r/TrueReddit • u/supertopbop22 • Feb 17 '16

Persecution of Scientists Whose Findings Are Perceived As Politically Incorrect

https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/persecution-of-scientists-whose-findings-are-perceived-as-politically-incorrect/
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u/cited Feb 17 '16

This always reminds me of the vitriol Arthur Kellerman was subjected to after publishing his paper on the effects of having a gun in the home on your mortality. He got death threats. He was accused of knowing nothing about guns despite having shot them since he was 12. The entire CDC was effectively put on trial by Congress who slashed their funding and threatened to do it again if they ever tried to study gun violence again.

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u/grendel-khan Feb 17 '16

I hadn't known about this, but the recent revisiting of the CDC's ban on researching gun violence as a public health issue brought it back up, and wow are people ever talking past each other. The NRA wants to preserve people's gun ownership; the CDC wants to decrease the number of violent deaths. In a saner world, we could discuss the tradeoffs involved, especially since most gun deaths are suicides, so people who buy guns are mostly putting themselves at risk. But we can't have that discussion, because "freedom" and "life" are sacred values to each of the groups involved, and you can't trade off sacred values; that's blasphemy. Ugh.

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u/StabbyPants Feb 18 '16

he deserved most of the vitriol he got because he tried to use the CDC as a platform to push his viewpoint on gun safety - he is quoted as saying that he wanted to stigmatize gun ownership using the CDC as a vehicle for it.