good-sized list of things they may affect, there is no reason to try to study more than a couple of those things at a time.

For example, some studies look at video games' effect on spatial reasoning. Are those studies also biased? Must every study measure both propensity to violence AND ability to count items at the periphery of your vision??

This study may be biased (I, like you, have not actually read it yet, so I don't know), but to say it is biased because it asks a valid, researchable question is idiotic.

From the TFA:

The study was published today in the March 2010 issue of the Psychological Bulletin, an American Psychological Association journal.

Unfortunately, it's not up on their website yet or I'd link you right to the paper.

Oh wait, actually he has a preprint up on his own website. For free.

Thank goodness someone here is sane. No, I don't like that the guy is calling for this to have policy implications either, but I'm not going to condemn the entire study for that.

Pulling out old saws like "correlation doesn't imply causation" doesn't even work here - his meta-analysis includes studies with a variety of methodologies, some of which are designed to piece apart true causation from mere correlation. Nor can you claim that he's only looking at certain types of people (chances are, with 130 studies there's quite a range), or not controlling for other variables (again, 130 studies - probably everything and anything you can imagine has been controlled for in at least one of them). Anyone who wants to attack this guy needs to read the actual paper and make rational decisions based on the actual soundness of his methodology.

Oh shit, you mean Apple's just using this thing to make money? Alert the tech blogs!

Yeah, I found this question to be too confusing to answer. I've been paid a decent salary for being a grad student for 3 years now - is that conventional enough to count? What about the tuition reimbursement I got for being an RA during my master's? What about the hourly paid research positions I held as an undergrad (some of which I'd do for pay one semester and for credit the next semester)?

The whole cost doesn't have to be bundled into the hardware - the purpose of the wireless access is so you can download games from their store. Charge a few extra bucks per game and you probably more than balance out the cost of transmitting it, especially for smaller old-school games, while keeping the cost well below buying a cartridge in a store.

At least they called it a "hypothesis" instead of forcing us to accept it as verified fact.

You say this as though "hypothesis" were some kind of weasel word, as though they actually do consider it a fact but are just calling it something else to avoid criticism.

Did it ever occur to you that this is precisely what a hypothesis is, and that the correlation =/= causation thing is the very reason that it is considered a hypothesis? I'm sure that these biologists have some vague idea what they're doing. If they thought that they had hard and fast proof they'd be moving this on to the "theory" stage. The very fact that they call it a hypothesis means that they agree with you.

Whatever happened to Prodigy? That was my first internet service. I remember my excitement at finding their ST:TNG message board... and chagrin at discovering that it was mostly full of middle-aged women having fantasies about Brent Spiner. I mean, I had a crush on Data and all, but at 14 I was definitely not interested in a 45-year-old actor in the same way these ladies were.