You Can't Get There from Here, Part II

It takes me a while to write one of these posts. If I published what came off the top of my head, it would be easy. I want to make sure I can back up anything I say and that takes time.  That path was my choice, so I'm not complaining.

There is a bramble in the path that I will complain about: access to research. Here's a case in point. The American Journal of Public Health released a study on Friday reporting a link between areas of high gun ownership and police deaths. Even before it's out, it's a political football. I want to evaluate it for myself. I don't want to read any of the million opinion pieces saying why it's a good study or why it's a bad study. I want to see the study.

In particular, I want to see the data. One site has helpfully provided a graph of the data. But I don't know anything about this site. Statistics aren't necessarily lies as the popular meme started by Benjamin Disraeli would have it. They're forms of communication. They can be lies or they can be the truth. This news site is new to me. I don't know if they've reproduced this graph straight out of the study or if they've shaded it in some way. If I could see the data, I could reproduce the graph, including the regression line. It's easy to do in Google Spreadsheets or Microsoft Outlook. Reproducing it would allow me to figure out what if anything they had done to shade it. 

Can I get to the study or any of its data? If I follow one of the many links to the study, I get this, a request for money (top image):

This is actually an improvement over what I would have gotten five or ten years ago. News sites wouldn't link to studies. Often they wouldn't even provide the name of the paper. If I wanted to find it, I'd need to search through a dozen articles, hoping someone would provide the study's name. Or I'd need to search on the study's subject along with the organization that published it. 

This particular site wants $22 just for the article. That's a bargain. I've seen sites that want north of $30 per paper.

So, I can view the opinions of thousands, even tens of thousands of blowhards for free, but I have to pay to see the work of people who do real research? "But!", I can hear you asking, "you're not a an expert in this field. You're not qualified to judge the veracity of the research." But I know people who are. I could ask them to fact check my posts. Better yet, I could ask them to write a piece for my blog. 

We live in an era that is increasingly anti-science. While bloviators proliferate, the way research is published hamstrings the voices of knowledgeable people. What if all qualified professionals could view this study for free? We'd potentially have an army of qualified debaters for every comment thread, every family gathering, every city council meeting. That's not to say we would have this in every case. But it would be better than what we've got.