Mass shooting in the middle school Vladislav Ribnikar in Belgrade

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

But that's in no way comparable to what Kleck did. Sometimes, unproven (even unprovable) assumptions are necessary in historical research - ya gotta start somewhere. 

But Kleck wasn't doing historical research or historical investigation. He wasn't constrained to make assumptions that may or may not be true. He deliberately chose parameters that would skew his research towards the results he wanted and relied primarily on subjective, pre-disposed witness statements to arrive at his conclusions. Any criminologist - except, apparently Gary Kleck - will tell you that witness statements are notoriously unreliable.

That's not pseudoscience - it's just bad science.

Boru

Well, like I've explained, as far as I understand the methodology of social sciences (and I have published a few papers in social sciences, so I know something about how social sciences work), if something is the only study about something (like the Gary Kleck's study is the only study that tries to estimate how many people are saved by guns each year in the US), we should generally accept its conclusions. There are exceptions, like when the conclusions are highly scientifically implausible (like the Thai study concluding that Moderna vaccine causes myocarditis in adolescents more often than COVID itself does) or when the methodology contains a fatal flaw (such as incorrectly calculating the p-value or not calculating it at all). Generally, if the study is not such that it shouldn't have passed the peer-review, and it is the only one, you should accept it. Complaining how unreliable witness statements are and discarding them, even if there is no better evidence, is not very scientific, in fact, it has more to do with the methodology of The Mad Revisionist than with science.

But Kleck’s conclusions ARE highly improbable, to the point of ridiculousness. He would have us believe that the number of defensive gun uses in the US exceeds that number of gun crimes. That’s absurd on the face of it.

And it’s already been explained to you why a single, flawed, non-corroborated survey should NOT be accepted.

Boru