...after a long run of shows worthy of four or five stars the team have again swerved off the path of scientific inquiry. This week’s show - psychologist Chris Ferguson on meta-analyses of video games and violence - starts with their guest using a lot of pejorative language and what sound suspiciously like logical fallacies to attack the quality of research and motives of other scientists in the field. I’ve made a lot of science documentaries and I have to say that when a potential contributor talked like that most often we walked away. Ad hominem attacks are not a good indicator of balanced scientific inquiry. Not without proof. And none was given. Just blanket assertions. Also, it’s more than thirty minutes into the show before Prof.Ferguson's research (opposing the link between games and violence) is openly discussed. Not a surprise, but it should have been flagged much earlier.
Like most parents I am genuinely interested in this field and, as a non-psychologist, look for balanced explanations of good quality research to inform me. Unfortunately, I soon developed a deep distrust of Prof.Ferguson’s opinions and a growing sense of disappointment at the standard of preparation of this show. Now, he might be a great feller with a load of credible research to back him up but I was left with no sense of that.
Instead, by the end of the interview, I was left with no idea of whether or not this was like those climate change denial media debates from a few years ago; the ones where outliers of opinion were given equal weight to the preponderance of evidence. Do any of the meta-analyses match the Cochrane gold standard? Is there a Cochrane study? How far out or how mainstream are Prof. Ferguson’s views? How rigorous are his own studies? I’d love to know. Unfortunately, I have the impression that this show didn’t know either.
And then, right at the end, Kishore and Indre have a insightful debate where they pretty much tear apart their own guest’s contribution. They answered a lot of my questions with eloquence. But, and, yes, there has to be a ‘but’, why then have him on at all if those questions were not going to be put direct to him? It’s why I wonder about the amount of preparation that goes into this show. Surely some phone calls and research beforehand would have answered the questions about Prof. Ferguson’s credibility and also given some perspective about his concerns over the quality of the research? It seems very rude to treat him this way.
I hope this is just a blip. I promise I’ll change the star rating once the show gets back on track.
