Marsala. I've seen a summary of the results of all the studies that have ever been done comparing the murder rates in states with and without the death penalty. After all the corrections have been made to account for all the variables and other demographic factors, it turns out that there's no evidence that the death penalty has any deterrent effect whatsoever. Since the effect would show up in a difference in murder rates if it existed, we should conclude that there is no deterrent effect.
Naan. You're misunderstanding the nature of statistics. Actually, the evidence for the deterrent effect of the death penalty holds up pretty well. You have to understand that there are all kinds of things that can go wrong with a study. There may be bias, for instance. Or the data may be incomplete. Or the researchers might have compared demographically dissimilar groups. So it should be clear to you now that we can discount these studies, and should affirm that the death penalty does have a deterrent effect.

Has Naan given any evidence for the deterrent effect of the death penalty?
Has Naan given any evidence that any of the studies were biased?
Has Naan given any evidence that any of the data was incomplete?
Has Naan given any evidence that the researchers compared demographically dissimilar groups?

It is a fact that science and public policy depend heavily on studies. Both science and public policy would be impossible if there were no good studies.
Therefore, there must be studies out there that everyone agrees are good studies.
Has Naan given any evidence that any of the studies were conducted differently from all these studies that everyone agrees are good studies?

Copyright © 2005 by Martin C. Young

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